The Act Before Identity

I, like many writers, became one far before I ever adopted the identity. That gap was the genesis of a 20-year journey that led me to the same spot I was before: writing for the love of the craft.

This past summer is the 20th anniversary of my exploration of the craft of writing in ways outside of required academics. Back at the beginning, I had a spare notebook, a love for the Inheritance series by Christopher Paolini, and fresh exposure to the beginnings of creative writing thanks to a passionate English teacher no longer bound by state testing requirements in planning the last nine weeks of her lesson plan. For the first time, I learned how those authors whose novels I devoured as much as possible engaged in their craft, and I loved every moment of it.

That summer, when everyone else in my home would go to bed, I’d pull out that spare notebook and a pen, pop a CD into my music player, stick the headphones into my ears, and write until the CD stopped playing. I had no plan, no understanding of crafting themes or narrative frameworks. I was a teenager in my pajamas, writing long past the witching hour because I wanted to, and nothing more.

I spent most of those 20 years bolting on qualifications and requirements to consider myself a true writer. Publications, awards, audience praise… I demanded I meet these additional qualifications because I didn’t understand the definition of being a writer.

There’s a chance you don’t either. I didn’t realize the depths of this problem until doing some reading from previous thinkers, specifically Sartre and his works on literature and existentialism, on not only the craft of writing, but living itself.

The word “writer,” as defined by Merriam-Webster, is simple in meaning: one who writes. Many other definitions will qualify this, usually adding clauses like “especially one who writes articles or books,” but those definitions never get away from the fact that the necessary component of that definition to be useful is “one who writes.”

Yet, nobody treats this definition as correct. The average person, upon hearing that someone is a writer, will ask what books they’ve published, or what platforms their article are found on. Tell this person you write for yourself, a personal blog, or some other humble space, and the excitement in your questioner’s eyes fades in an instant. As someone who’s experienced that judgment, I know what the shame feels like when you realize you don’t live up to someone’s imagined views of your craft.

The deeper problem is that most folks don’t realize they over-qualify the definition, and therefore their perception, of writers. Our minds naturally complicate our understanding of writers and their craft because many people understand that writing is tough, and especially so if it is your profession. To them, difficulty and complication are the same, so the train of thought goes from “anyone can write” to “only a handful of people can make it in this craft successfully,” and make this leap by assuming all the complications are from the craft itself, and not the unfounded impositions the assumer interjects.

Mankind’s ability to rationalize means that we will fill in the gaps of what we don’t understand with steps and qualifications until it makes sense, then assume those invented steps are the truth. As complicated beings, we assume all other things to be complicated, as, to our mind, that is the truth of being existent. To live is to be complicated.

Thus, when a simple explanation exists, the temptation of the mind is to reject it. If the simple explanation is true but doesn’t align with the imposed complications made on the same thing the explanation is able to sum up, that dissonance is felt, and the mind doesn’t like dissonance. That can make the dissonance reflexive, and not wholly earned.

Think about what your idea of “a writer” is. Take all the assumptions you have regarding publication status, platform, income potential, audience size, public recognition, everything. Then go back to the definition of writer and tell me where you see those requirements.

They aren’t there. The actual existence of being a writer is simpler and truer than the essence your assumptions lead you to believe.

A framework I’ve been developing for the last several months is called the five facets of writing. It’s been a mental model to help me understand the different steps a writer must go through to take a forming idea and turn it into something others can read.

Understanding these facets will make it clear where the title of “writer” falls in the process of writing and sharing that work with others.

All writing starts with an idea, whether it be the creative inspiration for a new novel or a connection between ideas the writer seeks to express. The processes by which these ideas spring into existence and develop into a working plan for drafting sum up this facet.

Most recently, I wrote three newsletters using Aristotelian empiricism as the basis for this facet, culminating in a complete review of the bottom-up approach to better brainstorming.

This facet concludes when the writer is set to put pen to paper.

With outline in hand, a writer then moves on to drafting, or the genesis of their idea taking shape on paper. At this point, a writer isn’t worried about whether their idea is fully formed or how it will be received, as those are considerations for later, when they can truly be known. They are concerned with creating their own words, rather than relying on someone else’s.

The engagement of this facet of writing makes someone a writer per the definition of the word. Everything beyond this point is simply how a writer takes their work and turns it into a communication medium.

Once a draft is done, or as done as the writer can get it on their own, that writer enters into the feedback collection phase where outside influence can potentially take shape. Many modern writers think of things like beta readers and audience comments on released snippets as the hallmarks of this phase of writing.

How much of the feedback to take into account comes down to the writer and whoever that writer gives permission to adjust their draft. There’s nothing stopping a writer from rejecting all feedback and releasing their first draft as true, regardless of the actual veracity and efficacy of the draft as a communication of thought.

The vast majority of writers will temper their egos well enough to know that some feedback will ring true once receiving it. This feedback could be as simple as a clean-up of grammar and syntax, or a realization that an entire restructuring or reframing of the draft’s message is necessary for others to understand it.

This doesn’t mean that the feedback will show up as the provider’s words. Rather, the writer still controls what words do and don’t enter into the revision(s) they make. Those words, in these revisions, are instead partly inspired by others, rather than coming solely from the writer’s internal wellspring.

Finally, with the final revision set, the writer releases that revision out into the world for readers to consume. The platform, audience, distribution, income, and all other considerations we questioned earlier in the definition of the writer become considerations here.

At this facet, the writer is no longer adding new or altering words to their piece. Here, the audience provides any of their own words of congratulations, critique, and follow-up questioning to the writer as they consume the work, all of which might be useful for future writings.

If you are perceptive, you’ll see that I worked in where, in your writing’s journey, the title of writer hits: facet two, or drafting. It doesn’t start at the brainstorming stage, and it’s long been established by the time you’re ready for any sort of feedback on your work, let alone anything after that.

Being a writer is an existence in which one writes. All that comes before, and all that comes after, isn’t relevant to the identity.

It can’t be before this act because the process of brainstorming and researching for your work requires, to some degree, the plain act of recording the perceptions, thoughts, and/or words of others. To some degree, you are taking the concepts provided by others, either in pieces or in totality, for your consideration as you pursue your work.

The title cannot arrive later than drafting because the words are already on the page for others to see. It’s too far down the process for the definition to be true. Additionally, all the superfluous qualifiers we’ve mentioned so far, like reach and money, have the chance to creep in if we take in too many of the later facets for the title of writer.

So, the title has to arrive at drafting, when it’s just you and the page and the work to be done to get your initial message crafted.

There’s a philosophy of human existence called existentialism that seeks to contextualize the human condition of being alive in the modern world and the moral considerations within. It’s a philosophy focused on personal freedom and responsibility, and one of its core principles is this idea that “existence precedes essence.” In other words, you create your meaning via actions, not pre-established signals.

What I find interesting about the ordering of existence and essence in this philosophy is how the ordering matches that process by which someone adopts their identity when that person actively seeks to shape it.

Again, recall the qualifiers to our definition of writer that the average person bears. Those overqualifications to earn the title by definition become something passed down to others, unless that person either finds someone offering a truer understanding of the craft or takes the matter into their own hands.

I know this to be the case because I experienced this firsthand.

During COVID, I transitioned from working at a chemical plant to freelance writing. My work consisted of creating blog and article content, ghostwriting books for business owners, and editing fiction for a local publisher.

During those five years of my life, I’d write an average of 3,000 words a day, seven days a week, getting paid pennies per word so I could provide a roof over my family’s head. I left myself no time to work on my own projects, and slowly burned away the candle of my creativity, grinding away at work I didn’t feel connected to.

All that work, and I still refused to call myself a writer. Because I was writing for other people, and because I was paid like crap, I believed I wasn’t worthy of the title because I lacked prestige, recognition, or connection to my work. All the flowery speeches writers give about their work, and I couldn’t get over that to see that I was already writing more per day than some of the greatest authors of our time just to make ends meet.

It also didn’t help that I wasn’t making something of my own. I attempted to blog about creativity in general, but I lacked the drive after eight hours of researching, drafting, and/or editing work each day.

My mindset at that time reminds me of how folks setting fitness goals change their identity. Fitness and health are sets of behaviors people take to improve their physical bodies. People changing in that direction of better health don’t adopt an identity akin to “I am healthy” until they reach their measurable goals. Take that mindset too far, or don’t give yourself enough grace, and you end up as someone in the upper percentiles of physical fitness still demanding more because you don’t accept the progress made so far.

I was that guy. Whatever the writing equivalent of a bodybuilder with dysmorphia was, that was my relationship with writing: doing more than some pros do, burning myself out, and refusing to see myself as a writer because I knew how to handle three facets of brainstorming, drafting, and editing, but not how to best take feedback or how to publish my work.

The truth that hurts today is that those results were never what I needed. I didn’t need to have celebrations of my work, or make a fantastical living off of it. What I really needed was for the work I wrote to be mine.

To finally, after years of putting off the identity of writer, to do the thing that writers must: to write. All that time spent feeling like I was lesser for not understanding all five facets of writing when I only needed one to accept the title.

The truth of the matter is that no credential you can achieve as a writer precedes the act of writing. Given that a writer is “one who writes,” you will always be a writer by definition long before anyone recognizes you as such.

This was true for me when I became a writer at 14 years old, scribbling away in my pajamas late at night. I didn’t do anything a professional writer does thanks to their understanding of the craft, but I was writing all the same.

I was a writer because my imagination didn’t require permission from others to germinate. I allowed myself to express my creativity long before I realized what it could mean to do, solely because I wanted to.

Back then, the Inheritance series captured my imagination in a way I hadn’t experienced before. I daydreamed about magic and dragons and epic adventures across a wondrous land, and wanted to live those daydreams as best as I could. I didn’t need anything other than my meager resources and the space to create a story from those wildly running imaginations.

I had that space to create because I hadn’t yet understood the complications the world imposes on writing. Books were entertainment my family would let me get sometimes when we went out shopping, not a business or means of living for the writer. Blogs, speaking events, and other communications writers would take part in were rare dips into greater insights about the things I loved from these writers, not marketing or awareness campaigns.

Two decades ago, everything came back to just wanting to write about something that meant the world to me. That was all I needed to write before I allowed the process to be twisted by the incorrect impositions and conclusions of others.

Let’s say that book I wrote two decades ago would have been a bestseller. It wouldn’t have, but that’s not the point of this argument. How would anyone know that was the case before it happened? Before I ever wrote the piece in the first place?

There was no way to know. It would be physically and temporally impossible, outside of a lucky guess. So why make the process complicated with qualifiers, then?

As we can see with other writers, this understanding can make or break one’s output.

A long time ago, I came across a video of Stephen King and George R. R. Martin discussing King’s writing output during King’s End of Watch book tour back in 2016. The four-minute clip covers what I think are two different ways you can approach your identity as a writer.

It’s no secret that Martin expresses a lot of concern and anxiety about his work, and for good reason. Great expectations rest on Martin’s shoulders every time he goes to write, least of which are his own. It’s a pressure I can see weighing heavily.

Yet, the same is true of King, but you don’t see King share these thoughts in the same anxious or doubtful way. King acknowledges that writing is a strange, difficult, sometimes ethereal craft that even those of us involved in the craft can’t always articulate.

But King manages to set that aside and write an average of 1.3 books every year over his five decades as a writer. For Martin, it’s been about 0.6 per year. You can see this for both writers by going through their published books and doing a little division.

Those figures are still impressive, and both authors deserve the praise and adulation they and their works receive. But I can’t help but wonder what Martin’s body of work would look like if the external burden of his audience could be set aside for him to just write.

It’s something worthy of further review in a later newsletter I plan to write in another look at existentialism, but the lesson I draw from this comparison is this: neither of these gentlemen is right or wrong. Rather, they represent the ways in which you can choose to handle the stress and external pressures of writing.

To further buttress my point, I want to make it clear that this letter isn’t a glorified “fake-it-till-you-make-it” piece dressed up in fluff. Neither is this an encouragement to adopt the Tolkien aesthetic of tweed and pipe and cosplay as a writer before you ever intend to be one.

In both of those cases, you’d put the essence of the act before the existence of it. You’d force the identity onto yourself before you allow yourself to settle into it like a familiar jacket on a cold day.

In other words, it’s simple: just write. All other considerations you’d otherwise fear are solvable down the road. They all rely on the fact that you wrote something, which means that you must engage in the definitional act necessary to be a writer in the first place.

But I recognize that such considerations will draw some attention regardless. This fact isn’t because of any particular intention, but rather because of the conditioning to overcomplicate this matter that most all of us have suffered.

So, I’ve codified the five facets from earlier into a handy reference called The Writer’s Five Facets. The goal for this reference is to make it clear where and when the title of “writer” comes into being true for you.

The document takes a grand total of five minutes to go through and provides a mechanism by which you can use that framework to get clear on what you’re bringing as overcomplications, and it sums it up in just two sentences you create: the bar you set long before this exercise, and the number of facets you were looking to achieve before calling yourself a writer.

Use The Writer’s Five Facets to make it clear what external factors you’re bringing into the craft that overcomplicate your approach to the matter, specifically how many facets you didn’t know you were demanding before accepting the title. Mark those down and keep the document somewhere nearby whenever you doubt your worthiness of being called a writer.

Writing it down makes it clear and gives you a record to reference later, which matters far more than just doing the exercise once and forgetting it ever happened.

People make writing far more complicated than it ever needed to be. At the end of the day, all that you need to write is your medium of choice, your imagination, and a desire to use the former to bring the latter to life.

That simple truth is something the complicated minds and world of today don’t want to accept.