20 What Does Being a Writer Mean?

Cassandra hadn’t grown up wanting to be a writer. Instead, she sort of fell into writing when other things about which she had dreamed as a child, youth, and young adult didn’t work out. For a while, writing was just a line of work for Cassandra. She still didn’t think of herself as a writer. She instead just wrote for a living. But when more people gradually learned what she did for a living, and began oohing and ahhing over her being a writer, Cassandra found herself wondering what being a writer really meant. Was writing that distinct and special of a role? Cassandra didn’t think so, although she could see that her writing depth, breadth, and skill had grown. She could perhaps also say that she was seeing the world in a different way from her having written so much. 

Meaning

Meaning inheres in the world, and so we generally find it good to participate richly in it. To ask what being a writer means is to ask the right question. If you don’t have a sense of what you do for a profession or vocation means, then you may be missing something important. Without meaning in your work, you may find your writing harder, shallower, or less satisfying. You may even find yourself wondering whether you should be doing other things besides writing or being something else besides a writer. Yet what does any vocation mean? Why do vocations have to mean something? Can’t we just write without having to analyze and justify it? Of course, we can and do just write, often without knowing why. It’s just there for the doing. Yet writing, like other pursuits, can need a guidestar drawn from its meaning. Indeed, because writing’s role is to convey meaning, one would think that writers should generally have a clearer sense of the meaning behind their own role.  

Symbolism

Writing is fundamentally symbolic. The tiny curlicues on the page have no meaning of their own, not at least in the Latin or Roman script in which we read and write the English alphabet. For the writer, one tiny thing, or arrangement or pattern of things, referring to the text along the line and down the page, means something else. Yet so, too, is the world symbolic. Nothing carries only its own meaning. Every discrete-seeming little thing isn’t discrete at all but instead reflects the meaning, pattern, and categories of everything else. The next person you encounter, for instance, whether a stranger, family member, or friend, you will know primarily or solely by the arrangement and integration of the several or many other things that person symbolizes. Meaning is itself symbolic. We know only by reference to other things. Writers are thus symbolists, conjurers of other things, especially of deeper things hidden in categories and their archetypes, and in customs, traditions, cultures, and their myths. Writers may even be alchemists, conjuring to transform elemental things into higher things, even into a universal elixir. Embrace the deeper nature and wonders of your writing art and craft. 

Purpose

The meaning of being a writer thus has much to do with its purpose. Things are because they have a purpose. A table, chair, motor vehicle, or house is such a thing out of the function that each serves. If one cannot see the thing as worthy of holding items within ready reach, then the thing isn’t a table but instead a worthless stump, slab, or collection of planks. Similarly, if one cannot see the thing as providing shelter for human habitation, then the thing isn’t a house but instead a natural cave, overhang, or pile of refuse. When writers convey meaning with the words that they assemble on the screen or page, they are conveying purposes, intentions, designs, and desires. Writers are thus purposive beings, individuals who know and communicate efficacy and motivation. That’s why the depressed, weak, and withdrawn read for relief because from the writing they draw the writer’s saving sense of purpose. Even the existentialist writer writes to make the claim that the universe has no purpose, making the existentialist writer the greatest possible claimant to purpose, which is to condemn the purposeful universe as purposeless. Writers inescapably write with purpose, inherent in their craft.

Humanity

The same purposive meaning is true not just for objects but for humans, for us. We exist not so much out of our material, referring to the oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen that composes nearly all the elements found in our cells making up our flesh, bone, and blood, but more so out of the purpose we find for ourselves in the material universe. We are not solely or even primarily material beings. We don’t go groping blindly about, bereft of purpose beyond mere survival of the fittest. We instead draw extraordinary purpose from the deep meaning and rich pattern we recognize within and above the material universe, displayed in no greater work than our own consciousness. Our consciousness is so far above the material that lodges it as to be inexplicably divine, of another dimension if not also of another world or realm of this world. Indeed, humanity marries meaning with material, mediating the two fundamental components of the real world. Unique among living beings, we are walking meaning makers, and as such, we naturally rule the universe. 

Vocation

No vocation better plays that role of marrying meaning with material than the writer. When you write, you participate in humankind’s essential and inescapable role, as makers of meaning in the material universe. When you write, you grasp humankind’s glory and take its rightful throne. Let other vocations heroically wring subsistence from the universe. They more than earn their keep, providing also for the keep of others including writers. But let writers wring meaning from the material world. Then see which vocation has the greater glory. After all, writers must organize the activities and announce the glory of the subsistence providers, like the farmers, processors, and distributors who graciously and generously put food on our tables. Writers may not claim heroic work, but writers have the privilege of discerning and describing heroism. Who, in the end, is the greater, the literary giant Dante Alighieri or the characters Beatrice, Bonaventure, Cato, Manfred, Sordello, and Virgilio whom his The Divine Comedy described? As a writer, you share in the glory of the heroes whom your writing describes. You also carry out humanity’s central role in the universe, which is to recognize, share, and celebrate its glory drawn from meaning.

Doing

Writing is certainly an active craft. The writer draws meaning not primarily from the role but from the activity. A security guard may do nothing but still accomplish the guard’s essential purpose. Indeed, if the guard’s presence alone deters the criminal act, then the guard has achieved the guard’s ultimate purpose. Better to deter than to defend an attack. A writer, though, must generally write to accomplish any purpose. An author is someone who has published a work. By contrast, a writer is someone who writes, daily contributing to the meaning making that spins the globe and justifies the intelligible universe. A writer steers the human vessel with a keyboard as the divine tiller, while discerning the creator’s desires from the patterns detected out of the invisible cosmic winds. When you are writing, you are a sea captain holding a wet finger aloft, in a constant effort to hear the powers and principalities converse with the creator over the proper destiny of man. Keep at your writing craft. Keep your wet finger aloft for the wind’s direction, your eyes up for its powerful ripple in the sails, your ear attuned for its low moan in the lines, and your feet sensitive to the pitch of the deck, so that you may expertly pilot your divine writing craft.

Being

Writing may involve doing, yet writers can also discern and embrace their sense of being. You are not your thoughts. We each continue to exist when not thinking. Thus, beneath your train of thought is your truer being. Who you are, in your unconscious depths, influences and informs what you think, the more the better. You can certainly allow your thoughts to carry you off, to submerge your authentic being, until your thoughts make you a caricature of your true self. Instead, hold onto your genuine self, and let your authentic self guide and inform what you write. You are also not your projects. Don’t become what you write. Your created self is greater than your manufactured self. I am, deep inside you, is your being. But I am gave you the gift of writing. And if you listen very closely with the humble attitude that genuine listening takes, I am will guide your writing. Find your being not in your writing but in your creator who gave you the writing gift. 

Identity

As the story at the beginning of this chapter illustrated, writers can take on an identity. Writing has enough peculiar hallmarks about it, like a tendency to self-isolate, internalize, ruminate, and then project in mad fits of text, to mark it not just as a vocation but also as a personal identity. Writers can be peculiar. Writers can also be introverts, frequently preoccupied and withdrawn. Writers can also be insightful, funny, informed, curious, verbose, analytical, intense, and intellectual. One supposes that it’s fine if others identify you as a writer, and if you take some small or larger degree of pleasure in the appellation. Yet among all the above interesting, annoying, and amusing tendencies, writers need to keep a little distance from writing as their identity. Identifying too closely with one’s vocation, whether as a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or chef, can soon make one into a parody of the vocation’s prominent features. Indeed, that’s generally why others apply labels, to satirize and lampoon. Don’t take the bait. Don’t take writer as your deepest identity, or you may indeed develop and embrace a writer’s unattractive quirks. Keep hold of your humanity and sanity. You need both to write. 

Persona

One can say something similar for the persona that you project as a writer. We all project personas to navigate socially. At times, you may project your parent, spouse, homeowner, neighbor, or other role, to claim and confirm your authority or opportunity to act in various settings. Likewise, your persona as a writer may help you get the peace and quiet to write, and the other employment, assignments, reputation, publications, and income you need or desire to succeed as a writer. Adopt and deploy your writer’s persona strategically and effectively. Others expect you to do so. But don’t let your writer’s persona subsume your entire thinking, personality, and humanity. You have a much deeper existence, with broader capacities and opportunities, than simply that of a writer. Don’t let your writer’s persona, for instance, adversely affect and infect intimate family relationships, close friendships, and other relationships where you have the capacity for greater or different expression. The persona of a writer is, in the grand view of things, a rather limited persona. Don’t let being a writer unduly limit your opportunities to be a spouse, parent, friend, or something else that you and others value. 

Self

You may, though, find that the role of a writer fits well, among other roles, within that broader and deeper self that constitutes your soul, nature, and being. See yourself as a unique created entity apart from the roles that you effectively or ineffectively play. See yourself as inextricably interwoven with and bound to your creator, to the extent that you are your creator’s experience of the created world, uniquely through your own person. Connect your consciousness with the desires and experiences of your creator, and you will find yourself better able to embrace and integrate your several roles including your role as a writer. Write from that whole, integrated, conscious, and connected stance, and you will find the creativity, uniqueness, voice, balance, and insight that your writing seeks. 

Inherency

To be a writer may also mean that you write from the view that writing is an inherent good. Goodness arises out of beauty, beauty out of proportion, proportion out of justice, and justice out of meaning, purpose, and truth. Writers directly address all these universals and their relationships with one another in their writing craft, which is in its essence a continual act of hope, love, and faith. What can better represent the good than to continually surf among its stars, sharing its wonders? If worship is the highest devotion to the ultimate ideal who embodies all good, then writing is a form of worship, participating with the ultimate ideal in celebrating his good. To draw the greatest satisfaction from your craft, while contributing the greatest commitment to it, treat your writing as you would treat your most-devoted act of worship, with all due reverence. See awe as your continual supply of writing creativity, for in his wonders lies all we need to excel in the writing craft. 

Reflection

What does being a writer mean to you? Do others recognize you as a writer? How does it make you feel when they do so? Do you take pride or satisfaction in having others identify you as a writer? Do you identify yourself as a writer, primarily or more so than other roles you also fulfill? Do you feel that you see the world differently because you write? Do you sense that you are actively engaging in the world, in a positive sense, by writing? Would a different occupation or role give you a greater sense of satisfaction, meaning, and participation, than the writing that you do? Would a different type, genre, or market for writing give you a greater sense of meaning, purpose, and satisfaction? What do you see your purpose as a writer to be, both at a specific level and higher or more general level? How would you articulate to a friend what you draw from being a writer? Can you put off your persona as a writer to don other personas to carry out other roles? Do you recognize that your own deeper identity is distinct from that of solely or primarily as a writer? Do you sense an inherent goodness to writing?

Key Points

• Discerning what it means to be a writer can help you with your writing.

• Writing is symbolic, as the universe is symbolic in all its meaning.

• Writing is also purposeful, as the cosmos is purposive and meaningful.

• Writers celebrate their humanity by marrying meaning and material.

• Writing in that sense is prime among vocations, celebrating humanity.

• Writing is a most-active craft, requiring continual doing.

• Writers benefit from their sense of being or existence, beyond craft.

• Don’t get lost in your identity as a writer, lest it distort your craft.

• Recognize that being a writer is one persona among many personas.

• Preserve and write from your unique created self, beneath personas.

• Writing exercises an inherent good in that it celebrates loving truth.