Writers! Don’t give up!

Writers must learn to suffer rejection. Personally, if I printed them all out, I’d have enough rejections to wallpaper my office—aaaand yours. I started writing when I was a child, and I’ll write as long as I’m able. It’s almost assured that my most-precious creations will never become best sellers or classics, but I’ll keep writing, or thinking about writing, as long as my brain still functions. 

Never once have I considered quitting writing just because someone told me I wasn’t good enough. And believe me, I’ve taken criticism. I’ve taken breaks from writing for other reasons, though. An English teacher in high school failed my short story because she said I must have plagiarized it. She said it required more effort than I would have extended. I didn’t write another short story for years.

I started really writing again when I returned to college after a long hiatus and changed my major from business to English. Unfortunately, after earning a master’s degree, I measured myself against every great writer, poet, and philosopher whose words I had studied. And I became paralyzed. Nobody had to tell me I wasn’t good enough. I did that to myself.

Once when I was a child, my mother shared memoir she had written about a family experience when she was young. She had submitted it to Readers Digest, and they rejected it. She had kept the letter as well. That one submission, and its negative result, made my mother think she wasn’t good enough to be a writer. Perhaps her piece was too long, or it wasn’t the right fit for the magazine. Who knows? I wish I had thought to talk to her about it before she passed away.

Last year, I asked my dad if he remembered the memoir, but he couldn’t recall it. I didn’t find it while cleaning out their house after he died. Neither did I find the drawings my mother had created when she took an art course years ago. It seems she threw them all away when downsizing from one house to another.

In my combing through my parents’ belongings, I did find some other things my mother wrote—essays, poetry, and song lyrics. You know what? She wasn’t an English major, and she never took a creative writing course, but damn, she could write. She was a writer.

If I could find my mother’s memoir, I’d post it on my blog, which gets a modest number of daily page views from all over the world. Then, she’d be published. I plan to post another one of her pieces in the near future. It’s an essay about empty nesting that she wrote in 1974, and it’s insightful, universal, and evergreen.

I now realize how much my mother had wanted to be a writer. I wonder how she felt as she watched my own writing career develop. Did she feel a pang in her gut whenever she thought about her own dream?

So, here’s my point. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not good enough to be writer, including yourself. If writing gives you joy, then write. If writing gives you pain, but also makes you feel more whole, then write. If something inside tells you to write, then write. If your writing is good enough for you, that’s all that counts. It might not get you on the bestseller list, but is that what really matters?

It pains me when someone tells me they can’t write or that they’re a terrible writer. Compared to what standards? And who says those standards are gold? Everyone can write. It disappoints me when grammar shaming takes place on social media. That could be what one of the reasons many people don’t want to write. Now, if you truly don’t like to write, that’s okay. But if you want to write, you should write.

Can we all improve our writing? Absolutely. If our goal is to connect with others, we must try to write in a form that others can understand. If we are writing for ourselves, and no one else will ever read it, we can write any way we wish.

Please remember this: If you write, you are a writer. Even if you’re at a point in your life when you cannot sit down and put pen to paper (or fingers to keys), but you want to be writing, you are a writer. Even if you don’t measure up to anyone else’s standards, or you aren’t writing what’s “hot” right now, you’re still a writer. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. Don’t give up!