What Does It Mean to Be a Writer?
An excerpt from "You Must Go On: 30 Inspirations on Writing & Creativity"
Okay, stop, I know, the answer should be clear: Writing. To be a writer means to write. Duh. But come on, is it that cut-and-dry?
In my classes, one of the most common struggles students ask for help with is overcoming imposter syndrome, particularly around the word writer. What, they want to know, do I need to do in order to feel like I can own that word?
I usually turn that question around on them and ask what they think the answer is. Typically, it’s about getting their output past various gatekeepers—seeing their name in print or online, having something out in the world that they can point to and say I made this and it proves once and for all that I’m a writer.
And yet I know published authors who suffer from imposter syndrome as well. Maybe because when we give power over our identity to someone else, whether that be an agent, an editor, or a readership, we cede our authority, we give other people the pen and tell them to go right ahead and tell our story for us when we should be writing that story on our own, with whatever words we want to use.
I recently saw the documentary Eno, about legendary producer and musician Brian Eno, who worked and collaborated with musicians like U2, David Bowie, and Talking Heads, among many others. In one wonderful snippet, Eno postulated that being an artist is not about your output, your product, but it’s about a philosophy, a way of approaching life. To attune closely, noticing the world and yourself in it, to be open to new ideas and exploration, to be willing to be challenged in your thinking and moved to change, to want to actualize the desire to squawk back to the art you love, to participate, to collaborate with other creatives. In a separate clip, Bowie said he wasn’t even sure exactly what it was Eno did in the studio, he just liked having him around because Eno asked good questions, brought in interesting ideas, and made everything better.
There’s something playful here, something loose. Something exciting and low-stakes and at the same time vital and important. An artist is someone who makes everything better. But how? And what does that even mean?
Novelist Katie Kitamura once told me that she writes from a position of uncertainty. This struck me as profound, because how often are we encouraged to sit in a place of uncertainty in our lives?
You cannot tell me I’m not a writer because I have and have not done certain things. Only I have that power, and I know I’m a writer because I read and love to read and love to take ideas and stories and turns of phrase and rhythmic sentence constructions and do something with them on my own.
On the contrary, society tells us that to be uncertain, to be in the process of figuring things out, to be thoughtful and slow, to admit you might not know what it is that you’re doing, is a kind of weakness. Politicians poll well when they are decisive and oversimplify big ideas into fifteen second sound bites. Religions lay out moral codes where right and wrong, good and evil, are clear and distinctive. Business tells us that profit is power, the ends justify the means. Social media provides clear metrics that clearly show how people engage with what we are putting out there. To follow this line of thinking is to find a line somewhere that divides the people who are writers from the people who are not writers.
I think that’s bullshit. I find, on a day to day basis, that I often don’t know exactly what it is that I’m feeling, or what motivates me, nor do I comprehend the world and other people’s actions, words, motivations. Art is a way into that disorder, a way to be with that chaos, in that chaos, and participate with that disorder. Art is a form of play and fun and self-discovery.
Art is about feeling alive.
That’s all I ask of myself when engaging with art; that’s all I ask of myself when making it: That I feel a sense of aliveness.
Notice that the art itself isn’t empowered in that sentence? I am.
I feel aliveness when I open myself to art, when I am moved by art. This is why it bothers me when writers discuss “literature” as if it’s a thing, a body of books that has a life on its own. It does not and it is not. That sounds so cold and ridiculous to me! What we call literature is a human concept, a category argued over by academics and critics and anyone with a social media account; there is no such thing as a canon of books everyone should read, there are no tablets in stone dictating what is and is not literature, no final arbiter, no rules, no god. I may be moved to tears by a blog post, a pulp fiction, or a magnum opus it took an author twenty years to produce, all of those experiences and all of that art is valuable, if different.
Similarly, you cannot tell me I’m not a writer because I have and have not done certain things. Only I have that power, and I know I’m a writer because I read and love to read and love to take ideas and stories and turns of phrase and rhythmic sentence constructions and do something with them on my own. I don’t just accept docilely, passively, without question. I encounter and I do because I am vibrant and alive and active. I sit with my uncertainty and from it draw meaning and value and an electric exciting feeling that’s hard to explain but which all creative people know because they’ve experienced something similar. This has nothing to do with output or product and everything to do with my body and mind’s attention and connection and approach to being in the world.
And what about you? Why do you write? What is it that you’re seeking? What is it that you want?
If the answers to those questions are outside of yourself, well, you may forever be searching, my friend. Today, stop seeking and start finding. Today, consider who you allow to have power over you and your work. Consider why it is that you picked up a pen to begin with. Try and get back to that intention, that motivation. See what happens when you attune to your aliveness, and attempt to bring some of that beautiful energy to the page. It sounds easy, but I know you know that it’s not.
Keep at it. I’m rooting for you!
Brian Gresko is a writer, illustrator, literary journalist, and educator based in Brooklyn. Their most recent book is You Must Go On: 30 Inspirations on Writing & Creativity. Gresko co-runs Pete’s Reading Series, Brooklyn’s longest running literary venue, and co-founded Writing Co-Lab, a teaching cooperative, through which they conceived and curated 100 Days of Creative Resistance. This essay is excerpted from Gresko’s You Must Go On: 30 Inspirations on Writing & Creativity
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You expressed the ineffable and it touched a chord in my writer soul. Thank you.
I love how you democratize the concept of art. It is for all of us. We don’t need the gatekeepers to tell us what counts as art. Very empowering!