Dear Becy,
This letter is all about identity… well sort of.
I want to begin by picking apart your statement that you don’t know if you can define yourself as a writer yet. I find myself asking, what makes a writer? Is a writer a writer because they put words on paper? Or because others see their writing? We can make two very different claims here — we can either say:
‘I write poetry’
or
‘I am a poet.’
The first statement suggests an act which is private. The second, one which is shared. A poet is usually someone published, whose name might even be recognised. Writing poetry, well, that’s that thing you do alone in your garret with a rhyming dictionary and a bottle of laudanum.
A few years back I’d have called myself a poet. How did I come to define myself as one? Well… I got paid to perform my poetry, so I was a poet.
Likewise, I was only a writer after my podcast gained a little success. Suddenly my writing was being heard and seen by others and I would get emails from people all over the world telling me how much they loved what I was doing. So to me it felt like validation. But, am I more a writer now than I was before all those people found me? Before I started making money from doing it? It seems obvious that the answer is no. I am not a writer because others value what I do. I am a writer because I sit down and I write. You are a writer because you sit down and write. Have you ever had someone tell you they’re a photographer and then you’ve looked at their work and thought it was terrible? I bet you’ve dismissed them as a ‘bad photographer’ but never as being ‘not a photographer at all.’
Perception is key here. They think they are a photographer, and so they are one. It doesn’t matter what the quality of their work is, only how they represent themselves. And, actually, you might find that if you tell someone,
‘I write poetry’
they will say
‘oh, you’re a poet.’
Because it turns out that those things which we, as writers, might use to measure our writerly worth, aren’t as important to others. Fuck the recognition, it’s all about the act of putting pen to paper.
The other day my partner told our daughter to ‘ask mummy’ and for a short moment I didn’t know who that was. Put pen to paper. Write. Nappies on your toddler. Mother. I am a mother. A writer. A writer mother. A mother who writes.
How could you desire more than motherhood….
A friend of mine sent me this article…
‘There’s evidence that parenting is associated with … a suppression of sexuality’
I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the piece.
Tess x
ps. What a tangle my mind is in!
Dear Mother 