So, You Wanna Be A Writer…

When I was a kid I would write on every available surface.  I was often reprimanded for writing on the very cool ‘telephone message book’ we had on our very fancy telephone table.  Thinking of it, that fancy table was my first writing desk.  It had a small tabletop to house the phone, a notebook and a jar of pens. There was an adjoining seat with space beneath for something… oh I remember – phone books!  Plus we stored our magazines there too! 

I loved that little desk and I loved the spiral bound notebook that sat beside the telephone. It was a tall, skinny notebook with carbon paper between the pages. A duplicate of your notes was effortlessly created. It felt like magic. Each page was a template with a simple form you could fill out detailing specifics of the phone call, including boxes to tick.  How satisfying to double tick the box marked URGENT! There was a perforated strip where you could tear off the note as well. 

I made up endless stories in that special telephone notebook: 

* the prime minister had called (please call back), 

* a talent scout had called, wanting to speak with Gabrielle, (of course they did!)

* Tatts Lotto had phoned (URGENT tick, tick, tick). 

These little forms were my first “flash fictions” scribbled on small squares.  And I got in trouble for creating them.  But that didn’t stop me, I’d just open the notebook toward the back and bury my storytelling in there where it wouldn’t be discovered for weeks or months.

Also when I was young, just beginning high school,  Mum would bring home ‘computer paper’ from her work.  It was near to A3 size with lines on one side, blank white on the other. There were small holes along each edge and a perforated strip kept each sheet attached to its eleventy million bedfellows.  This paper was perfect for long-winded story telling, acrostic poems,  making illustrated booklets, chapter books and (my fave) writing letters to the prime minister. (I know, I know, again with the prime minister – I was very concerned about women’s rights and the effects of forestry and logging. I thought our PM might not know about these issues so I was often writing to inform him.)

Fast forward to the early two thousands and you’d find adult-me ambitiously setting out to write a book during the two-week school holiday I had as a new teacher.  I’d take my little laptop with me when we went camping and I’d write while the (now ex-) husband fished.  I loved nothing more than carrying on with a writing task set during my local writers’ workshop. I also loved reading books on ‘how to write’ and engaging in all the writing activities they suggested.

Reflecting on it now, I think I taught myself to write by writing (and reading).

Now, I have achieved the mighty title I longed for as a kid and as an aspiring young adult.  I am a published author.  I earn money from my writing. It’s my job – legit.  I have a contract from a publisher sitting just over there in a file on my shelf.  It seems I’ve made it.

And so, my advice to you, fledgling writer, is to write. If you also hold hopes of one day being published, you must write. You must write with the playfulness of a 1980’s child, left alone with a telephone notebook. You must write with the reckless self-importance of an early 90’s teenager faced with a sheaf of dot-matrix printer paper. You must write with the same bold audacity that I write with now.

Writers write. There’s actually nothing magical that separates me from an unpublished writer. (“But look at that contract,” you say, pointing dramatically at my shelf.) 

Listen carefully now – the only reason I have that contract is because I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I wrote until I thought perhaps I had the confidence to submit something to a publisher. And then I wrote and I wrote and I wrote until the rejection letter(s) arrived. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote until the rejection stopped hurting and then I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote until I had something else I felt confident to submit. And then I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and – amazingly, miraculously – it was accepted. So I wrote and I wrote and I wrote…

Look, I think you get the point.  If you want to be a writer, you have to write.  Yes – there are many other things you have to do (especially if you’d like to be a published author) and over the course of this blog I’m going to explore them. But ultimately, the first step is always the same. You have to write and not stop writing because writers write.

I know that’s true because even if there was no contract on the shelf, I’d still write.

So what are you doing, still reading this?  Go get your notebook. Find your favourite pen. Open up the laptop. Click File. Click New Document. Get to the page, spread the words all over it. Do it now. Do it today. And then do it again tonight, or tomorrow. Or a few times over the weekend.

If you wanna be a writer, write.