Writing Advice #6

Send your writing-related questions to: itsottessab@gmail.com. Each week I'll pick a question at random and answer it here.

Dear Ottessa,

I recently had an upsetting conversation with someone close to me. This person kept repeating that my writing is a hobby. I insisted that my writing is not a hobby — it is an obsession.

I was hurt, especially because I used to think this was the one person who truly believed in me. I can acknowledge that I may have an unhealthy relationship to my writing, and that maybe the whole “hobby” argument upset me because I am so unsure of myself. But I know I am a writer. I know it will happen, but I am in a dark place. How did you hang on until it happened for you?

Sincerely,

Denzel

Mr. Washington driving an enormous garbage truck in Fences.

Dear Denzel,

I’m curious what the “unhealthy relationship” with your creative practice looks like. Most writers I know exist in a state of hyper-curiosity, anxiety and/or dissatisfaction. Our job is to make something out of nothing. It’s a miraculous feat to write anything good. Are you taking care of the life-sustaining essentials? Sleep, eat, hygiene, trash out on trash day? The stuff that “normal” people do? If so, it’s nobody’s business what you do with your creativity.

I might be getting this wrong, but I sense you are aligning yourself with non-artists who will never understand you. This person who is close to you, they sound very sad. They might have once had a creative dream that got squashed by their parents, or a talent that they never actually discovered because they were discouraged to explore themselves creatively. This person might feel they are protecting you from the pain of failure, disillusionment. It’s probably not worthwhile to describe your passion for writing to this person. It will only make them more worried.

This person might be jealous of you, might know very well that calling writing your “hobby” hurts your feelings, but pretends not to know that. (This is “trash talk.”)

This person who is close to you might be so needy that they can’t stand to think you’d be passionate about anything but them.

This person might not know that writing is a calling for a writer. This person might have no idea what a book is. Or this person might be a little dumb. If English isn’t their first language, maybe they’re just using the word “hobby” wrong. It doesn’t really matter…

This is my advice: