Taking Risks: The Hallmark of a Serious Writer

Because I'm not a serious writer, I can't say a lot about what makes one -- at least not from experience.

Because I write, I can talk about writing -- and why I'm not [yet] a serious writer.

Serious writers are defined by their ability to take risks. They venture into new territory and expand the perspective of their audience. Or, more usually, they bring a new spin to an old subject.

Writers, people like me, we comment. We observe, remark, self-indulge, fail to edit, fail to review, fail to consider the current state of the world, fail to consider our readers... FAIL.

Simply because writers are marked by failure does not mean that serious writers are characterized by success. Quite the opposite. Serious writers may do all of the things they do, and fail to find an audience -- fail to generate revenue -- fail to produce more than even one remarkable work.

The distinguishing factor between writers and SERIOUS writers is that serious writers are willing to take risks. They're willing to say what has been yet unsaid. They're willing to put everything -- their reputation, their careers, and (most frightening of all) their egos on the line. And, even if met with failure, serious writers continue to take risks.

That means the underlying factor that weeds writers, like me, out from serious writers is this: work. Serious writers are willing to invest time and energy in work that is bound by its very nature to be imperfect -- quite literally bound from conception to fail miserably. They are willing to conceive, record, re-write, abandon, revise, edit, submit, re-submit. They are willing to be at first imperfect.

Serious writers acknowledge and understand that writing changes form -- from unintelligible, valueless scribble, to something of an art -- something unique, unconventional, something as distinct as the sound of your mother's voice rising above a crowd. But this transformation is something that happens much like the formation of a diamond: under unfathomable pressure over a long period of time.

Do I aspire to be loved and consumed? Or do I aspire instead to be an artist?

I aspire to create art. I acknowledge that this is not art. In venturing to admit my failures, I am realizing my potential as a writer -- even if only a little bit. In venturing to take the risk of admitting my shortcomings, I gain humility. In writing -- even writing that is not serious -- I exercise my ability as a writer to translate an intangible thought into a collection of symbols that may be meaningful to others. Thus is the nature of language.

In understanding the nature of writers, the nature of writing, the nature of language, and most importantly myself, I may well be ready to start thinking about what it would entail for me to transform myself from a mere writer into a serious writer.

Of course, to become a serious writer, one must write something.

As I am distracted by my pregnancy, the likelihood of this transformation taking place is small. But pregnancy is never an excuse not to exercise -- the physical being or the mental being. And without exercise of either of these two creatures, the writer in me will never be born. Thus, I bend, I stretch, I think, and I work. That makes me a writer.

It is in the re-bending, the re-stretching, the re-thinking, the revising, and the re-working that I will become a serious writer.