Let Me Play God: My Top Reasoning For Becoming A Novelist

Welcome back, readers! I have gotten a few requests to write this weeks article on my reasoning for being a writer. Now, I ask you to forgive me if this article isn’t as organized as I normally would like for it to be since I am in school writing this work today. I have gotten a new schedule that is throwing off my rhythm a bit, but we will push on either way. When it comes to being a writer, I have a couple of reasons why I enjoy my job, but in all transparency, I have stayed a writer for a different set of reasons entirely.

When I first started out as a writer officially, I joined the club because I thought that it could be fun. I had been enjoying my time in school writing essays for English, and I loved taking organized notes more than life itself. I had a good time writing and I really enjoyed the praise I got from my teachers after turning a new essay in for grading. There is no way to say this without sounding condescending to you, but I always got high marks and good feedback on my papers. I was always a favorite when it came to classwork for essay writing, and I always loved the feeling when I got my scores back. But after a while, there was less and less that was fun about writing these papers in school. I never got to choose what I wrote, only how I wrote the work. And while that can be rewarding and interesting, I found that it got to be a little boring after a few years.

In my junior year of high school, I got an email about the Young Arts Competition, a chance to submit your art works online and get a chance to win a sum of money, scholarships, national recognition, and other things to that effect. I thought it could be a really fun way to challenge my writing skills outside of school. A few months prior to receiving the email, I had gotten into this blog, and had a few articles up already, so it didn’t seem crazy for me to try a new form of writing with the competition. I had chosen for my preferred work to be a novel entry. The requirements were that I submit an excerpt of the first twenty pages of my work along with my synopsis for the novel. I got to work on writing up my ideas for what my book could be about and what kind of story I wanted to tell through this opportunity. I had come up with a few ideas and ultimately chose the plot that some of you may have read. I won’t bore you with the details of writing the book out itself because, frankly, those details are long and tedious, and don’t pertain much to this article. I want to tell you all why I am a writer, not what the writing experience was like for me.

When I started writing, I found my biggest reason for wanting to be a writer, and where my passion stays in my work. I wanted to tell my own stories. And I don’t mean that I wanted to tell my stories, stories about myself. I mean that I am able to tell stories that I want to tell, and stories that I think the world needs to hear about. With my debut novel, What The Cameras Don’t Catch, I was able to tell the story of an abuse victim, and show different ways that trauma can manifest in young adults when growing up in a toxic environment. I was also able to tell a story about finding who you are when you are too scared to make the jump and get out of a toxic environment. And I also chose to tell the story of being queer and finding your found family when you don’t have a biological family to turn to. I found that I was able to tell a few different stories through this novel, and it was an incredible feeling. I was able to play God in my own universe and create a world for people to find an escape or relate to my characters. I was able to write up a world that helped readers to understand people in the world more clearly in an entertaining way.

Another reason I enjoyed writing my debut novel, is that it gave me a project that I had total control over. It allowed me to explore different writing styles such as the changing perspectives between chapters, or writing in the first person perspective of a fictional person. I had all control over what the characters would be like, how they would interact, when the plot would advance, what the plot would be, how I told each of the characters’ stories, etc. I was able to decide everything for myself. It was very refreshing to be able to choose my own path for my writing. There were no set deadlines in the beginning, no class grades that pressured me to continue if I got bored of it, nothing. It was entirely my choice to write and my choice to continue writing for the duration of the book and publishing process. I have been able to write anywhere in the world, at any time I want, and publish the product that I am proud of and want the world to see. There is no curriculum holding me back, no teachers telling me that it doesn’t fit the assignment guidelines, nothing.

When it comes to being a writer, I think there is a lot of pressure put on us to fit into a box. You have to be a certain age to be taken seriously, you need a specific word count or page count to be seen as a worthy read, you have to be published officially to be a “real writer,” etc. I need you all to know that none of this is true, and I will say this a million times if I have to: If you have written or are writing a work, you are a writer. If you have poems hidden in the back of your school notebooks, you are a writer. If you have published several works, you are a writer. If you self publish, you are a writer. If you sell very few copies, you are a writer. All you need to do in order to be a writer, is write something.

---

I hope you guys have enjoyed this little rant of an article. I know it isn’t as structured as my usual work, but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. Once again, thank you all for reading, and I’ll see you next week.

Love you guys

Signed,

Lina McGovern