I am not a writer! Yes, you are!

I am not a writer! Yes, you are!

Journals of a writer  — how it all started with a hobby

News flash! A writer has a journal! So much of stating the obvious!

How it all started?

Long ago. I believe I started when I was twelve, with every page in my diary, as it was a way of putting together my thoughts. If I look back now, I was surprised how natural it felt to write, compared with speaking. That first memory of me under the blanket with a flashlight and smiling to myself at the wonderful sensation of being inside a world that I knew it was only mine. It was so uncomplicated and trouble-free to let the words go on the paper. The more I wrote, the more I left behind worries, as if once trusted to the paper they disappeared. Even now, writing this piece I smile to myself like I just discovered America.

We need so little sometimes to be happy. So very little. Paper and pen. Or, well, nowadays the keyboard and glasses, as the age progressed over me.

Writing was also easier because of my fear of rejection. I was terrified that I would be laughed at if I tried to speak what I think.

When I was a child for me it was interesting to dissect (in writing) my philosophical ideas, which I will then thoroughly apply to all those that upset me. Writing was also a good way to deal with sadness and pain.

Today I know it was my good friend — the instinct — that showed me how to build up my resilience, mainly by acknowledging and assessing what I feel, by taking responsibility and writing it down. Once on the paper I made it real and true. 

We fear the unknown, start labelling and analysing and the mind travels sideways, focuses on the matter and the unknown is not an unknown anymore.

My very first journal (at 12 years old) 

was a bit of a personal pour-out that started with:

‘Dear Journal, I talk to you because I need to talk to someone.’ (how many millions in the world are doing the same thing, writing exactly the same first words?)

Ah, well, my hand wrote that, but secretly my mind had other reasons… like, ‘you are the perfect friend because you will not criticise me, and you will stay quiet while I talk all the nonsense in my head. And you will not laugh at me either!’

So, I was not very truthful in my journal-writing since I did not admit that I need a ‘silent’ friend about which I could imagine that is nice to me, understanding and friendly.

Turned out it was not easy to be honest with my own journal (and even myself).

Wanting to have a journal but still afraid to write the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Yeah, something along those lines, because later I discovered that some things are better left unsaid and unwritten all together.

Anyhow, that was the start. After I finished school, I started working and a family, and some writing ideas started to take shape. Ambitious love novels, historical novellas and, in time (and I mean over decades) I became an ardent collector of my journals and manuscripts.

My writing has taken many forms across the years both in Romanian and English: 

handwritten journals, letters and loose pages, then I used a mechanic typewriter, then an electric one, and, moving with times, the last two decades I went through various generations of computers, laptops and tablets. I still use cards and notebooks. I always have a supply with me just for jotting down any ideas that come to mind.

My writing was rarely shared, and when I did share it, it was only with a few people close to me.

My dream of publishing a book had been there for all these years, but it always felt like a faraway and impossible dream.

Making money out of it, also a dream. 

But, I used to tell myself — it’s a hobby that I enjoy more than anything. I have the same feeling today, since I am here writing for free, just because I like it. Aren’t I lucky?

Few years ago on an unrelated discussion, my son springs on me ‘As a writer, you should know that.’

‘I am not a writer,’ I answered back, and the original topic lost its meaning.

‘Yes, you are!’

‘No, I am not, I did not publish anything!’

‘It doesn’t matter! You write almost everyday, you write stories and novels, create plots and characters, hence you are a writer. You need to publish to be an author, but you are a writer.’

And so it was that I learnt in my forties that I was a writer.