The Beginning

Happy International Women's Day! Today, I want to tell you about becoming a Writer.

I believe we are all writers just like we are all readers. Letters, emails, text messages, posters; these are written things. But a Writer is, to anyone who believes in segmentation of a population for marketing purposes, someone who "crafts" written pieces to express themselves. That's not an authoritative definition, but it's mine.

My first story was one sentence, scrawled on a piece of yellow paper in kindergarten. It goes something like this:

Profound.

According to my mom, this was a hit, so take that with a grain of salt. She says my teacher toured the other kindergarten classrooms to show them what I'd done, because my story had a beginning, middle and end. To this day, I don't understand why this is particularly special, as I've met plenty of four-year-olds who can follow basic story structure. But I suppose when you're inundated with "stories" that simply say, "green is my favorite color! Dogs are small!" anything resembling a plot is a big deal.

However, most of my childhood was spent doing more extroverted things like musical theater, choir, figure skating, cheerleading—I loved being in the spotlight, or at least on its fringes. Any writing I did was for school, for a grade, and therefore compulsory. Self-expression was constrained for the sake of a clean report card. In the summer of 2008, I took a writing course at my art camp and, for an idea of how that turned out, I haven't revisited "Talan's Island" since.

It was only when I turned 16, emerged from a long period of arrested development, and began to develop a healthy amount of angst that I noticed my diary entries were becoming more florid, focusing on finding new, complicated words to explain how events affected me, rather than just recalling concrete details. I fell in love, embraced a social life, etc. In school, my essays were no longer graded based on a basic comprehension of the assigned text, but instead on my ability to interpret the text and argue my point. With my first proper exploration of American romanticism in American Literature Honors, and a crash course in scansion in AP Lit, I began to desire creativity and seek it out. Outside of schoolwork, I joined my high school's philosophy discussion group and literary magazine, and the world became a little bit wider.

One rainy afternoon in 2012, I decided I could write a poem, so I did. It was simple, a little melancholy, painfully self-aware—all the hallmarks of adolescent writing. To my surprise, it was published in the school's literary magazine later that year. Friends were mostly shocked that I could write something so pensive, given my boisterous demeanor. We contain multitudes, etc., etc.

That summer, my mom signed me up for Sarah Lawrence College's week-long Summer Writers' Workshop. This course not only convinced me that SLC was my top choice for university, but that I had a knack for writing. I wasn't prodigious, but the simple process of ungraded inspiration and expression unlocked something in me. Add to that the chance to befriend people from a panoply of backgrounds, combined with daily experiments in form and content. I began to hear my own voice emerging between the lines.

And then I read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and there was no going back. I had found an author who resonated with me so deeply, I couldn't stop myself from reading his other work, identifying what was so beautiful and intimidating about it. I became, just before turning 18, the asshole who passionately defended ethics, empathy, and human connection while waiting in line at Panera. And the only way to stop that level of public embarrassment was to write it all down.

Throughout my time at SLC, my writing matured significantly. It had to; it was atrocious at first. I was adamant that I was not a Writer, but someone who enjoyed writing. I didn't submit to competitions or magazines because I knew I wasn't ready. Every time I shared work, the audience reaction was an obligatory round of applause without snaps or hollers. And that was well-deserved, because my writing was missing something critical: resonance. I couldn't reach people, and was limiting myself creatively. I was against using curse words for shock value, or writing about the trauma I was experiencing during my first year or so of college. "It's not worth it", I'd say. Plus, I was so against writing free-verse or slam that, during a paint party, I wrote "the spoken word said nothing" on the wall right next to someone's poem.

I look back at who I was at SLC with pity, because I could have had so much fun as an amateur writer if I wasn't so stringent with myself and resentful of others. I wish I could apologize to the people I was so bitter towards, and hope they've kept up their craft too. But I was right about not being ready to put my work out there. I needed to write those pieces that I'm only just revisiting and editing now, that were so personal and strange. There was something wonderful about coming back to my dorm, covered in someone else's glitter and the smell of raspberry vodka, only to scribble a treatise about the night sky that made perfect sense to me and that no one else was allowed to read. Still, I insisted I was not a Writer, because I believed I needed to prove myself to wear that title.

Fast forward to 2024: I very much call myself a Writer. It's not just because I've cranked out a novel no agent wants to read (yet) and some publishing creds, but because I've started taking my writing much more seriously. Giving yourself a title demonstrates self-confidence beyond any title conferred upon you. I believe in myself, am willing to advocate for myself as such, and even made a website.

And, on IWD, it's fitting to mention that men are much less annoying at parties when you introduce yourself as a writer rather than a civil servant.

At my worst moments, when my confidence has been in the gutter, I turn to that yellow copy paper. It sits in a simple, wooden frame just beside my mom's desk. It reminds me of what I can do. It's mawkish as hell, but if four-year-old Michaela is telling me the sky will get klere, I have to believe her. I'll be so happy.