At the age of 40, I'm only now realizing the true evil of "labels". About twenty years ago, when I first declared myself a "Writer" and began fantasizing about a brilliant future, I didn't realize how awry the whole thing was going before I'd even started.

Chasing after the dream of being a Great Writer turned out to be nothing but self-sabotage, as I became completely settled into an image of myself as some kind of undiscovered genius. I suffered from a bad case of 'negative grandiosity' -- because I'm meant for something great, I'm nothing now. I had both an inflated ego and no self-confidence.

Over the years, I wrote in fits and starts, never really enjoying what I was doing, usually leaving things unfinished, but all the while telling myself that something great was just around the corner.

I'm now getting used to the idea of just writing and not calling myself a Writer. I don't know if I've completely shaken off the self-proclaimed 'Writer' label, but I've taken the whole thing down a notch.

One more thing: Look at how many postings come with corrections or post-editing. We are too hard on ourselves here. It's just a place to share ideas and thoughts. It's OK to miispel!

For a creative, there is fascinating stuff in this thread. I don't have much to add because I am stepping in late, so just this:

It isn't your responsibility to judge or even edit your own creative endeavors. Don't bother to categorize what you do either. You just get to create, see? Then release. Create. Release. If you think too much about your audience, you can ruin all your own fun. After all, we aren't here very long, that one is true.

Ding dong, the king (editor, critic, buzzkill, judge) is dead!

Dear Cary and Letter WriterS...

I am in no mood to be wise or wordy. I just want to say to the second LW and to Cary that writing for consciousness or writing for a good story to shine through or writing a diary can stop FOR MANY REASONS.

I wrote daily from age 8-56. Then I wrote some more, mostly fiction. And then the urge to write anything except emails and letters here STOPPED. I didn't have horrid experiences. I didn't plan on it. I actually was having fun when the cessation began. I was living with fun people and did not want to step away to my desk. That was two years ago and I notice that I feel much as letter writer 2 does. I just don't wanna do that. And weird as it is, I accept that there is a reason for this inability to enjoy what I always more than enjoyed.

I always learned from writing (whatever form) and now (since I am not writing at all) I can't even begin to understand this cessation of what never ceased before. But that's okay. I can't analyze this to death, but I can do other things all the while hoping dimly that 'it' will return.

Watch the movie "Closer" sometime.

Jude Law's character? He's definitely a writer - as Clive Owen's character so beautifully points out during an intense scene late in the movie.

And I? Well, thankfully, I am a mere caveman....and that much happier and more fulfilled because of it.

Life is to be lived.

If you are moved to write about that process, do. If you are not, don't. But don't put value on YOURSELF, based upon those urges or lack thereof.

I used to fancy myself a writer--got the ohhhs and the ahhhhhs from teachers and professors all through school. But I found that I lacked the discipline to BE a writer, in the sense of writing in order to make a living.

Everyone writes. Not everyone is a writer. Everyone has artistic urges, it's part of the human experience. But you can no more call yourself a writer because you enjoy writing, than my MIL, who enjoys painting her garish, slightly off in perspective landscapes, can call herself an artist.

Either way, it's OK. It's only when your ego, and your sense of what is right and wrong, get all tied up in knots about that elemental human need to communicate, even if just with oneself, that it becomes a problem.

If what you are asking for is permission to write without expectations, you've got it. If what you are looking for is absolution, someone to tell you that writing, for pleasure or for profit is not, by definition, evil, you absolutely have it.

Take a breath, pick up a pen, and write. Just. Write.

...is that it is usually a result of too much time on one's hands without any action. A fabrication, a luxury, a privileged invention. (This sounds a lot like writing.) If one were in immediate danger, not in the position where it is a luxury to write or not write or lament one or the other of those states, one would not have the opportunity to invent a crisis which, to my mind, can be solved easily. To that end, I offer my own interpretation.

Letter Writer: do you want to write or not? If the answer is affirmative for the former, then sit your butt down at a desk, on the floor, in a sauna, wherever it is you feel would be most conducive to putting pen to paper and joining words or tapping keys with letters that add up to more than conjoined consonants and vowels. Hang upside down and talk into a headset and transcribe the words later. If you're waiting for the perfect moment, the right scenery, the ideal mood, note that "now" is the best choice for "now's" writing. Write about how much you hate writing about not being able to write. Make a list of words you hate/like/don't understand. Write about how much you hate feeling turned off to writing because of a few meaningless jerks; about how you won't write in rebellion of their opinions, or how you will keep on despite them. The point is, you can write; else, what is the product in front of you? You might not like what you write, or how you write, or what little of grand importance or small revelation you have flowing from your mind to your hand; but the truth is, you can write. There you go.

If you don't want to write anymore, don't. When one grows up, things change. Reality comes in. Writing isn't all romantic, tower-trapped people penning and pining away or drinking disaffected by anything except art on some Left Bank. It's not all drunks, tragedy, and ruffle blouses. If writing doesn't amaze you anymore, if you are not compelled to do it like some junkie starved for the next hit, maybe it's just not your thing. And that is OK. It just is. People give up dreams, get new ones. The trick is to find out, then, if you don't want to write, then what do you want to do? And DO it.

That said, are you feeling guilty you aren't writing or surprised you aren't writing? That should clue you in on something. You should similarly take notice if you are feeling the gleeful rebellion of someone who cut an obligation or class when you are not writing. That you are concerned about not writing to begin with points strongly to where you might want to be going now. There's an open desk in the corner...

Fellow writers and Writers and writertypes and nonwriters (if one falls into the first classification, one is bound to stray into the others at times, often by the self-castigation which unfortunately checks and fabulously spurs such individuals), it's a choice we make everyday. I am not a writer everyday, I am almost never a Writer, I disdain writertypes when it is merely a moody affected affliction based on the elevated stereotype of the tortured artist, and I am often, these days, a perverse nonwriter. Life is mutable. Occupations and pastimes change. Do or do not. If a writer is simply one who writes, without the further qualifications of the establishment of skill, talent, and creativity wrought out of subjective analyses based on heralded, canonical subjective conclusions, then Letter Writer, you are a writer, as are we all. Deal with it--Gracefully, spitefully, prolifically, anxiously whatever fits your style.