A real writer

What does it mean to be a "real" writer?

Nothing of course. It means nothing. That word “real” is super problematic and offensive. A “real” writer is simply someone who writes. Period.

But, for me, and perhaps for others, this term is haunting.

For me, it’s also emboldening.

It doesn’t matter if I’m “good” or “bad,” if I’ve developed my talents, or not. What it means for me is that when I write, I come alive. It’s writing itself, the act of writing, that brings me, oof, to the doorstep of my life. The rest of the time, I’m sort of meandering along, floating above it, in a way.

I kid you not.

It’s really weird, this.

I had a boss once, a boss I admired and liked. Her name was Kati Koncz, and she was the executive director of the Open Society Institute in Budapest, Hungary. I worked there in my early twenties. (Can you believe that? I set out to have an interesting life, really I did!)

(It’s all I ever wanted: to have an interesting life)

It’s about telling the truth, it is. It’s not that I’m lying, exactly. In fact, I’m not lying. But I’m also not GOING THERE. You may know what I mean.

I had an English teacher at Mills College. She was beautiful, elegant, willowy, and whip-smart. One day, she said to us seated in graduated rows in a pristine little auditorium, that to make our writing better, we needed to press on when we thought we were done. “Force yourself to write one more sentence. That will likely be your most important one.”

It stayed with me, this advice. There’s truth to it. It’s that, we, or at least, I—I can only speak for myself—tend to shy away from the real deal. The real pain. The real confession. The real rawness. The real.

Seeing “Baby Reindeer” last night (yes, I binged all of the episodes except the first) brought this home to me. For this comedian went all the way. He brought us there, fully there, fully into what he perceived to be his humiliation. He didn’t shy away, he didn’t imply, he didn’t hint. He brought us right there, to the abuse he suffered, and I tell you, it was brave.

But it was so much more than brave. It was art. It was essential. It was crazy-raw. And oh so real. You believed—hook, line, and sinker. You knew it to be “true” (even if the show is a fiction—which, by the way, it’s not—it’s based on a true story, but even if parts are fictionalized or dramatized, they are “real.” They have the important note of the real, the tenor of the real.)

And because of that, they gain our trust. Not only our trust, but our deepest empathy and admiration. Because to tell the truth like this takes courage—courage in spades. It takes introspection (the courage to have that level of introspection). It takes courage to admit just how crazy our own minds can be. That’s what it is. That’s what really got me about this show.

You see, the actor, the maker of the series, lays it all out: the crazy machinations of our own minds. The way they go hither and thither, the weird decisions we make. I understood him. I knew he was telling a deep truth. Shame. He was letting us in one his weird, shame-driven behaviors.

I’ve been there. It resonated. I’ve also done bizarre things that were driven by shame. I got it. And I so appreciated it. You see, I’m so adept at moving away from this kind of thing in my own mind and heart that I barely register it. It’s like a blip of my consciousness.

But it’s very important, because it’s the most human thing about us, I’d wager.

Back to Kati Koncz, my boss in Budapest. She was the executive director, so she wasn’t really my boss. She was probably four levels above my boss. One day, we were seated outside having lunch with a few others. Eventually, they got up and left. She took that opportunity to say to me, apropos of nothing, something along the lines of, “Where are you? What are you doing? How can I get you to drop down into the situation here and engage? Really engage?”

She was genuinely frustrated. She seemed to be saying I wasn’t there. I was absent. I was wasting my potential.

I was confused and frightened. I could claim and probably would have if I’d ever had the courage to tell anyone about this, that I had no idea what she was talking about, that she was nuts, or whatever.

The truth is, I knew in the moment that she was absolutely right, and it terrified me. It was true. Where was I?

I’ve sort of floated above my own life for much of it, I’m afraid. That’s a strange thing to say, and I’m not even certain what I mean by it, but I think there’s a way that I hold myself out. I examine, perhaps I judge. I protect myself. I engage just enough. I’m socially acceptable (I think, for the most part), but I’m not truly THERE much of the time.

I think certain (rare) people have had the ability to anchor me and bring me into the present.

But, much of my life, I’ve been absent.

Back to writing. And being a “real writer.”

I don’t know what it is for other people.

What I know for myself is that the second I manage to “write,” I become… aroused. Not just sexually, but in a way, that way too. All parts of me wake up. I become… roused. I wake up. As soon as I hit “publish” on one of these platforms, my own life becomes more interesting to me.

If I wait a week before writing again, I begin to descend again into this weird ether where I’m drifting. I become a drifter in my own life.

The truth is, there is SO MUCH to write about.

When I start, I feel it.

When I stop, I forget it.

That’s all I mean by being a real writer. I can’t live without it. I’m not alive without it. And it doesn’t matter if I never publish a thing.