For those who required permission...

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I'm not published, but I am still a writer. I don't think achieving that goal is a determining factor in calling myself such.

I don't announce it to just anyone, most people at my day-job have no idea- but my husband and friends are aware and I have no problem calling myself a writer. It feels good to say the words aloud. I am a writer.

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I don't know why people think they need permission, but I see the same thing in the people I teach in my knitting workshops. They all think there's a right and wrong way to do it (the knitting, but it applies to writing and other creative acts as well). They think that "real" knitters (and writers) know the "right" way to do it. They don't realize that creativity is just a question of experimentation and selection. They don't know that the process can be long and drawn out, with lots of false starts and mistakes, lots of thrown away failures. They only see the end result, the one work in however many that the artist was willing to share, and they think their work doesn't measure up because they can't create the equivalent on the first try.

That's my take on it.

Unfortunately, in the knitting world, there are people like me who design projects, write up the instructions and make them available by publishing them, and then all of the people who think they can't create can make a replica of what I designed. This means that they are affirmed in their belief that they can only follow, not lead, and it increases the idea that there is a right and a wrong way to do it, since, if they don't follow the directions correctly, theirs won't turn out right. I can't think of a parallel in the writing world.

In my classes, I frequently find that I am teaching them how to experiment and helping them develop a trust in their own judgement.

KTC said:

What was your KEY? Who or what gave you the permission you sought?

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My college English teacher didn't just hand me my key, she shoved it down my throat. I had always enjoyed writing, but who was I to be a writer? I don't have mastery of the art of language, entwining poetic words to build a cherished novel scene by brilliant scene. Nope, not me, I just tell stories.

She loved my writing for some reason and every time she saw me, either in class or passing in the hall for years to come, she'd say, "I'm still waiting for your first novel to come out."

I'd say, "Don't hold your breath. I'm a science major." But somehow, she got inside my head. I sat down one day and I wrote, not just to write, but to write *gasp* a novel.

Poor teacher, like me, is still waiting for my first novel to come out, but when it does, I guarantee she'll get a free signed copy from me with a big "Thanks" inside it.

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KTC said:

No. Exactually we are not obliged to do any such thing. I do not appreciate this derail. This has nothing to do with money.

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At the risk being annoying, I have to say that I don't think this is a total derail. Maybe a partial one

I agree that capitalism has an effect on this in so far as it tends to dictate what we call ourselves. Baker, banker, construction worker, teacher, doctor, lawyer. Each of these carries the connotation that it is not only what we spend our time on, it is what we make our livelihood from. For those of us who have assembled a patchwork of jobs into a life, whose true vocation may not align with our job, I may be difficult to say, "I am a writer," when we're not making our living at it. It's easy for me to imagine this, because I went through the same thing, a hesitation to say, "I am a knitter," when I decided to go professional. I only started admitting I was a writer when I started spending more time writing about knitting than do the knitting itself, and when I started making more money at writing than at knitting.

It's like the old joke: An amateur artist has a day job. A professional artist's wife has a day job.

I've never felt the need for permission to write, but I've definitely felt a lot of indifference and outright opposition from the people around me. Being of a contrary nature, that's just encouraged me.

The work that has spoken to me most strongly about this topic of permission is The Fountainhead.

Poor, pathetic Peter Keating, shuffled into architecture by his mother and his own need to feel (not to be) superior, thinking for all those years that he hated the one man he worshipped, because that one man always knew what he was. "But how can you know, Howard?" "Peter, how can you stand not to know?"

It wrings my heart when Peter, already broken, tries to paint, which is what he wanted to do, but which wasn't a practical or lucrative profession. He's denied himself for too long -- that self is eroded away now, unredeemable.

Too often the world does want us to deny ourselves. We can't let it do that. I'm very happy for you, KTC, that you've found your way out in time. Whatever book or books did it for you are your sacred texts. Keep them near you, along with your own books.

KTC said:

If you are among the writers who had a hard time owning up to the fact that you write, why do you think that's so? And what helped you gain that permission? And do you still struggle with that permission or have you achieved a happy place where you are writer?

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I had exactly the same problem for many years. It all has to go back to childhood, doesn't it? In my case it was a strained relationship with my father. He wasn't a bad person, but I couldn't help puzzling and disappointing him. He came from a working class background and believed - never explicitly stated, but it didn't take too much inferring - in academic success, degrees leading to postgrads and then lectureships. I never saw my father open a book, not in my whole childhood, and that's where you get your values from.

Anyway, I tried to follow the academic path and made a horrible mess of things, and eventually figured out that I didn't care about careers. Not in the slightest. Making money is necessary, sure, but promotions, boardrooms, big houses? That just doesn't interest me.

The strange thing is, even once I'd worked out I wouldn't live the life my father would have expected, I still didn't write. I went through the options, but I squirmed at the thought of being a writer. It seemed like a horribly embarrassing ambition.

Last year I worked out that I'd given myself permission to be anything other than what I wanted to be. After a terrible introduction to secondary school, I'd rebelled against my parents and teachers. I wouldn't do what they wanted, but I wouldn't do what I wanted either. I'd just drift and do nothing. That was the denial of permission, and I'd been the one who made it.

But I wanted to write. I like plenty of subjects, appreciate art and music and science, but the only subject I've ever loved is literature. The thing about permission is you can change your mind whenever you want.

I no longer need any permission. This is what I do, and will continue to do it. I'll be a successful writer or I'll be a failed writer, but I'll never be a didn't-try writer.

As for the key, well, there wasn't one, just a series of decisions stretching back twenty years.

I understand the distinction you are making, KTC, and I appreciate it. What it boils down to, in my opinion, is this: we are 'something' in our day to day. 9-5 lives. Then we tell ourselves that we are going to sit down and be someone, something different for a few hours a day.
We tell ourselves that we will be one of the creative 'geniuses' that we've looked up to over the years, Hemingway, London, Nabakov, for a few hours, and that takes a certain type of ego-driven will, or chutzpah.
Never mind telling others that we are doing this, because making yourself believe it, and do it, takes a certain amount of convincing, for some of us. For some, it's role-playing, for others, it's simply acting, and for others it might be channeling. Either way, it takes some amount of convincing and inner persuasion.

Some of us aren't even pretending. For some it's simply an act of will propelling us forward to a new reality and higher level in life, that of creative expression. For others it's simply having the courage to finally, 'scratch that creative itch' that won't go away.

By the time others have found out about it, we may be past the point where we feel the need to explain it to ourselves, and we no longer take convincing, it's just the others who need to be convinced at that point.

Those who become published and do receive payment, need only offer that proof up to the 'others' as our badge of sincerity in our 'new' endeavor.

I still need permission. No one ever discouraged me from writing. In fact, numerous teachers, family members, and others encouraged me, but as a result of certain "can'ts" regarding careers that were impressed upon me in my youth, it never occured to me to do anything with it. I then entered a stage of "time to grow up." I was finishing school and had a job and thought it was time to stop playing pretend with imaginary people and stories in my head. So I stopped writing. The imaginary people didn't stop talking; they just kept it to a whisper.

Many years later, I realized that it's not the imaginary people who are crazy. It's me. I started to write again, but, man, was I rusty.

I write now, but I don't call myself a writer, and I still struggle to write. There is nothing that makes me happier, but also nothing I procrastinate more. Part of it is priorities. There are other things that are, hands down, more important for me at this time. Part of it, though, remains the mental hurdle of giving myself the permission.

I am still seeking "permission". I was always writing from the age of 7 to 16, but it was ok bc I was not yet a "grown up", it was just an acceptable hobby. For me, creativity in adults has been a scary thing. My mother is an artist (painter) with many artistic friends, I grew up surrounded by very creative women. The problem was, they were all eccentric, in fact my mother met 3 of them during therapy (agoraphobics and a host of other social phobias)-one jumped off a building, one hasn't left her house in 23yrs, one has her 32yo son sleep in her bed-these are women who are freely expressing their creativity. She also had one male friend who was a writer-his son stabbed him in his sleep, makes a person wonder WHY?

I need to believe that one can be creative and still retain some semblance of normal life. For years writing birth stories for clients was my creative outlet-it was safe in that much of it was a retelling. Then I went back to school for Nursing and had to take English classes-like Story Girl it was those two professors who encouraged me to write, which forced me to think back to my Junior year in high school and how my English teacher would critique each chapter of the novel I was writing-I had forgotten how much I enjoyed writing fiction.

I joined this forum because I need to see functioning writers; I need to know that I can express creativity without being consumed by it. When I am confident that reality can co-exist with creativity permission will come.

JustJess said:

I joined this forum because I need to see functioning writers; I need to know that I can express creativity without being consumed by it. When I am confident that reality can co-exist with creativity permission will come.

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Not to overstate or anything, but creation is reality. The rest is grey existence.

I work in the mental health field, and I can't say that I've ever seen a case of mental illness brought on by creativity. Creativity and mental problems can coexist, sure. So can noncreativity and mental problems, and in my facility, we see far more nonartists than artists. (After all, nonartists are the majority in the population.) Lots of accountants, and what profession could be more real than that? (Don't throw ledgers! I love accountants! Like Kevin on The Office! Who's also a musician, btw.)

Some therapies seek to treat through encouraging creativity.

I've always written, and I've attended college, and I've held the same job for twenty years plus, and I've lived a quiet life as a good voting citizen who keeps her bit of the world clean and well-lit. So it can be done.

I am not afraid of admitting I am a writer. People who know me well also know this is a passion of mine. There was a time when I kept it very much to myself.
there came a point for me though several years ago, where someone I trust, a friend, a colleague admitted to starting a novel. I was so proud of him, and at the same time, ashamed that though it was something I always wanted to do, and that I had always loved to write, I had been neglecting. I told him I would write one too. I felt such a freedom in that. It's ok to try and do and write.
It was all I needed to put me on the right track. I no longer needed someone else's permission, because I had given myself permission.

I see this thread went from simple question to members poking at one another in no time flat. For those who continued with a mature, civilized discussion, I thank you. For the others, be aware, I have neither the time nor the patience for dealing with egos or angst and will respond accordingly if either show themselves in this thread or this forum again.

That is all. Carry on.

I'm one of those people who keeps my writing secret. I work in a practical field containing a lot of people who pooh pooh the arts. My family and my SO enjoy the arts but do not create anything themselves, so they don't really understand or appreciate (or, at times, respect) how something is made. Keeping quiet about my writing protects my WIPs because I've had more than one WIP go poof from an insensitive comment.

Since I write under a pen name, almost no one knows what I've published, and that's fine with me. It saves me from putting up with armchair psychoanalysis about my stories. Even intelligent people often have trouble distinguishing the work from the writer ("It's FICTION, people!"). A side benefit of keeping my writing under wraps: it adds verve to my writing, as if all that energy from keeping it a delicious secret is channelled into my WIP.

I do struggle with giving myself permission. Writing used to feel like a useless, self-indulgent pastime, but that feeling is going away as I get older and as I have more work under my belt. Plus, after seeing how much time and money my colleagues blow on golf and hunting and sports bars and TV and fishing and bar hopping, I figured that I'm entitled to do what I want with my time too. Plus, I'm creating something new that other people can enjoy.

OK, so now after reading this thread or what's left of it, I'm confused. So do I have permission to write something here or not?

DWSTXS said:

Those who become published and do receive payment, need only offer that proof up to the 'others' as our badge of sincerity in our 'new' endeavor.

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I wish! When I received my first check, my SO said, "That's it?"