When Do You Get to Call Yourself a Writer?
Are you born with it? Does something in you magically change? Is it when you are published for the first time? At what point do you get to say: I am a writer?
Out loud.
To other people.
Even as a young girl, I always had journals where I wrote — stories, quotes, song lyrics — but I wouldn’t have called myself a writer then. It just felt like I was releasing something that wanted to get out.
In college, I was an English major and my first job when I graduated in 1996 was as a researcher and fact-checker at a magazine. There, I was lucky enough to be mentored by two incredible editors and with their encouragement, I began writing articles steadily. I’d say in the first year, I got at least a dozen published but it was one in particular that really shifted my perspective.
It was a personal essay about my childhood, connecting memories to the foods you grow up with. The difference was, in the other pieces, I had tried my best to replicate what other so-called “real writers” did but in this one, I had no choice but to write entirely in my own voice.
“… it had nothing to do with being published and everything to do with writing something that people connected with …”
I remember being extraordinarily nervous handing it in, almost to the point that I’d have liked to throw it on the editor’s desk and run. But I stood, nervously awaiting the verdict and after a few minutes, she looked up with pride and said, “it’s really, really good.”
A few weeks later when it was published, the magazine got a lot of feedback. Readers sent in letters about it. Co-workers and friends told me reading it had brought tears to their eyes.
Maybe technically I had been a writer before but it was then that I felt like one. And it had nothing to do with being published and everything to do with writing something people connected with. So now, 25 years later, that is still my answer. If you can make a real connection with a reader — even if it is only one — you have earned the right to call yourself a writer.
Darcey Gohring is a freelance editor and writer based outside New York City. She specializes in memoir and personal essay. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, Insider, HuffPost, Zibby Mag, among others. She is a contributing author to the anthology book, Corona City: Voices From an Epicenter, and recently completed her first novel. Darcey leads writing workshops and has served as the keynote speaker for conferences all over the northeastern United States. Visit www.darceygohring.com to learn more.
