#thewritinglife
I came out of the closet the day I attended my first prose workshop. I distributed copies of my manuscript to my fellow transgressors, hung my head, and whispered my admission: “My name is Sandy. I am a… writer.” The members of this group understood what only those who have experienced such addictions can understand: Writing is not a job. It’s not a hobby. It’s a drive, as basic as eating and sleeping and drinking, as necessary as oxygen. It is something that is in me and must be released.
I have not always been ashamed of my passion. As a pre-teen, I eagerly told anyone who’d listen that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.
“She’ll outgrow it,” my mother assured my father.
“Don’t you mean a teacher?” my teacher asked.
“There are enough books already,” the librarian said.
But I went on to college and majored in English Literature. I loved it. My counselor hated it. “You are so good in math. You need to think about the future.” I didn’t listen. “You can’t pay the rent by writing.” I didn’t care. “You need a real job.” I didn’t need anything except a pen and a pad of paper. “Unless you want to depend on a man … ” And he had me. Those were fighting words in 1975. I Am Woman. I can do anything. Listen to me roar.
I became a programmer. I learned to manipulate numbers to propagate whatever pretension was required: production is on schedule, customers are happy, the business is solvent. I learned to use fact to tell lies. But at night, my compulsion surfaced. I used lies—made-up stories about made-up people with made-up problems—to unearth the Truth. I wrote late into the night, the pen my secret lover, the paper my confidante. For ten years I satisfied my cravings with nocturnal fixes. Then, busy having babies and feeding babies and cleaning babies, my binders went to the attic and my pen went dry. I tried to compensate. I smoked. I drank. I binged on chocolate. But nothing satisfied that carnal craving.
One day—and I don’t remember which day or what inspired it—I retrieved those dusty three-ring binders and read the words I’d written years before. My heart beat faster. Sweat dotted my forehead. I couldn’t stop. I read for days, my excitement growing. I spent weeks typing, months revising. I endured the rejection, the rewrites, the criticism. I embraced the joy, the pain, the fear. I submitted to my passion, finally admitting that awful truth: I still want to be a writer when I grow up.
© 1994 Sandy Tritt. All rights reserved. www.InspirationForWriters.com
You may reproduce portions of these essays and stories for educational purposes like writing workshops as long you distribute our copyright notice and our URL (InspirationForWriters.com) with each page. For use in conferences, websites, blogs or other uses not mentioned here, please contact us.
