Taking Myself Seriously

It's never too late!

Something major shifted for me when I committed to living a writing life. I don’t think I understood what that meant at the time, and might not have even used those exact words. I was about to turn 70 and was fascinated by the ageing process that I thought was represented by hitting that milestone. I felt like I was watching my life in slow motion; I kept repeating that word seventy, but it was hard to figure out quite what it had to do with me - I wasn’t feeling old even though my knees were getting a bit creaky and my hair had long since turned grey. So I announced that I was going to explore the subject of ageing creatively online, and lots of you came along for the ride. Then I realised that it is far more fun to age creatively than to talk about the process of doing it. All the while, I kept getting little writerly nudges in the back of my mind. Write! You know that’s what you’ve always wanted…

I started writing more and more. I started talking about writing. And reading about writing. And I tried to ignore (or heal) those really old voices that have always snarled at me when I’ve tried to make good on an old dream. It didn’t escape my notice that I was choosing to write about a woman who was exactly my age when she died. Seventy. The more I learned about St Birgitta and the medieval world she lived in, the more I questioned my place in the modern world. I have always felt like an outsider, like someone watching my life from just a little ways away, slightly disconnected, as though my real life was a few steps away, just slightly out of reach. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who feels that way in our crazy fast-paced, high-pressured world. This doesn’t mean I haven’t been happy or that I haven’t had a good life - because I am happy and I have had an amazing life. But in my heart of hearts, I will admit that I have thought of myself as a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none as I have moved through life, juggling my many interests without feeling truly committed to any one path.

Until now.

Over the past year, I have learned to claim my Writer Self. And that is leading me to a writing life with a community that holds up mirrors for me so that I can see how substantial I am. It’s not about talent or greatness. Or a publishing contract. It’s simply about knowing myself and who I am in the world. I am a writer. My work in the world is to write. I don’t even have to be right all the time, so long as I am writing.

Writing tells me what I think, and that scares me because it won’t let me keep people happy, might not make them like me. Writing my truth takes me to the seat of my magic, my soul. How amazing is that? When we are being true to ourselves, we are free to be our true selves. Even me.

Ray Bradbury says: Not to write, for many of us, is to die. If that is true, then a writer who doesn’t write is letting life slip through her fingers and is slowly dying. But the converse is also true: A writer who writes is grasping life with both hands.

My promise to myself is simple: I will take myself and my writing seriously because that is how I will age creatively. It’s how I want to live the rest of my life.

The above is a digital collage I created to use as a wallpaper for my writing focus. If you look closely, you might even see the opening lines of my book-in-progress.