Writing in Between

by Charlie Fabre

A little ramble for those of us who aren’t quite published yet but who know the author life is for them.

Writing professionally when you are not already a published or established author is an odd thing. Can it even be considered ‘professional’ if you’re not getting paid? When I tell people I write, that I am a writer, do they laugh in private and think ‘not until there’s proof’? It’s a glorified hobby, perhaps, something that takes up a little too much of my free time, something distracting me from the real goal and my real career in life.

It’s been three months since I finished my Creative Writing degree. My academic career is over and I work part-time in retail while writing on the side. I’m in this very odd spot where I have three quarters of a short story collection but I’m nowhere close to being published. But writing is what I want to do, I just know it in my bones that writing is for me – there is nothing else. The goal is simple: finish my manuscript, acquire an agent, get published! Easy. Except, no, not easy at all. 

Writing sits in a very strange space of my life right now. It is living in between. 

In between my job and in between my free time. Figuratively and literally.

Literally speaking, I am writing in between both facets of my life. I work part-time because I need the money – something has to keep me going until this collection pays off! – and it ends up taking up most of my time. When can I write and finish my project? When I do have free time, a rare weekend off from retail, I want to spend it with my friends, I want to go out, read books, catch up on the new Netflix shows. Writing isn’t a chore, but it also isn’t a hobby. It’s a demanding thing that lives in the corner of my apartment, the one where my laptop is permanently on charge. It leers at me while I sit on the sofa, it begs to be looked at, entertained. 

Writing is relaxing, it’s a way to air my grievances, to let my mind run, and ultimately it’s a way for me to speak my truth. But it is tiring. This isn’t often appreciated. Many of my family members think writing is easy, you just pick up a pen and do it, don’t you? I’m asked if I plan on writing blockbuster movies and they frown when I say I write literary fiction, the kind where nothing much happens, where the character is a little sad and lonely but interesting nevertheless. This is worthless, there is no money in it, why pursue it at all?

Writing is tiring, so when I do have a weekend away from the shop, away from nagging customers, do I really want to sit in front of a blank page and  use my brain and think think think? No. I don’t want to think anymore.

Figuratively writing is in between because until it is on the paper, when it only resides in my mind, it isn’t real. I cannot shape the intangible thought into what I want it to be, like pottery, until it exists on paper, on a screen. Writing is a constant work of translation from emotion to vocabulary – how will I ever have the capacity to look at the abstract concepts and feelings and turn them into common English words? Until they are written, my stories exist in a quantum realm, real but not real, both alive and dead. 

It’s hard to start something when it isn’t there, when you quite literally have to start and birth it by yourself. It’s hard to write, to continue writing, when there is no validation. I am scaling the face of a cliff with no ropes, trying to get published, with no guarantee that I will.

But it’s just so worth it, isn’t it?

Writing is beautiful. Literature, in all its forms, has brought cultures and worlds together for ever, and that’s the core of it. I write because I have stories to tell, stories that other people have lived, that others will relate to, and I want to share that bond and bring everyone together. I write because I love nothing more than the turn of a beautiful phrase, I am in awe of the potential of language, the sentiments we can forge, the ideas we can create.

The key is discipline. You just have to do it. Even if it takes months, even if it takes years, you just have to do it. If the words and stories are in you, they need to come out. You have to do it.

I’ve been frustrated at my work, I’ve cried over my lack of progress and pounded at the walls in my path. It’s hard, and it’s tiring, but I can’t wait to have the work done, to get it out of me. Words cannot describe how wonderful it will be when I do.

We have to get it done!