About becoming the writer I am

Oi, pessoal!

Hoje resolvi postar o primeiro essay que escrevi para o meu curso de escrita. A tarefa era escrever uma autobiografia, mas que descrevesse nossa história de escrita. Julguei que faria todo sentido postar esse essay aqui, já que este blog sempre foi uma tentativa de expor mais o que eu penso e coloco no papel. 

Postar é sempre um desafio pra mim. Postar um texto em inglês então é ainda mais desafiador. Como vocês terão oportunidade de saber melhor, caso leiam o essay abaixo, lidar com julgamentos e críticas é sempre muito difícil pra mim. O medo da falha está sempre presente. Mas um escritor deve estar sempre à espera de críticas. Suas palavras são lidas, interpretadas de maneiras diversas e são sempre julgadas. Eu sei disso e estou me permitindo errar mais e aprender com isso. Foi por esse motivo também que resolvi postar esse texto. 

Aqui vai um pouquinho da minha história:

Writing was always my passion. When I was little, my dream was to be a writer, a novel writer. At an early age I discovered that becoming a writer was not that easy, and even more, making money from writing was pretty hard. Later on, I had to choose a career, and aware of the difficulties implicated in being a novel writer, I ended up choosing an academic career. At a first look it sounds sad, but it is not. The struggle to fit in the society’s expectations turned out to be excellent for my growth and understanding of the world. I not only have realized that to be a good academic writer is my main goal nowadays but also that even though sometimes we have to makes decisions in order to get financially stable, we can still learn a lot from them, and this learning process is determinant for those who are trying to figure out their own place in this world. For me, this process made me understand who I am and what I like the most about what I chose to be.  

When I was a teenager I was pretty confident about my writing. I was young and I already wanted to be a writer. Maybe it’s a very common dream among the youngers, however my dream was bigger. I actually wrote almost two entire books during those times (these ones that I hide today), as well as kept a lot of diaries. I was sure I was going to carry it out. For me, writing at school was as pleasant as writing at home. Actually, my composition class was my favorite one. I remember how proud I was the day when my elementary teacher read one of my compositions aloud. We were supposed to write a narrative and I had this great science-fiction-comic idea. I remember I was smiling while I was jotting my ideas down. I remember I was writing without stopping. On the day we got the grades, forty young students were in the classroom waiting for them. All my classmates’ compositions were there and she chose mine as one of the best so she read it to everyone. I was on my seat (always one of the first desks), smiling, proud of myself, while my classmates were laughing very much, listening to the teacher telling my comic story about aliens who were falling into the huge holes of the moon. My narration was approved by everyone. That was success. That was one step to achieve my dream. Remembering those feelings assures me that writing was good to me and, more importantly, it reminds me that I used to believe I was good at writing. Also, I used to read a lot at that time, much more than the average of teenagers at the same age. They were novels in general, which I believe made me create even more. I had these whole stories in my mind: different characters, several love stories, names from all over the world…in a very innocent way, I used to think I was going to be famous and publish many books, be rich and well-known.

However, everything started changing when I started High School. At that point, in Brazil, students start practicing the “dissertação” (very much like an essay) that is required in a lot of public universities’ entrance examinations, which are very difficult and select very few people. As it was supposed to be, I started training in that genre all the time, and that made me stop writing my own words at school as well as at home. I totally dedicated myself to enter a public university, because I already knew I had to think of my future. I chose a course that would not only allow me to make money but also keep in contact with literature and, of course, writing. But, in the university, I had totally different genres to write, those which I had never trained before. After my first bad grade (the first in my whole academic life until then), I became more and more concerned about my writing. I had to deal with judgment in a new world, full of rules to be followed, where I was unaware of many things. I had to start to fit in a world that did not accept my old style of writing. Getting an A started to be my most important issue.  Every time I had to hand in a research paper I got nervous and tense. I was certain that my writing was not good and that I was not able to write an A-paper. It was a feeling completely different for me. I started to be less confident about my writing. Before, it had never been so difficult to get a good grade, especially in my papers. Now, that feeling was following me. It followed me all my five years at the university. The lack of confidence that took me over made me burn my diaries because I was ashamed of them, and lock my “books” in my wardrobe, where nobody would find them.

Once, maybe in the second year, a professor said that the best way to improve writing was writing. That had been said directly to me, I was sure. That was the moment when I realized I should do something to get rid of the fear of writing. So I started writing a blog (this blog, folks!). For me, that would be the best way to try to improve my skills and feel better writing. In the beginning, going back to that free writing of my childhood was scary, and I think that is because it had been long years without feeling free of judgments. Soon it became easier and more pleasant. The fact that I have not told more than 40 people about it until today explains a lot.

Today I am sure that the loss of confidence is due to writing something that has to fit in society’s standards, which is really different from what I was used to when I was younger. Writing the blog made me realized how much my writing skills still work based on others’ opinion. I was sure of that during the last Winter Break in the US when someone told me that a lot of people were reading my blog and it was their favorite. These people are Fulbright scholars like me. Actually I do not know how they discovered my blog, but they did and after being aware of that, my way of writing there changed. Even though I was always concerned about my small group of readers, suddenly my concerns got bigger. I cannot write without addressing them anymore. I think I have become their writer without them knowing that. That made me realize audiences scare me a lot.

Several questions come to my mind when I think of all these struggles: why did I choose an undergraduate course that it is all about reading and writing? Why am I ashamed of being judged if writing is all about judgment and particular interpretation? Why am I afraid of making mistakes? Why did I end up choosing to have an academic life at the university, since the Master’s I am taking requires the publishing of articles and books all the time? Is it the little teenager still trying to be a writer? Do the old hidden dreams make my conscience work without me being aware of that?

I think I know what happened to the little girl and to the writer I am today. That little girl was pretty innocent and she did not know about the competitive world she lived in. When she grew up and went to High School, she started to face the truth. She was hit by reality when she got into the university. Of course some standards of the educational system have changed her. The obligation of following rules and pleasing audiences tortures her. For the little girl that is still within me, the words just have to be written down on the paper. For the academic society, they have to be written on the paper under a lot of standards and scientific meanings. It has to be clear, nothing implicit. The woman I am today knows and understands those struggles. She respects them and also she respects the dreams of the little girl. But the woman I am today, who is conscious about what life expects from us, is also aware of what life has taught her and she is a woman who made her choice and really loves it.

I know that I had to choose a career to make money. I believe that the idea of making a life of writing never left me and I know an academic writer is not a novel writer, but he/she is a writer anyway. The dream of having a great audience and being recognized as a good writer was always inside me. It still moves me. Even though I stopped writing novels in order to get into this academic career, I feel more and more in love with this choice and I know it can be very pleasant. The mature woman I am today has transformed the dream of the little girl inside me in a more realistic one. I have never forgotten how I used to feel when I was free writing. That was really passionate and good. But the way I feel today when I realize how much I have accomplished and how much I still have ahead, I feel totally in love. My mature dream is my career today and that fulfills me. I still have much to learn to be the best, but I can be the best, since I do what I love: writing.