What’s in a Word? What’s a Writer?

How are writers made? Are they born? Are they raised? Or are these questions not worth posing because talent and craft are red herrings?

We could imagine an imperfect world where writers are mere props of the powers that be. We could imagine that there are no rules to writing and everything is a wild, dangerous game of power. But that sounds too cynical. Let us ask tangible questions, rather than lurk in the dark. I will do away with abstractions and approach this concretely with my own life. How did I become a writer––if I am a writer?

We cannot ask what a writer is before we understand what writing entails. Writing is not only communication, but an art and a craft, what Plato called techne (‘science’) and what Aristotle linked to arete (‘sharpness’). There are also other forms of writing: the essay, the poem, the short story, the fable, the allegory, the novel, the dialogue, whatever ‘polyphonism’ means for the present day.

Let me limit myself. I am a writer of horror short stories and a poet of the weird tradition. I primarily write in the tradition of H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, George Sterling, and Clark Ashton Smith. But, before I was enthralled by these poets, I always saw myself as a formalist. I wanted to be like Roman Jakobson, Samuel Beckett, and Louis Zukofsky.

It might seem strange that I ended up in genre fiction and speculative poetry. However, the weird poetry tradition, for better or for worse, has always been bound up with formal poetry. I would rather the unhallowed mark of ‘genre’ or ‘speculative’ than be without meter, rhythm, rhyme, structure, beauty. These specters of Romanticism enchanted me. So, I am now bound with this unholy brand of literary alterity––the horror! the horror!

Despite all these pretensions, and my claim to language for style and beauty, I actually struggled with writing clearly and effectively as a young man. This might be a strange arc for someone who is obsessed with literary form and formal poetry. But I think that shows my ability to progress at my own pace. My restless energy, for what it's worth, propelled me towards new terrain. When I was 19, I would try to write as complicated prose as possible without a genuine foundation in grammar nor language. I had everything except the necessary linguistic skills. I wanted, no, needed, sweeping analysis, cerebral historiography, a battle of grand ideas, and an epic view of everything that existed. I wanted to pierce through all the ideology in the world, and finally burst the bubbles that everyone seemed stuck in. The only problem was that I could barely find the words to do so.

I had everything, even the clarity of thought only tyros possess, except the skills to convey what so desperately needed to get out. In my undergraduate years, my essays were often marked down for being convoluted, ornate, and dense. My research and understanding received High Distinctions, but the overall mark would be brought down by my lack of clear signposting, confusing structure, or awkward grammar. I was a reader before I was a writer.

I only ever took two creative writing courses in my Bachelor of Arts degree because I was too scared of receiving criticism. But I ended up proving to myself that I could not write a novel effectively. I was too didactic; I would tell rather than show; I would write my way into stories; I did not have the wherewithal to execute my grand visions. I had a draft and outline for a novel about the Second World War, from the perspective of Russian-Jewish peasants in the Red Army, which would trace their lineage from the birth of twins in a Jewish ghetto in Moscow, decades before the October Revolution, to a patriarch character’s heart attack at the funeral of Joseph Stalin. But I did not have the skills to tell this epic story of an immense family tree.

I could have all that ambition, or as much drive to acquire knowledge, but I just did not have the tools to build what I wanted. How can I speak about history and literature if I do not possess the grammar to convey these grand ideas in the ways which grand ideas demand? I needed to go back to fundamentals, and I think we all need to go back to fundamentals once in a while, to humble ourselves and learn how to become better. It has taken until now, now that I am 27, to realise that I just needed to slow down and reread what I had written. I was trying to convince the world I was smart when all I needed to do was relax and be self-aware, working on my flaws and leaning into my strengths.

After all that, can I answer the question: Just how are writers made?

Melancholia, Albrecht Durer

Writers are made through trial and error, through blood, through sweat, through tears. You cannot hope to be a writer if you are fearful of transformation. Writing is found in the strange liminal space between two people, teetering on the edges of reason towards the madness of beauty.

Sometimes, it is just a matter of time before you stumble on the realisation you were doing it wrong this whole time. For me, it took almost 8 years until I saw my blind spots. I had all the ambition and ideas and drive, but I needed to go back to the basics. I needed the groundwork to erect a cathedral.

And perhaps it will take me another 8 years, or more, until I find another blind spot. I think it is hard to know. But what I do know is that I am not couched in density, hiding in obfuscation, shrouding myself in language; instead, I am trying to expose myself to the world through the medium of language. I want to illuminate the darkest reaches of myself, and shine a torch on all the monsters of the world.

I do not think writers are born with genius, nor are they raised by writing workshops. Writing is both a talent and a craft, a vocation and a destination, an impossibility and an innate faculty. It is everything we can think it is, because language is how we think. We can only become better at writing by realising how we always fail at it.

I can be a writer, but not a real writer; I can be a writer, having never written a line; I can be a writer, where writing always fails me. It does not matter what you call yourself but it matters what you really are. Because writing is both everything and nothing at all. Writing is the specter haunting the mind. It emerges from the complex interplay between writer and audience, and language itself. Writing is a curse and a crucifix, light and darkness, life and death.

We need to communicate something to another, but language might get in the way. We need to learn how to use it as effectively as possible because language is not only how we convey meaning, but how we have meaning at all. Our minds are inextricably bound up with language; language is the medium through which humans think. We could imagine a world without language but that would be an imperfect world. And I am scared of what kind of monsters cannot speak. Because I used to be one of them.