What Makes You Think You Can Write?

I found this image on tumblr the other day. In case the image isn’t working, here’s what it says:

“Too many women (and men) mistake for repressed genius the vague unrest which is the soul’s response to another’s poem, essay, or novel. Your appreciation of a noble utterance is not a guarantee that you could, in the most favorable circumstances, say the same thing or anything one-half so good” — House and Home: a Complete Housewife’s Guide, by Marion Harland, 1889

Now, isn’t that a lovely thought?

As this quote comes from a book that was published over 110 years ago, I think I can safely say Ms. Harland is no longer living. However, the sentiment she expressed is alive and well.

I first vocalized my desire to write a novel sometime around 2002, when I declared English as my major in college. Upon hearing about my chosen course of study, a well-meaning, distant relative asked what I planned to do with such a thing. I answered that I wanted to be a writer, and there was a definite uncomfortable silence before she said, “Well, that’s nice.” She didn’t say that I might as well try to lasso a sunbeam, but the implication was there. I don’t know if it was merely that she thought I was wasting my time, or if she thought that I, specifically, would not be able to pull it off.

It is an insidious and all too pervasive idea about writing that it’s something only special snowflake geniuses can pull off. It’s not true in the slightest. Some writers are geniuses, but most of them are not. Most of them just worked really hard to become good at what they do. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Neil Gaiman, and JK Rowling are all people who stuck to it through to the bitter end, through the days of self-doubt and the days where the words come like trying to squeeze the last drop of juice out of a halved lemon.

As easy as it is to put our mental image of an author up on a pedestal, it just isn’t realistic. Read any author’s blog for a while and you’ll find that they have struggled with the same things that you do. Speaking of Neil Gaiman, he wrote a pep talk for NaNoWriMo that I really love. In it, he relates a story about how he got stuck in the middle of writing ANANSI BOYS and called his agent to complain. Her response was to say, “You do this every time you write a novel. But so do all my other clients.” And, so, Neil says, “I put down the phone and drove down to the coffee house in which I was writing the book, filled my pen and carried on writing.”

And that’s the thing. No matter what, you just have to keep on going. “One word after another,” as Neil says. It doesn’t take a special snowflake genius to write a novel, just someone who wants it enough.

To anyone who thinks as Ms. Harland did, I’ll refer them to a well-known saying, one which Dame Maggie Smith’s character used to hilarious effect on the TV show Downton Abbey. It goes, “So put that in your pipe and smoke it.” I can write a novel. I can even write a good one, if I work hard enough. But no one ever got there by believing the the opinions of naysayers.

(image found on questionableadvice.tumblr.com, via Internet Archive, copyright unknown, used without permission)