When I was a little kid I wanted to be an author. By the time I was in middle school I had a pretty clear vision of what being an author would look like. In college, I was still clinging to that vision.
Standing in the dorm hallway with my little bag of toiletries in one hand, my toothbrush still dripping wet, one of the girls on my wing had stopped me. We were talking about her dream which she had just spent a semester abroad pursuing. Then she asked about mine.
My major, creative writing, seemed like a silly choice to some people but at my Christian liberal arts college there were a couple different ways you could make it sound like a good idea—a mix of spiritualizing (it’s a “calling”) with some professional development (I have an internship) and it started to sound good.
With this particular person though, on this particular day, I told her I always thought one day I would have a home office and my kids would be at school and I’d sit down at my desk to get a final draft of a book off to a publisher while munching on twizzlers and popcorn in the middle of the afternoon.
She didn’t laugh. Instead, her eyes got wide and she said, “that sounds perfect for you! I think you’ll do that!” We both turned to close our heavy wooden dorm room doors, I tucked my toiletries in their little spot on my dorm shelf and went back to my routine.
Just a few days ago, I had my head in my hands at the kitchen table while I was talking to my husband after our baby’s bedtime. “Is all this just a glorified hobby at this point?” I asked him, while we talked about my writing.
To him, this sounded silly. I’d been writing for our entire marriage. I’d been published as a contributing writer in multiple places online, then in books, then wrote my own book, then ghostwrote books. I had a literary agent and a book proposal I was excited about. I was freelancing full-time and even freelanced for a publishing company.
Then, I got pregnant with our son.
In this particular conversation, my husband and I talked about how I had no closure on my writing career. I was telling him I never got a goodbye party. I never really quit. It was like one day I just woke up and suddenly identified more as “stay at home mom” than “working mom” and I never formally left my work.
No coworkers hugged me goodbye saying they’d miss me. I just stopped writing for the places I contributed to. I sent final projects off. I left networking groups I was in. And then, I was a mom.
I wrote, obviously. As people often remind me I actually wrote and produced an entire podcast in my “time off.” I kept sending my weekly newsletter. I fiddled with the next book idea during nap times. But still, I was looking at my husband asking myself if this was “just a hobby” because the thing—writing—I had always dreamt of doing and worked so hard to get paid to do wasn’t paying me much anymore.
He said golf is a hobby. And people who golf as their hobby don’t even do it every weekend. You write every day. That’s not a hobby.
Appropriately, I then found a folder on my computer called “why I write.” Just like how people do new years goals, I do this. Every year I write about why I write. I don’t know exactly why I do it but I do.
Here are a few of my past reasons:
I wanted to write before I understood words. I already knew poetry before I understood what poetry was. My life was poems and stories before I could walk. I don’t know how, I don’t understand it, but I know that I don’t exist without writing.
I doubt myself but I cannot let it control my life. So, I tell stories. I write words. I string them together often far before I am certain or before I know or before I believe and that’s as it should be. Because when I tell the story, when I write the words, then I start to believe.
Knowledge just lines your mind’s shelves with books but doesn’t change the way you look out the window. I don’t want words to color within lines that are already there. I want a shift to happen within me that affects everything outside of me, too.
I realize that I have always been and will always be a writer. To some people that might seem like an obvious fact but for some reason it’s really hard for writers to call themselves a writer. I know this personally but I also know from coaching writer clients who are doing the work of writing and still struggle to label themselves.
There have always been questions for me too about what would actually make me qualify. In high school, I thought picking the creative writing major might qualify me. In college, I thought maybe if the professors all thought I was the best and I spent my free time writing other stuff—not just the stuff for the assignments, then perhaps I would qualify. There’s been times when I thought maybe I could just look like a writer (act more introverted, sit in libraries, stop being allergic to cats then start petting them) and maybe then I would measure up.
At some point, I got some bylines and paychecks and success stories and thought—yes, I’ve really done it now. But imposter syndrome still shouts, “not good enough!!”
When I became a mom I felt an onslaught of conflicting beliefs. Some mom friends insisted you could just write a book during naps—no big deal. Others said momming is the highest calling so just chill out about writing stuff already. Still others say drop him at daycare and jump back into writing work.
In a lot of ways, I am a successful writer by most writer’s standards. Published. Paid. Professional. Degree. Time spent. Word count. Whatever metric you choose to measure by. But I still don’t think any of these metrics are right. And maybe that is because none of them explain why I write.
I’ve been through more life than I had the last time I wrote about why I wrote. And I think I have an even less clear answer now. Actually, I think I just have more questions. Deeper curiosity. But when I think of writing now, at this very moment in time, I think about my little boy waking me up at 3am.
I don’t know why he was crying. I don’t know what he needs. But even at 3 in the morning my entire being—mind, body, spirit, and soul—can do nothing else but be with him.
I would be with him again and again in that moment without explanation or clarity as to why I need to be. I just go and hold him.
To me, writing is like that. I might roll my eyes about it when I tell my friends about it the next day thinking, it was such a pain to be up in the middle of the night, but in the dim light in a rocking chair I hold him with care, attention and wonder.
Words are like that to me—I just want to hold them, even though I don’t always understand why.
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