03rd Jul 2008
Who’s a Writer?
I bought business cards the other day. They identify me as a writer.
There are many opinions about when you get to call yourself a writer [Ed: see comments]. I like to think that like other parts of one’s own identity, it arises from within — only you know whether you’re a writer or not.
Doubts I have, though this identity has been with me as long as my oldest friends. It’s been a secret. It’s been a title. It’s been a lie. It’s been the only thing that keeps me alive. I have rolled around in the mud with writer, wrestled it and conquered it, only to lose on rematch.
And even when you get over coming out as a writer and you claim the identity, there are other people in the world to think about. Will they call you a writer?
Apparently the late, great George Carlin struggled with this side of the dilemma. He was not just a comedian, but a writer. From his last interview, with Psychology Today:
It sounds like you think of yourself much more as a writer than a performer—is that true? How do you think about performing?
It’s my primary delivery system. I used to, in my early years, when I would do an interview I was always proud to tell the writer that I wrote my own material, if they asked me or even if they didn’t. I wanted to be distinguished from the ones who didn’t do that, and I was proud of it, so I would say I am a comedian who writes his own material. And then at some point, I discovered what I really had become was a writer who performs his own material.
This was a really important distinction for me to notice—it happened way after the fact. I’m a writer. I think of myself as a writer. First of all, I’m an entertainer; I’m in the vulgar arts. I travel around talking and saying things and entertaining, but it’s in service of my art and it’s informed by that. So I get to write for two destinations. The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the editors, and then to have a first draft and get it back and work to fix it, I love reworking, I love editing, love love love revision, revision, revision, revision.
Last year a group of us from the little writing school that could, Bent, went to Saints and Sinners, a queer literary festival in New Orleans. Traversing one of those cobblestone streets en masse, we talked about the fear of calling yourself a writer. And we practiced. In turn, we said it, out loud, so that everyone with us could hear. “I am a writer.”
I am a writer.
Those of us who have come out in other ways know how scary – and ultimately liberating – coming out can be. But when I came out as queer, it was just done. From then on I could be. Could love. Could breathe and smile and curl up in the arms of the person I loved and who loved me, freely.
Calling yourself a writer means that now you must work. Because if you don’t have “something to show for it,” sadly, nobody will believe you.
You may as well tuck that journal back under your mattress and go back to keeping secrets.
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