Being A Writer…

Is frustrating. Really, truly, properly frustrating.

 

Non-writers will never understand this. They’ll try — especially if they’re family — but they won’t know it in their bones the way that another writer would. No one chooses to become a writer. You’re doomed to be one from the minute you’re born and no matter how you try to escape it, your destiny always catches up to you.

 

Writers, also, don’t get to choose the stories they write. Oh, yeah, we do get to plot them out. We do get to outline them and refine them. We do, in some sense, get to “play God” with our stories. But we don’t choose the stories we write. They choose us. They sneak up on us and jump on us like small children on Christmas morning. One minute, we’ll be asleep in our nice, warm, comfy beds. The next, we’re woken by our stories pouncing on us, screaming for our attention. All writers have been dragged out of bed at an ungodly hour to start outlining or typing a story that has demanded their attention. We can’t ignore them anymore than parents can ignore the cries and screams of their offspring. Our stories are our children.

 

Stories also like to rebel against us. Sometimes we think that they can only turn out a certain way. We’re convinced that the characters will act in a certain manner. We believe that we know everything about them…until they stand up to us and rebel. Then we’re left completely flat-footed trying to figure out just where that came from.

 

Writers spend hours lost in thought, lost in dreams. The real world is an annoyance we tolerate. Family, work, bills, friends — these are things we put up with because we realize that if we don’t have them, we’ll starve to death in front of our computers (or notebooks or typewriters) because we’re so lost to other worlds, other times, other places. All writers have a TARDIS strapped atop their shoulders. Some live in the future. Some live in the past. Some travel to parallel dimensions. But, none of us are really “here and now.”

 

Being a writer means that you get damned tired around people. People who demand your attention. Who ask you inane and asinine questions. Most writers are introverts. We live inside our minds. We don’t get a thrill from “hanging out.” We want to be left alone to dream. When we have to interact with the world, we do it as actors. We do it as if we were strangers in a strange land. Only when you get a bunch of us together do you find us in our “native habitat.” We can go days without saying more than a dozen words to the people around us because we’re so busy living in our own worlds.

 

None of us choose this. It just happens.

 

Yet, every one of us longs to find that Someone. That other person who will understand us. Who might not be able to share the rich, internal world we’ve developed but who, at the very least, won’t be jealous of it. That Someone who will give us the freedom to live as we are, who will not make demands on our time and energy, who will not drain us with pointless small-talk and silly social conventions. We long to find that person who will complete us. Who will be our Better Half. And, in rare cases, some of us find them.

 

But even that person, that “perfect mate,” will not understand us. When we get tired. When we’re exhausted. When we weep in frustration because we want a few weeks of peace without a story jumping on us and demanding our attention, our “perfect mate” will think we can just stop being writers. That we can turn it off. That we can take a vacation from it all.

 

But we can’t. Because no one chooses to be a writer any more than they choose to be gay or straight. Male or female. Trans or cisgendered. Blonde or brunette. It’s something you’re born with. It’s not something you choose; it chooses you.

 

Being a writer is like being a parent. You’re going to have long nights. You’re going to be exhausted. You’re going to cry in frustration. You’re going to have hope and lose it. You’re going to wish you had the kind of control that outsiders think you should have. And, in the end, you’re going to wake up and know a satisfaction that others can’t even conceive of.

 

No one chooses to be a writer. It chooses you.

 

Whether you want it or not.

 

— G.K.