Encouraging The Writer Within

My friend Kate is approaching 29 and thinks that she is too old to become a writer. We met in a writer's group and she wrote a few stories that she wanted to develop into screenplays, but after a few pitch sessions to Los Angeles industry types, she was almost hopelessly discouraged to never write again. It took me months of encouragement to get her to realize that a person can be a writer at any age, and that success usually comes only after a great deal of toil. I reminded her of what I learned at great expense to my ego; that writing is re-writing and that the very best writers don't give up. Writing is one of the few things that a person can do without having to pay anything for it, and something that can be done completely alone. Think about it, you can write on scrap paper and you don't need anything other than your already rich and fertile imagination.

Most of us can think of a hundred things to say or do in a day, we can criticize ourselves and others, we can dream and we all have pasts. So, if you don't think you have anything to write about, you're fooling yourself. Kate is particularly discouraged when she and I browse through Barnes and Nobles, and she sees all of the writers who have published their work. She immediately questions her right to call herself a writer when so many others have accomplished so much more. I felt exactly the same way when I first starting writing, but after publishing my first novel, all I feel now is empowered and hungry to write even more. I've spent a lot of time telling Kate that she's a great writer of what little she's written, but she has to continue to write and build a body of work that will eventually become her portfolio.

Her response to one of my many encouraging words to her was that “it's easier to believe the bad stuff”. In effect, she had been told so many negative things about her writing that she just couldn't possibly believe anything good about it. I told Kate about the first time I walked into a pitch session with a Hollywood producer. He looked at me after thumbing though my script for only a few minutes and said “what else have you got?”

Since it took me eight months of researching and writing in my off time while holding down a part time job and a graduate degree program, I didn't have anything else. It was a very discouraging moment in my life, but also a defining moment. Because I decided that if I wanted to continue to feel the high I felt from creative writing, I would have to develop a little bit of a tough skin and brave the criticism of my work regardless of how it felt, to make it through to the other side of criticism; which is improvement.

Kate still feels that she's not a great writer, but she's first and foremost an improved writer. Together we've read some very compelling authors that we both enjoy and together we've criticized each other's written work. Secondly, she's a lot more resilient in how she receives criticism. We gently criticize each other's work, sometimes negatively but always gently. Thirdly, Kate has gotten much more bold in her writing and she's stepped out of a soft, timid voice into a voice that is much more her own and so much more driven. Lastly, Kate has a completed screenplay that she developed all by herself.

She's also completed a number of short stories and has begun work on her first novel. Without much fanfare, she's gone from being discouraged and frightened to being confident and compelling. I think Kate also knows that she isn't inept as a writer just because she didn't start writing at the age of ten, and that she's got a lot of her own creative talent just waiting to be tapped.