What makes you unique as a writer? What do you have to say that is different from all that has been said before?
Are you confident that your imagination, your viewpoints, your ideas have value and are worth sharing? It’s important that you are confident of that, because if you are not sure of it your writing will reflect your uncertainty.
No two people see life exactly the same; not even identical twins have brains that work exactly the same way. and for those of us who are not identical twins the differences are even larger.
Think about a couple of adult siblings raised by the same parents in the same house. You ask them what their mother was like. One says,
“She was a demanding and difficult woman. I left home when I was eighteen.”
The other says,
“She was always warm and patient with me, even when I screwed up.”
It’s a common enough difference in perception and you’d have to know (or imagine) the back story to even begin to understand it.
Or think of two people describing the same man.
“He’s tall and…”
“I wouldn’t say he’s tall. Six foot isn’t all that tall these days.”
Or a mom speaking of her brother, Simon:
“Simon’s the most irresponsible person. He hops from job to job and half the time he’s off living in some other country.”
Her son, however says:
My Uncle Simon’s the neatest guy. He emails me from all over the world and sends pictures of places I’ve never even heard of.”
Your perspective on each of these might be different yet again, and I might see it differently from all of you. None of the perspectives is wrong. It just reflects the way we view and structure our world.
This is what writers are all about – having a viewpoint and perspectives. Then developing ideas from that and sharing them because they might help someone else understand their world better.
It doesn’t matter what form your writing takes – fiction of any genre, blogging, essays or op-eds. You can be funny or serious or oblique. In depth or light touch. It doesn’t matter if your family thinks your ideas are right off the wall, or if some old coot takes offence because you dropped an ‘f’ bomb.
A writer feels the imperative to write their experiences and ideas, framed by their own perspective, to offer to the world. If they are read the ideas might change the world, just the tiniest bit. One perspective at a time.
Do you have the confidence in your perspective to do that? To be a writer?
