Writing Isn’t For You
By: Shaunta Grimes
Tags: Reading, Writing, Productivity, Self, Creativity

I was twenty-four the first time I was paid for something I’d written.

It was a short article for Dog Fancy magazine about dog-friendly restaurants in Las Vegas.

I was paid $10, which was about half as much as my copy of Writer’s Market where I’d found the magazine’s submission guidelines. I couldn’t afford to buy that book, but I did it anyway, because it made me feel like a real writer.

I’ve learned a lot about writing since then.

But today I want to talk to you about something important I realized early on. Long before I used that $10 to fill up my gas tank. (You could do that in 1996.)

I realized something that changed everything.

I realized that writing isn’t for me.

I had this epiphany when I was still in high school and, I’m not going to lie. It broke my heart.

That was more about the method of delivery than the actual lesson, though.

My stepmother had a friend who was a high-school art teacher. He was her drinking buddy while my dad was in prison and I had a kind of crush on him. Not because he was so attractive or because I had a thing for men in their 40s.

No. I had a semi-crush on him because he was an artist and that was as close as I had at the time to knowing someone who created anything — which was as close as I could get at 15 to a writing community.

I loved words. Everything about them. The way they weren’t much, taken individually, but could be strung together into absolute magic.

The way, when they were strung together right, they became stories. And my God, I loved stories.

When I was fifteen, I wrote short stories and poetry on yellow legal pads with black Sharpie markers.

And when I was fifteen, my stepmother’s drinking buddy — the art teacher I had a semi-crush on — came into our kitchen and found me working on a poem at the table.

He pulled it out of my hands and read it out loud in the world’s most dull, monotone voice.

Looking back on it, from a space of more than thirty years, I’m pretty sure he was making fun of me.

He clearly didn’t get out of my poem, when I’d tried to put into it.

But regardless of whether or not he had cruel intentions — he taught me a lesson that I’ve never forgotten.

You’re doing it wrong, I said.

I can’t do it wrong, he said. It’s my poem.

But, I wrote it.

But, I’m reading it.

Writing isn’t for me.

It’s for the reader. It belongs to the reader.

Sure, it’s mine for a little while. All the ideas that are swimming around in my head are still mine. This blog post is mine as I write it.

Not because I’m writing it, though. Because I’m the only one reading it at the moment. I’m interpreting the words in a way that is, of course, extra right since I know exactly what they’re supposed to mean.

While I’m working, I can be greedy. I’m the only one the story belongs to.

Once I hit the ‘publish’ button on this post, it’s not mine anymore. And ‘supposed to mean’ loses all value.

After I hit publish, this story is yours. You, who are reading these words right this moment.

And maybe you’ll get out of them what I meant for you to.

Maybe you won’t, though. And that’s okay.

It’s more than okay. It’s the way it should be.

Think about yourself as a reader.

Think about a book you love.

Really love. Maybe a childhood favorite. The first book that ignited you.

The Secret Garden. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Maybe something by C.S. Lewis, or J.R.R. Tolkien, or Roald Dahl.

A book that you dog-eared and read more than once. One where the main character felt like a friend who seemed to know all of your secrets.

Think about how you feel when you stumble on that story in the wild. Maybe you when you come across it in the library or a thrift store or on someone’s bookshelf.

If you have kids, think about how you felt when you read that book out loud to them the first time. Or when you walked into their bedroom and found them reading that book. On purpose.

Your book.

That’s how it feels, right? You have a moment of oh, that’s mine.

When you recommend it to someone else, you feel magnanimous. Like you’re giving them a gift.

It’s a real, visceral experience, that feeling.

That’s what you’re doing, when you write.

You’re creating that feeling for someone else.

If you can start to see writing as a service you provide to your readers, it will shift something in your work for the better.

Think about what you want your reader to feel. The experience you want them to have.

When you tell your story, understand that you’re not telling it for you.

If you can wrap your head around the idea that writing isn’t for you, you’ll create something that people want to read.