I’ve sometimes regretted choosing the career path I have, as rewarding as the experiences have been, as sizzling as my resume looks, as confident as I am in my craft, as right as I feel doing what I do – most of the time.
When I was nine, I remember telling the Old Man that I wanted to be a writer, it didn’t matter what kind then: children’s books, paperback novels; all I knew was that I was meant to put a pen to paper and move people the way I moved him every time my written words made him cry.
And somehow, that dream evolved into becoming a journalist. Yes, I want to be a journalist, I declared. Ten-year-old logic internalized the raised eyebrows and the well-meaning advice of how next-to-impossible it was to simply be published whenever I said I wanted to write. Journalism seemed a fair compromise.
From there I jumped to copywriting and creative direction after stints in a few ad agencies, and when I had to chose my degree field, I chose advertising and public relations. Public relations, the New Love.
The one thing they’ve all had in common is that they allowed me to be creative, but more importantly, to write, whether two-line copy or 20-column-inch stories.
I’ve come full circle now: I’m about to receive a bachelor of arts in the New Love, but what have I been doing most? I’ve been a journalist, albeit a fledgling one, a damn good writer all the same. It feels sometimes though, that something’s missing, that I made wrong choices along the way.
Why didn’t I do English or perhaps creative writing? Why didn’t I get into the academic side of things and study how to hone my writing into an Oonya Kempadoo or a Nalo Hopkinson? I could have.
Granted I can probably still write my book when I’m ready to take up the task, but how much different or perhaps better would it have been had I exposed myself to a different kind of instruction? Can I even write a book now when I can barely even write a short story, tainted as I am by the need to be descriptive but brief because of the journalism?
Who knows.
At the end of the day, I’ve made the choices I have and gained invaluable experience. And I do love what I do. It doesn’t stop me wondering though that maybe I had it right when I was nine.
4 comments:
"Why didn’t I get into the academic side of things and study how to hone my writing into an Oonya Kempadoo or a Nalo Hopkinson?"
You wouldn't need a degree to write fiction. I dunno 'bout Oonya, but I had no academic studies in creative writing when my fiction began to be published. (I did go to Clarion for six weeks, and I took the occasional informal workshop, and I was in a writing group.) I was on my third novel contract when I signed up for an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction, and that was largely because I wanted to add the letters to what I was already doing.
It's also more than talent and discipline. For me, it'll take confidence. If I don't believe I can, I won't be able to.
I've managed without discipline. Not quite sure how, but I have. As to believing you can, you can sometimes squeak by by being agnostic, rather than a true believer. Maybe you don't know that you can, but it's not proven that you *can't,* either. Its letting belief and disbelief step outside to duke it out while you get on with the business of, say, signing up for a writing workshop. It's putting the question aside as something not germane to, say, writing a page worth of text today. I believe that NANOWRIMO is coming up soon (she said mischievously).
Hmmm. Was that a hint? (She replied mischievously herself.)
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