I write what I write because that's who I am as a writer

Hannah Moskowitz has an amazing blog post on this topic.
So does Shayda Bakhshi.

I figured it wouldn't hurt to put my .02 in on this topic, since I'm actually aiming to get a double Bachelor's degree in Anthropology and Creative Writing when I go back to school next fall, and then go on to get my MFA in Creative Writing and a Masters in Anthropology with an emphasis on linguistics.

I took my first creative writing class as a senior in high school.  I needed a filler and my mum suggested that one.  "You want to be a writer, don't you?" she'd asked me.  "You should take it to see if you can learn something you don't already know."

I took it.  And Mr. D was the biggest waste of space for a teacher you could get when it came to creative writing.  I had double trouble with him because he was also my English teacher.  The bell would ring ending English and I'd just sit there and wait for creative writing to begin.  After a few weeks I started dreading that bell because as an English teacher he was brilliant.  As a creative writing teacher, he sucked.

He was insistent on us writing essays, doing daily writing exercises, and keeping a writing journal.  All of those things I wouldn't have had issues with if he hadn't kept failing my writing exercises and marking me off on my journal.  Why?  Because I write speculative fiction, not literary fiction.  I write science fiction and fantasy.  I turned my writing exercises into exercises in description of Aleran or character development for one of my sci fi stories.  My writing journal was full of poetry and short stories tied into my worlds.  He told me that he wasn't interested in someone who wanted to write "trashy novels".

Now, at that time, "trashy novels" were the bodice ripper romances my grandma read.  The ones with the explicit sex scenes.  I told him, quite horrified, that I didn't write trashy novels.  He told me I wrote something other than literary fiction, so what I wrote was "trashy".  He relegated the whole of the science fiction and the fantasy genres with a wave of his hand as "trashy".  He told me I lacked talent and should instead consider looking at becoming a teacher since I didn't have it in me to be a writer.

I was crushed.  At the time I didn't have much in the way of a strong sense of who I was.  So I stopped writing.  I wrote poetry still, but nothing at all in Aleran or any of my other worlds.  That persisted for two years as I struggled to get myself through college.  I decided to pursue a teaching degree, since it at least would let me teach children about "good" literature and that's what I wanted...wasn't it?

It wasn't.  And when the opportunity came to take English 111 and 112 (honors English), I jumped at the chance.  It was a writing intensive program, and once it was done I could brave the spec fic creative writing class.  Even though I didn't think I was good enough I was rediscovering myself as a writer.

Once again, my love of fantasy and science fiction got me ostracized by my teacher.  She told me that the books I loved weren't real literature.  She said that mythology and the early works of fantastical fiction (faerie tales, mythology, the arabian tales, etc.) were just exercises in describing a world primitive minds couldn't understand or to teach virtues to children.  I was told that, once again, my dreams were as nothing compared to the realities of my teacher's world.

I stopped writing at that point.  Completely.  I did the assignments and had my portfolio all neatly lined up for the creative writing class.  But I didn't go forward with it.  I didn't see the need.  I wasn't a writer, just a talentless woman with delusions of grandeur.

My mum had different ideas.  My mum wrote most of her life, and she knew what I was going through.  She went through it herself at one point.  It took her a decade, and a lot of encouragement from my dad, to get her back into writing.  Mum wasn't going to let me suffer for that long.  She walked up to me about a year after I took that class and she quite literally smacked me upside the head.  "Sit down, pick up that pen, and write."

I did.  Bouts of writer's block aside, I haven't stopped since.  That was around 12 or 13 years ago.  I've finally gotten to a point in my writing where I'm getting ready to brave the world of publishing for my first novel that I feel is good enough to reflect me as a writer, and the world I've been laboring over for 20+ years.

I also intend on going back to school and getting my multiple degrees because it's something I love.  If I get a teacher who doesn't love it, I know how to get around that now.  I'll look at anything I learn from those classes as a way to apply a different view to my writing but I won't ever let another teacher dissuade me from writing what I love.

Why am I up? (Artists vs. Writers...Break Room edition)

It's barely 4 am.  I've been up since 3:30 am.  Why am I up?

It's simple: I need computer time for my writing, and I don't get it after work.  Downside to only having one computer.  One of us has to take their time in the morning before work (we leave together since he's my driver...and we have similar schedules).  The other gets it when we get home.  Given that I'm usually really tired after work, it works out - although personally I think part of the reason I'm so tired is the fact that by the time I go to bed I've been up for 16-18 hours.

My roommates asked me why I'm doing this.  "You've got a pen and notebook.  Write that way, and then on your days off write on the computer.  He doesn't get up until late afternoon anyway."

They've got a point, but I made another one: I need to do research.  Half the time I spend online is because I'm doing research on one topic or another.  I'm getting a good starting point for when I finally pay off those pesky library fines and can start checking out library books again.  Once I do that, I'll probably still spend quite a bit of time researching because, frankly, the internet is a lot faster and easier on the budget than driving to the library twice a week.

That got me thinking: what exactly is it a writer does?  We got onto a discussion of art vs. writing in the break room one day because one of the art students was working on her research paper, and I was working on the notes for the WIP.  One of my co-workers made the crack that writers have it easy.  "All you do is sit down, put words on paper, and voila! You have 'art'!"

I get up early, do my research, write between calls and on my breaks long hand at work, and when I get home I'm STILL working because I'm revising notes, editing manuscripts, and going over my research from earlier in the day/week.  I've talked to writers from the NaNoWriMo group who routinely get into fights with SO's because they don't understand this drive to write that we all share.  Even outside the yearly torture in November, they spend hours during the week writing.  Most of those like me who work in jobs where they can write in their spare moments do so.

Others actually travel to the places they're writing about or using as references for their work.  We put a lot of effort into our "babies", and then when we're done we ruthlessly chop our "babies" down and then send them out to be further ridiculed by those in authority.  When we FINALLY get someone to take our "babies" seriously, we end up having to do more chopping and tweaking until it's time to see them go out into the world to be introduced to others who we hope will love them as much as we do.

When I explained this to the co-worker, she just snorted and made another crack: "Artists still have it harder than writers."

I don't think we have it easier or harder than anyone else.  We just do what we do and hope for the best.  Both artists and writers are like that.  We're no better than each other.  We have our different mediums, our different artistic styles, and we all have different ways of seeing the world.  We take those different views of the world and turn them into works of art - even if they're only works of art in our own eyes.