
Why be a writer? Why do we do it to ourselves?
After all, I’ve been flailing around in this career for a year and a half, just scraping by with some help of my family in exchange for independence and dignity. Searching for odd jobs to pay my way, trying to carve a career in something that I seemingly love, is a difficult won – especially when you work on so many websites daily for many hours and for free. Because at this crucial stage in my career, getting my name out there and polishing that name so it shines means it will eventually become gold. It’s a lot of work to see your ideas in print, or become a film. It’s a lot of work

My second attempt at Uni saw me abscond to London. And if anything, it really opened my eyes because I was brave enough to say “I need to be a writer.” Because I got to converse with this stellar minds, bustling with ideas and it was so glorious. I got to hone my skill and discovered I could article write and talk about film (oh hey! That’s what I do now!) More importantly, I had these people around me who were buckling down with me and chewing through the gristle, toughing out art because we needed to. Our minds sweating with the possibilities, bleeding from the excavation of our souls – but boy, did it make us feel?!
I use brave loosely. Though people protest it around me, I don’t think what I am doing is brave. Sure, the initial leap into the abyss is daunting. But when you are undertaking something that is coding into your basic DNA, you feel less like you are storming into the night, trying to make something of yourself roaring with passion and more like you are jumping up and down going “look at me, look at me.” I think courage comes from those who have families and sacrifice their goals for them. I am not brave, I’m just doing something programmed into me in hopes that the industry will absorb me. Eventually I want to give back, give so much back and then some. And eventually it will happen, if I keep remembering that letting this dream go, just the mere thought of it, hurts more than what I’m putting myself through.

Because there are characters pressing against our brains and worlds to be unlocked. There is something so enchanting about a sentence that dances out of our minds, into our fingers onto the page and honey drips of our tongues. It’s a transfer of all that passion – the beating pulses wrapped around ideas and eloquent stories – that we are eager to share. And they are palpable inside us, like blood flow burning through our veins but making us more alive. Oops, I slipped into the overbearing cheesiness that you’ll find printed across hipster photographs of landscapes.
Simply put, I’m a writer because I am. I do it because I hate to. And even when it hurts, it is gives me so much joy – that I know I am blazing to a stellar career. Poised on NaNoWrMo, with a novel to bulk up and a massive amount of support behind me – kind words from the industry and a soundboards I can trust – I feel that something golden is in my grasps.
Or maybe, something golden has always been there. Only this time the world is going to see it.