I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember.

When I was a little little girl I wrote poems for my mother and left them on her bed as a surprise. I waited with gleeful anticipation for her to find them, smile and praise me—which she always did.

As I grew older, my writing became more private. I had stacks of journals and notebooks filled to bursting with the maudlin observations of a hormone addled teen.

I didn’t want anyone to see that work—I knew it was bad. I knew it because I read almost as much as I wrote. I packed my notebooks, not just with my own words but with quotes that were transcendent in a way my measly scribblings never were. I can still recite the majority of them.

“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan. The proper study of mankind is man.” ~ William Pope

In my early twenties I moved to New York to “become a writer”. I didn’t really know what that meant, but only that I’d never had another kind of dream. I proceeded to become a waiter, who admittedly wrote a lot, but whose writing never traveled beyond a single set of eyes—my own.

In my mid twenties I met a charismatic psychopath and fell in love. I stopped writing for five years—I was too busy snorting coke with him to bother. After we broke up, words—like an old friend—poured forth and packed over 400 handwritten pages, all about the terrible things we did together.

Like my journals, this was raw, personal stuff but I forced myself to share it with a select few trusted souls. I suspected that I might not be a horrible writer anymore, but I was still comparatively awful. It didn’t seem to matter. The words tumbled out whether I wanted them to or not.

For Christmas in 2001, my husband bought me my first laptop computer. He wrapped it very badly and left it on my desk much as I had left my poems on my mother’s bed. He was beside himself with anticipation as I opened it. It was the best gift he could have gotten me.

This computer—not right away, but ultimately—was a game changer. I didn’t realize it at the time, but technology would take me out of the shadows.

Three years ago, after approximately 38 years of writing, my very first piece was published right here in elephant journal. It was followed by 449 more.

When that first clumsy article hit the internet, I was stunned to realize over 300 hundred people had read it in 24 hours. More people saw that one piece in a single day than had seen anything else I’d written my entire life. My mother promptly sent me flowers.

Blogging became addictive. I loved sharing pieces of myself and finding the common threads of our shared human experience. I felt all at once connected and released. And I loved the feedback. No one had ever said “thank you” to me for articulating something elusive before. I craved those thank you’s as if they would fill in all the empty holes left by years and years of diligence but never truly honored work.

But recently I realized something had gone missing. That private process of writing things for no other reason than that they need to be written had been compromised. I was walking a thin line between writing for the words and writing for my ego.

So I decided to take on a new challenge—or rather, an old challenge with which I had never gotten very far. I decided to write a fiction novel. And I discovered something rather interesting. Though this novel has come pouring out of me and the work is easier than I ever dreamed it would be in terms of story telling, I have to force myself to the task. Why? Because I am once again in solitary pursuit of the words.

There is no immediate gratification in novel writing; no bells, no whistles, no real evidence that anything has really even happened other than an occasional spark of knowing that something is right and real. And while those sparks are worth countless hours of labor—they are the magic that fans the flames—all the slogging and self doubt and fear and procrastination in between is tough stuff.

This is the essence of writing, though, it always has been. It is an internal battle, waged on the front lines of our hearts, our intellects and our resolve.

Returning to my private work while continuing to write for public consumption has provided a better sense of balance. The fires of my ego may still be stoked when I see a high view count for an article, or doused when I don’t—but only for the briefest moment. I am solidly back in the territory of writing for writing’s sake.

I have been reminded that, while the thrill of leaving  poems on the bed may be great, the thrill of simply chasing words is greater.

A writer’s life is not a glamorous one, even in this modern age of technological connection. It is working in pajamas, late at night and early in the morning with old coffee cups and water glasses scattered on the desk. It is unbrushed hair,  an unwashed face, stiff back and a growling stomach. It is burned toast, whining dogs and closed doors. It is messy and odd and only rarely beautiful. It is poor and bewildering and ripe with bleary eyes and aching heads.

And it is a life like no other. It is my life.

~

Author: Erica Leibrandt

Editor: Alli Sarazen

Photo: Meni/Flickr