Waiting for
Approval
It didn’t dawn on me until a few months ago how much waiting I
used to do for permission to write. I
wanted to hear the words, “Yes, Susan Girolami Kramer, you really can write and
should write.” Then I just stopped waiting to hear these words and wrote, listening
more closely to the writer within. So
these days I don’t have a problem saying I am a writer.
This isn’t to say I
won’t look for approval/permission now and again, always some of that left. Sound familiar? I’m sharing my experience not because it
is anything new, but to hopefully help someone break their “Waiting
to write” habit.
Yes, it is a form of stalling. I used to be part of several writing groups, biting my nails, waiting for someone to crown me WRITER. I remember telling one of my writing groups that I wouldn’t attempt long prose like a novel. After all, I hadn’t gotten the green light to write longer pieces, so I attempted poetry instead. Found out poetry is way more difficult to write!! (I still had some of my poetry published.)
This very topic was in an email newsletter—diyMFA Writer Fuel—I received from Gabriela Pereira (go to http://diymfa.com/ to visit Gabriela’s brain-child to “take your writing education into your own hands”), Creative Director of diyMFA. The headline read, “How do you know if you’re a writer?”
Gabriela says, “Stop waiting for agents/editors/publishers/etc. to vet you as a writer.” This is such a great quote I may have to place it somewhere to see it all the time. She said it “boils down to a simple equation: BEING A WRITER = GIVING YOURSELF PERMISSION = DOING THE WORK.”
So no more waiting, give yourself your own STAMP OF APPROVAL. No more looking around your critique group and hanging onto crumbs of approval that may fall to the floor. It’s like with anything else, it is in your hands. You write, you write. You don’t, you don’t. I sure hope you do though …
