From the journal…

It’s been six years now since I went to the Fringe with him and Andrew. Andrew’s now a successful headlining standup comedian. John’s now finally starting to get recognised for his music on an overdue scale. There is no greater pain than seeing friends succeed. After I read the review I spoke to a friend who was both supportive and dismissive of my clichéd laments, suggesting that as a musician he knows exactly how any writer must feel – anonymous and invisible. And it’s true. Everyone claims to be a writer at some point because it’s easy to say it. All you need to do is write something. You don’t even need to show it to anyone. You don’t need a stage or an instrument or a canvas that others can view to validate your claim; your identity. Thus the only validation becomes how ‘successful’ you are – “do you have an agent?” “Are you published?” “How many copies have you sold?” “No? Not yet? None? Oh.” To paraphrase the original little green man, a writer craves not these things.

It’s a profession anyone can claim and dismiss in a moment, but few truly understand unless it’s something they truly are. I can thus take some comfort from that I suppose. I am a writer. I am. I am a writer. I am because I keep going. I keep writing. Even when I think I’ve given up – even when I think I’ve achieved nothing but ‘failure’ because my markers for success are foolishly set by an uncomprehending society rather than by myself, I still don’t put down the pen or stop typing. I am still writing even in this journal, more often than ever in fact. Is this just habit? Is this courage? Is this faith? Either way I feel that it is not something that ‘failure’ can triumph over. This is the person I am. This is the self I bare to the world.

• This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 2:27 pm and is filed under words. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.