I Never Wrote A Word. Now I Write Every Day.
By: Christina Hope
Tags: Life Lessons, Self, Creativity, Writing, Writing Life

Open up my workbook from kindergarten, and my idle doodling reveals one thing again and again: since the age of 6, I have wanted to be a writer. I’m not sure how this idea first entered my head. All I know is that that is what I wanted to do. I adored books; my mother would read to me every night as a toddler, until I read for myself. Words were my comfort zone. I have no memories of a time when I wanted to do or be anything else, before writing (there have been other fanciful ideas since then, but nothing pre-dates it!).

Here’s the odd thing: despite that, I was basically petrified of the idea of writing anything serious. My dream was always the novel. And yet, I never wrote a word. The dream was so huge, so all encompassing, that I was entirely paralysed by it.

There were times where I was forced, by school or university, to produce writing of significant length. But outside of those times, I wrote almost nothing. A blog post here and there, but all of which died out after only a month or two. I’d go months and months at a time writing nothing at all. None of my projects ever went anywhere beyond the idea stage.

Now, I write every single day.

What changed? I finally found the honest answers to these questions:

Well, what do you actually value?

A big part of why I think I never wrote anything much at all pre-2016, is that I simply didn’t align what I valued internally (i.e. creativity and writing), with any externalised action. I kept my value dormant, and never acted on it. Why? Well, for one I was confused. It wasn’t clear to me that this value that I had was something I absolutely needed to explore. So I suppressed it; I was given the advice time and again, by parents, random adults, career advisers and teachers alike, that writing was not a career option. Therefore, I dismissed it. If I couldn’t be a writer, why write? This self-fulfilling cycle had me blinded for a long time.

Why aren’t you doing the thing you value?

It is a shame that this interest of mine was never particularly encouraged in a productive way. I never took part in workshops or lessons, and my school was far from academically interested. A lack of information and understanding meant that I didn’t realise how much I liked writing, or how important it was to me. That was definitely part of the problem.

I realised though, that I needed to write, by having a life meltdown in 2016, which is also when I decided I would pack in everything I was doing, quit my job, and try my hand at living off writing full time. This hardline approach isn’t for everyone, and going from zero to hero wasn’t exactly the outcome. But it did mean that I saw writing as not only viable but valuable, for the first time. It was also the first time I was forced to do the thing I valued, way more consistently.

In a nutshell, the answer was about fear. I wasn’t writing, because I was afraid. I was afraid that it wouldn’t work out, that it wasn’t really an option, that I wouldn’t be able to work and earn a living, that I would be going against the advice I’d been given time and again by adults I respected. Ignoring them all and doing whatever I wanted seemed awfully selfish and brattish, and I was not used to being such a hardline rule-bender. I’ve now realised that I have been a quiet rebel for a long time, and tapping into that part of myself gave me the courage to do exactly what I had always dreamed of doing.