Stage Fright

 

Hello everyone,

 

Beginning this blog has proven to be rather daunting because I have been struck with a sense of -- no, I won't call it Writer's Block; rather, it's Stage Fright. I am a professional writer. By this I mean that editors of newspapers, magazines, book anthologies, newsletters, encyclopedias, and other printed and online sources have paid me to write for them. By this I also mean that I have been employed in the past by publications under the job title of "Staff Writer." And by this I also mean that I teach and coach students in colleges and high schools to learn how to be better writers.

 

I have been doing this work for awhile now: writing as a staff writer and/or freelancer since 1984, teaching since 2001. One would think the jitters would have long been past. On the contrary, they're as alive as ever.

 

I decided to create a blog on Writing and Storytelling for fun and for practical purposes. I wanted to play with blogging, a craft that I've dabbled with before but not really practiced reliably. I also wanted to put my writing "out there" into the world in a more structured fashion, partly (truth, be told) for self-promotional purposes. I just signed a contract with a book publisher for a manuscript and I want to start building an audience for that hopefully soon-to-come book. And, finally, I wanted to create a space where I could communicate with students who take my classes as well as some others about the art and practice of writing.

 

Good intentions led me to Blogger, an attractive layout and page links. And then to Stage Fright.

 

Perhaps like every other writer, I wonder on a daily basis whether I really am a writer, if I can lay claim to the title. In the journalism program I attended as an undergraduate, I was told that we were reporters, not writers, that to call one's self a writer was to be self-flattering and pompous. That reputation was reinforced in courses and workshops on fiction writing that I subsequently took, where it was declared that "writers were not normal people" and that only a few, a chosen few, had the "God-given gift of being writers."

 

So, not wanting to appear pompous, I called myself a reporter, though later I got a bit daring and began to self-identify as a journalist. By this point, I already had decided I was not entirely normal, but I still did not think I possessed any special God-given gifts. (The fact that I was raised as a Hindu and held an appreciation for a notion of God as being one and all, simultaneously didn't particularly lessen my image of God as genie and giver of gifts to just a few.)

 

Finally, writing Ph.D. comprehensive exams in 2002, one month before my fortieth birthday, it dawned on me that I had just spent a week creating 140 double-spaced pages of prose based on a blend of what I had learned in studying and what I felt in my heart. Knowledge + Knowledge, I suddenly realized, equaled something I had always yearned to do: Create Writing in the form of books, essays, and poetry. (I would add blogs to the list, but they hadn't quite emerged as an art form in their own right in 2002.)

 

I almost abandoned my Ph.D. program in Political Science to pursue a master's of fine arts in Creative Writing. The only thing that stopped me was that I already had a Master's Degree, one of those pre-requisites for a Ph.D., and I really wanted to do the dissertation that I thought would become my first book. (That dissertation is going to be my first book.) But, from that moment on, I forgot about God-given gifting processes and the pomposity embodied in calling one's self a writer, and adopted the title for myself. Old conditioning dies hard, however. Thus, the idea that I can put myself out there as a Writer who might be able to help others become Writers generates stage-fright.

 

Stage-fright -- like Writer's Block -- is a symptom, however, of growth and creative breakthrough, if one allows one's self to believe that it is. And so, my first post, is perhaps an invitation to anyone and everyone who might read this blog to take this message as my first insight into the writing process. Like singing in the shower and dancing like no one is watching, writing is first and foremost process. It's a process available to anyone who wishes to pursue it, and I happen to think it's a healthy and happy way to connect with one's inner self and find a way to walk in this world.

 

I welcome you all to join the journey, to comment and critique the blog, and to use whatever I share for your own learning and growth. 

 

And stay tuned for more.

 

Himanee