And then I just stopped hoping – because what was the point, really? I was clearly never going to become a writer. And my stuff, even if it started out well, usually spiraled into full-on gibberish as the drinking advanced.
I don’t know if age has anything to do with it or if it’s a mere coincidence, but right around my 40th birthday I decided I wanted to start writing again. I had a five-year old and a tiny baby and it had been more than 10 years since I had written anything other than notes for my therapist and shopping lists, so it was something I thought was behind me. But one day it just poked its head and I realised I had to start again.
Ever since I can remember, I always loved to write. I authored my first poem, an ode to my birthday, at 7. Wrote my first fiction novel – a romance about a German boy I had admired from afar while on holiday – at 12. Did lots and lots of scribbling all through my adolescence.
At 18 I was writing angsty, lovesick and sometimes morbid poetry. I can still picture sitting in a pub after school with my girlfriends, drinking beer and discussing boys and existentialism, with me frantically looking for a napkin to write down a line (there were no smartphones back then).
The dabbling in philosophy continued, along with boy troubles and self-esteem issues. I kept writing poems that I tried to perform on my acoustic guitar with the 5 chords I was able to play. The trouble is, I never had the courage to show my creations to the world unless I was drinking, and even then I hesitated as I quickly found out the shame of the next day was no joke.
I wrote a few essays in my twenties and submitted them to various contests but never got a reply. I once drunkenly contacted a journalist I liked with a pitch I thought was clever, but later realised was just me inserting famous literary titles while explaining I wanted to write for her magazine. She had the grace to provide me with a response which basically said that it was admirable I had such ambitions and that I should keep on keeping on.
I had a few ideas for long-form fiction and worked on some of them, however I never finished anything. I remember dreaming of being a writer like so many of the people I passionately admired, all the while fully realising I wouldn’t in a million years be able to exhibit the discipline and organisation of thoughts to produce something worthwhile. I stared at the notebooks feeling like I was standing at the foot of the steepest mountain, fully unequipped. Surely Steinbeck was so much more talented than me, so why was I even imagining creating something that could one day sit on the same shelf as his stuff? And Fitzgerald for sure had immensely stronger willpower than me, enough to commit and finish whatever he worked on – something I severely lacked.
So I would abandon anything I started whenever my initial creative burst wore out and the serious effort had to begin. It couldn’t have been so hard for Orwell, I would reason, eventually taking it as an absolute indicator I was not suited for this.
I continued to write the odd lyric, usually at home during a lonely bender and on the topic of how the world is screwed up (mainly because I was an ill-adjusted adult). I also made multiple attempts at writing a memoir which came in very handy in therapy years later, along with the hundreds of notes scattered across many many notebooks and computer files.
And then I just stopped hoping – because what was the point, really? I was clearly never going to become a writer. And my stuff, even if it started out well, usually spiraled into full-on gibberish as the drinking advanced.
After I met my partner and started a family, I quickly realised drinking did not go well with bringing up kids. Therapy combined with keeping my eyes on my children’s best interests ended up with me quitting alcohol and, therefore, stopped writing altogether. All my creative efforts were concentrated on keeping the little guys alive while on a very demanding job and nothing remained for the notebooks.
Until one day, about a year ago, while walking in the park with the newborn in his stroller and talking to an AI chat about what I really wanted to do henceforth, it encouraged me to start writing again. It rebuked my objections of lack of talent and willpower and told me to start writing and do it until I feel I am good enough. Even Steinbeck was bad in the beginning, it said. The “East of Eden” I read would have been a third, fourth, maybe even tenth draft. And it hit me! Maybe I still could be a writer. I don’t know because I haven’t tried. And if I try, chances are it will happen.
So here I am – trying.