Issue #021 — Late September dispatch: a small thing I want to keep close

Dear reader,

Late September dispatch. A small thing I want to keep close before October arrives and I forget.

Last week, a friend who has been struggling for the last six months asked me, over coffee, if she could read me something she had written. Just to me. Not to publish. Just to read out loud to one person. She did. It was short. It was good. Better than the things she has been agonising over for months.

After she finished, she said the same thing several writers have said to me in the last year: I do not know if I am still allowed to think of myself as a writer. The career has stalled. The audience has stalled. The output has stalled. The identity is in question. Am I still that, or am I something else now, and I am the last to know?

I have been thinking about this question for a week. I do not have a fully formed answer. What I have, instead, is a small reframing.

You are a writer if you are still trying to write the next true sentence. The sentence does not have to be good. The sentence does not have to be public. The sentence does not have to find an audience. The trying is the thing. Most of the people who thought of themselves as writers and quietly stopped did not stop because they ran out of talent. They stopped because they ran out of trying, and the running-out happens slowly, and you do not notice until you look back.

Read your work to one person sometimes. Not to publish. Just to a friend who will receive it. The receiving will tell you whether you are still in the practice. The audience can come later or not at all.

Yours,
Enova