(Continued. Read Part 1 Here.)
Officially, I am now a writer. That's what I tell people I do when they ask, though a note of hesitancy always slips into my voice. What really qualifies someone to claim to be a writer? Do you have to have a certain number of things published? A business card? A website? Or do you just have to churn out word after word after word with the hopes that some day someone will read it? Writer is what my taxes will say for 2010. It is my only (sometimes) paying job. From the outside it looks like I'm finally doing exactly what I set out to do back when I was young enough to believe that you really can be anything and everything you want to be. But from the inside, things are still confused.
You see, writer, though containing only six letters, is a big word. It has so many meanings. There are newspaper writers and television writers. They are speechwriters, screenwriters, press release writers. There are bloggers and website writers. There are travel writers. There are essayists. There are poets. There are playwrights. There are biographers. There are novelists. Behind every single thing we read--from bestsellers to the back of the cereal box--there are writers.
So trying to sort out just what kind of writer I am, just what kind of writer I want to be, has been difficult. Because as I said before, I'm a rational person, and I can't ever escape the thought that what I do has to make money (and in the here and now, not the somewhere down the road). No matter how many times Jeff tells me that we're fine without a reliable paycheck from me, no matter how many times I smile and nod, I can't let the thought go. And so when I sit down to write, I usually don't find myself lost in a story, but instead find myself pondering what kind of writing I can do to make a buck. I peruse websites that aggregate freelance writing jobs. I consider churning out how-to articles for Demand Studios. I delve into the idea of monetizing my blog. But always, I reject idea after idea. Because when I really take the time to find my voice amidst all the noise, I realize that none of those jobs embody the type of writer I want to be, that if those are my options for writing, I'd honestly rather just take a desk job. Writing what someone else wants me to write has as little appeal to me as entering data all day ... and at least data entry pays better.
And then there's travel writing. The road most of you probably think I want to go down. The road I myself thought I might want to go down. I've had a bit of luck getting some articles published in magazines and newspapers. I'm at work on my second guidebook. I lovingly keep up a blog dedicated solely to travel. But as I said to Jeff while we sat in a plaza in Cartagena and had a drink, "I don't think I want to be a travel writer." You see, I could care less about top hotels, best restaurants, the 10 most romantic spots in the world, or the most fashionable carry-on bags. I don't like interviewing people. I hate querying, following up, and waiting for responses that rarely come. I'm going to cancel my subscription to Budget Travel if I see Italy on the cover one more time. Writing service pieces (where to go, what to eat, where to stay) interests me once in a blue moon. I don't like working (or feeling like I should) while I'm on vacation. I hate social media (the bloodline of writing these days it seems). I prefer paper to online. And I can probably count on one hand, in this world of shortened attention spans and rapidly dying print media, the number of publications I'd actually like to work for.
On the surface travel writing seems like the perfect fit. I love to travel, and I love to write. But it's not. When I travel--as I see new things and meet local people and come to understand once foreign cultures and histories--I take tons of notes. I file away images, both in my mind and on SD card. But when it comes time to sort through them all, what I find myself creating is not articles but stories. I don't want to tell you the facts; I want to tell you the bigger truth. I am not a journalist. I am a storyteller. Fiction is what I love.
(To Be Continued...)
1 comment:
Your second paragraph speaks to an idea I've had recently about situating my composition 101 class around the question "what is writing?"
Writing is a big word. And I always find it problematic to ask my students to "write" without defining what it is that writing is. Sure, I can take a definition (personal writing, academic writing, public writing, research writing, etc.) and force it on the masses (my class), but, to me, there's a value to asking, "what, after all, is writing?"
Granted, most of my students just want to learn how to write. But, when they say that, I say, "well, what kind of writing do you want to do and why?" Alas, as the instructor, I'm supposed to know that answer for them.
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