What does it mean to take writing "seriously"?

What does it mean to take writing "seriously"?

It’s a question I’ve been trying to answer for myself since a month ago, when I decided that taking writing “seriously” is something I want to do again.

There was a time when all I wanted to be was a Writer. I wanted to work at Manrepeller (lol) or The Cut. I wanted to write a memoir and go on a book tour. While getting ready in the morning I would practice how I would slip in the mention of my new book in my Glossier Get Ready With Me feature.

I’d heard rags to riches stories of girls who, like me, worked in social at media companies and climbed their way to Writer positions. I hoped, earnestly, that I too would be able to make connections and gain enough followers on Instagram who cared about my writing, and eventually do the same.

At some point that dream died. Work became just work. A transactional relationship that allowed me to live in New York, pay expensive power bills in the summer, try the latest ethnic food pop-up in Brooklyn.

Work also exhausted me. I didn’t have time to plot how I might climb the corporate ladder or finesse my connections into a Dream Job. At some point the idea of a “dream job” became unrealistic. A farce. I didn’t want to grind and build after eight hour days, sitting hunched over a laptop. I wanted to spend my free time hosting dinner parties for my friends and binge watching the latest season of Ramy. I use the past tense here, but this is all still very much true.

Writing, to me, is like that friend you had a falling out with, but can’t really put your finger on the reason why anymore. It’s been years now. You still feel the frustration of the disagreement in your body. But when you scroll past a photo of them in a bridesmaid dress on Instagram, you feel sad.

I guess you could say I’m rebuilding my relationship with writing again, and that’s why it feels a bit confusing to define what it means to take it seriously. Sort of like figuring out how to text the friend you fell out with on their birthday.

Rebuilding a relationship doesn’t mean it has to look the same way as it did before. Becoming a Writer doesn’t have to mean what it used to mean to me.

I think mostly, what I mean when I say I want to take writing seriously, is that I want to grow as a writer. I want to learn how to get better at writing. I want to learn how to research, and write in a way that looks outward at the world instead of merely at the self. I want to write something I might think is bad, and submit it anyway.

I also want to stop pretending that becoming a Writer means that writing has to be my day job. (Although, there is still a small part of me that thinks that would be ideal.) During one of my therapy sessions, I off-handedly used the language that I “want to be a writer some day.” When my therapist corrected me saying, “You’re already a writer” I weirdly believed her.

A word on the direction of this newsletter

This newsletter is also a part of me beginning to take writing more seriously. I originally started Not A Writers Club back in 2020 as a “newsletter for people who have a difficult time writing.” In each newsletter I’d share a piece of my own writing, and then present a prompt for you (the readers) to respond to, with the chance to submit and be featured in the next newsletter.

At some point the structure of presenting writing prompts and gathering submissions became a bit lackluster for me. Moving forward I want Not A Writers Club to function as a playground for my practice, where I can explore various topics and forms of writing, and hopefully in turn, inspire you (the readers) to do the same.

While the What You Can Expect from this newsletter has changed a bit, I’m feeling more and more inspired to write than I ever have in the past few years. So you can expect a lot more newsletters in your inbox from me, at least for as long as this creative streak lasts.

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Some things

• Roxane Gay’s newsletter, The Audacity, is open to submissions for its Emerging Writer’s Series. Read the guidelines to submit here.

• Parts Per Million, an "online creative forum" exploring the climate crisis, is looking for submissions for their first themed issue, ‘Our City’. Read more and submit here.

• For any fiction-curious girlies out there The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn is hosting a panel titled The Craft of Fiction: Can Creative Writing Be Taught? next week. If you can’t be there IRL, you can sign up for the live stream.

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