A Writer Writes About Writing

Florals? For Spring? Groundbreaking.

I never thought of myself as writer.

I would get my essays back from English class filled with red markings, for run-on sentences and poor punctuation. And if you’ve read my previous blogs you’d see some misspellings. I do my best proofreading after I hit Publish.

(Although I celebrate my misspellings now. It’s proof that I don’t use AI, and never will, for my writings, or any of the work I do).

I remember I was writing an essay on Hamlet. I had some good insights, I was being authentic with my opinions and ideas, only to get my paper back with red markings “at about page 3 this turned into a script of the play”, well fucking hell!

I wasn’t the person that would write stories on their downtime. I didn’t start using a journal until I was about 31, when I started reading tarot. So outside of school assignments, I wasn’t a writer.

About a year ago, at the time of this writing, a friend of mine told me about Substack. She said it was this mixture of blog and newsletter, and she was having fun on it and that I should give it a try.

The Brainstorm

It’s as if all the stories I’ve had buried in my mind started to surface. I’ve had stories I wanted to tell about my life, my thoughts, opinions, and I had no place to put them. They’re just my own storied after all, who cares what they are. But they’ve been swirling in my head for a long time.

Have you heard the saying “Love is like a fart. If you have to force it, it’s probably shit”?

Well, I take that saying to many areas of my life. If I have to force it, it means something inside me isn’t vibing with it.

Once I’ve let go of my doubts and shortcomings, writing felt nearly effortless. I say nearly because I had some soul-searching to do.

That was no easy task.

My heart got excited about writing. This is new. Something you haven’t done before, and these are your stories. You finally get to let out this trapped muse you’ve had stored in you for so long. My mind kept reminding me of the red markings.

I thought, yes write! I thought, no, who cares?

I thought, yes, it’s not about the audience, but my own need to express. I thought, no, these stories are vulnerable and real, and you’ve been rejected way too much to expose yourself again.

I thought yes, I need to express! I need to let out every part of myself. Keeping ourselves trapped is how we become unhappy, unfulfilled, and inauthentic.

The No didn’t become magically silent. It started reminding me of great books I’ve read. One of the first books I read as a child was Animal Farm by George Orwell. Brilliant use of animal archetypes in juxtaposition of government and social structures. Then I remembered The Little Prince, precious children’s book, that to me speaks more to the inner child inside the adult than to children themselves. Then I remembered Angela’s Ashes, and I remembered how my teacher thought it was so brilliant how he never used quotation marks to show a conversation. The author used commas and how you could still read and understand that it was a conversation. Then I remembered one my favorite books, Lover’s Dictionary, written like a dictionary as you get snapshots of a story. The story itself is completely out of order, the only order being the alphabetical format of the words that guide you through the story. And I thought that was brilliant!

I also remembered Twilight, and 50 Shades of Grey. I know they’re a sensation. They became a massive hit. People still go nuts for them. I thought they were shit. Badly written and weird storyline. And we can absolutely disagree.

As a matter of fact, I disagree with my teacher thinking the lack of quotation marks in Angela’s Ashes was brilliant. I loved the book. Read all three of them, but to nut over the fact that we’re missing quotations is brilliant? Witch, please!

So then, in my soul-searching, my soul started emerging. There are some real shit books out there and those writers had the audacity to put it out into the world.

Audacity is good! We can learn from mediocre men.

But guess what? The opinion of someone thinking something is shit, is simply an opinion, not fact. I love things that some people find awful. My friends have stopped asking me to choose music during a road trip or a party because they don’t like my eclectic taste. Which I’m a little hurt by, my taste is impeccable! But they haven’t stopped being my friends. I’ll find people that like my music. And sometimes, even I don’t like my own music. I want something else, something new, something different.

My point is, I finally started listening to that inner voice saying to go for it. I saw all around me how writers, artists, musicians, poets, all express themselves not because it’s a good piece of art, but because it had to come out of their bodies. They couldn’t contain this muse or it would start to rot from the inside.

So I decided to go for it.

Also because being on Substack gave me anonymity. Now I have subscribers (thank you so much for being here, it really means the world to me.) and some of my friends read my essays, but not all. And that’s ok. That’s exactly what I want.

Initially I didn’t want to promote my writing on other social media platforms. I wanted secrecy. I wanted the quiet freedom that comes with not being known. I get to write about whatever I want. I haven’t created a name for myself. I haven’t carved a niche to box myself in. I just get to write.

I thought I would have run out of ideas by now. I’ve written most of the stories I’ve had in my head. So I thought at any moment now I will be starring the paper. It blank. Me blank. But not yet, the ideas just keep coming. This is one of them. I’ve had the title “A Writer writes about writing” for 6 months now. Goddess! And it has taken me longer than that to claim the title of writer.

It felt a lot like claiming the title of witch. At first I didn’t think I deserved it, wasn’t worthy of it, I didn’t fit the title. It took a lot of soul-searching too.

And here’s my opinion. Being a writer is a lot like being a witch. Even if you haven’t written much. Even if you don’t cast any spells. Even if you have stories that are not on paper yet. Even if you are just starting out. Even if you think you’re “bad”. Even if you don’t do it for a long time and then come back to it. Even if you did it, and decided to abandon it. You can still call yourself a witch, and you can still call yourself a writer. The title doesn’t leave you unless you choose that it does.

I’m claiming my title as a writer.

I love my wild and free essays. They don’t always connect from week to week. They aren’t always about tarot, feminism, queerness, surviving narcissistic abuse, spirituality, witchcraft, Jung, feeling lost, not knowing who you are, etc.

They are all those things and yet fragmented.

Isn’t that what being a human is? Fragmented, and yet wholly complete from the union of our parts.

Claim your title.

With much love and tarot magick,

Icaro

What titles have you not yet claimed?

I understand there’s a conversation that maybe claiming titles for one self can keep us trapped in ego mentality and over identification. However, the other side of the conversation is that while in this human physical body we are tied to our egos, so I don’t see it as a bad thing.

We become afraid of the ego because of egoists and narcissists, but we are entitled to feeling good about ourselves and owning who we are in this wild and crazy life.

Claiming titles isn’t about becoming narcissistic but it’s claiming and owning the gifts we have and the subjects we’re naturally drawn to.

It’s claiming that it’s ok to be yourself and a form of self love to claim I am who I am.