What is a writer?
When I entered my first year at the University of Guelph I was a 17-year-old political science student who had no idea who he was, much less what he wanted to do with his life.
Fast-forward and I’m now a recently graduated English student getting ready to pursue a master’s degree in journalism in Toronto in the fall.
Obviously a ton has changed in the intervening six years. I still can’t say I know exactly what I’m doing, and I’m sure that feeling will probably never go away, but now at least I know that wherever I end up: I want to be writing.
I’ve never been clear on what it means to be a writer, but, at the end of the day, I don’t know if it really matters. When I was younger, I always thought that it was a solitary pursuit, that romanticized idea that plenty of young men have in which they spend their nights sitting with a pen, some paper, and a half-finished bottle of scotch.Even though I never went so far as to get myself a typewriter—though I had friends who advised me to do so—I was probably one of many who bought a little too heavily into the idea of the artiste when I first started to seriously put my ideas to paper in high school.
Before coming to Guelph, I went to an integrated arts high school in Peterborough and was fortunate enough to create and collaborate with some brilliantly creative people. I had been accepted with drama as my discipline and spent my next four years writing, performing, and having an absolute blast while doing it.
Still, during my time in high school, whenever someone would bare their soul in a creative writing class or leave their audience silent after a particularly emotional performance, I’d sit and wonder why I wasn’t able to do what they had done. Sure, I could waltz onstage and crack a joke, but writers were supposed to be deeply introspective and take their craft seriously—something that I always struggled to do.
I tried for ages to make my writing sound like something it wasn’t. Whether it was an ill advised foray into poetry or trying to create serious “literary” fiction, I wrote everything I could during my final year of high school, as long as it didn’t sound like me.
Each story that I wrote was too lifeless for slice-of-life and I always seemed to be checking off boxes on a predetermined list of what makes a story deep or emotional, instead of trying to write about what was true to myself.At the time, I had carried the idea with me that proper writing could only exist if it was looking at the real issues of the world in a raw and unflinching manner. There was no room to be arch if you were looking to be a writer.
Going to university did nothing to dissuade me of this opinion. I remember in a creative writing class during my second year, classmates trying to one up each other on the terrible circumstances that their literary subjects found themselves in. By this time, I hadn’t written anything that wasn’t meant to be carefully critiqued and graded since I left high school; I kept looking for a reason to write.
It was only during the third year of my undergrad, when I finally made the leap from political science to English, that I picked the pen back up and began to really work at whittling down my words and pursuing my craft.
Once I started spending my time stooped over a notebook again, the unwarranted advice came rolling in.
I’ve been told to type all my drafts on the computer, pick myself up a typewriter, and write in every type of notebook known to humankind. I was advised on how long I should write each day, and the appropriate times that my writing should be done, but no one ever gave me the advice that I needed. I should have been advised to take myself a little less seriously. By no means do I feel like I’m generally suited to dish out advice—I’m far too young to adopt the role of the wise old man yet. The only thing I feel even slightly qualified saying is that your work doesn’t need to be grave and raw. If it is, you feel proud of it, and it resonates with you, then that’s great, but there is room in the world for work that is just fun.
I know that I’ll never write the next great Canadian novel or bare my body and soul on stage to a rapt audience, waiting expectantly for my next poetic word, and I’m completely happy with that. I’ve met enough people during my time in university who pursue their own work with an emotional and earnest conviction that I can sleep easy at night knowing that the world of serious literature will keep chugging on fine without me.
I’m now at a place where my own authorial voice is getting some much needed usage, especially after years of being stifled by a series of half-hearted impersonations. I know that means that my writing will include plenty of misused commas, an abundance of alliteration, and turns of phrase that may sound antiquated, but I’ve learned to accept these odd and grammatically infuriating quirks as part of what makes my work mine.
I still can’t say for certain what a writer is exactly supposed to be, but I’m more interested than ever to find out.
Photo by Mariah Bridgeman/The Ontarion.