This morning I had to decorate a paper bag. Not a mammoth task; all I needed to do was cover up the coffee sticker with something pretty in order to shove a birthday present in it. Should be easy, I thought; I’m good at crafts.
Several minutes later, after hunting futilely around for ribbon or coloured paper, it occurred to me: I’m not good at crafts. Not in general. I can decorate cakes, do a spot of half-hearted calligraphy and cross-stitch to an adequate level, but that’s about it. I haven’t made cards or drawn or done origami or quilling or any of those crafty things for years… even my cutting-out skills are pretty rusty… yet all this time I’ve had the vague impression tucked away that I’m the Sort of Person Who’s Good at Crafts.
And come to think of it, that’s true about a lot of things. According to my fond husband I’m the Sort of Person Who’s Good at Languages… but how many do I speak? One. OK, snatches of Quenya learned by rote, but that doesn’t count. I’m the Sort of Person Who Likes Highbrow Films, but, well, the last movie I saw was Ghost Rider and I’m not sure I can remember the last truly arty film I watched. I’m the Sort of Person Who Reads All the Time, only… I don’t, these days.
So it’s a dangerous line of thinking. Particularly so when it comes to writing. I call myself a freelance writer despite having only a handful of articles published in print, because all the articles about freelance writing talk about the power and magic of owning the term “writer” and self-description and so on. And it fits, during the week before a deadline where the house goes to hell in a handbasket because I’m frantically finishing an article.
It doesn’t fit during other times, when I gradually forget about sending out queries, start to rest on my laurels (such as they are) and stop thinking and acting like a writer. Those times are the beginnings of a gradual slip into becoming The Sort of Person Who Writes. And I don’t want to be The Sort of Person Who Writes, I want to be a writer! But because I’m lazy and have other things to do, and because freelancing is so self-directed, and because I’m not actually relying on my freelancing income to live, the tendency to let things slide is always there.
Other things I do let slide, and that’s OK. I don’t have time to actually draw or do more crafts or learn a language now, and that’s fine, as long as I don’t feel smug at the rather useless and questionable achievement of being the Sort of Person Who might. There’s no virtue in vague unrealised potential; and one doesn’t get published for being the Sort of Person Who Might Write a Novel, after all.
That is as philosophical as I plan to wax today, fear not. But it puts me in mind of an elderly gentleman who once wandered into the cinema I was cleaning in my glamorous days as an usherette. Usually I shooed people out so I could clean in peace, but this chap seemed nice so we exchanged a few pleasantries as I wielded the broom around his ankles. Then as I moved into the next row, he piped out
“You’re from England, aren’t you? I’d place you at…. ooh… South London.”
“Sorry, no, I’m Australian,” said I, feeling it a more tactful explanation than “It’s prosody, sir, I have Aspie tendencies”. He looked faintly disappointed, but a few rows later piped up again:
“I’m betting you play the cello, do you? You look like the sort of person who’d play the cello.”
I have not, nor am I ever likely to play the cello. But it warmed the cockles of my heart nevertheless to know that to the casual observer I looked like the Sort of Person Who might.
Kovac Says:
AprilElf Says:
