When Writing It Real member Jean Erler sent me the following essay as part of work she wanted to further develop, I knew that Writing It Real members would relate to what she was describing, a stance we writers take all too often toward our role as authors. I helped Jean polish the essay, and I am grateful to her for permission to share her words with others.

The Non-Writing Writer
by Jean Erler

For what seems like uncountable years, I have been a dues-paying member of the non-writing fraternity. A non-writing writer is one who writes only in his or her head or hides in letters little gems aching to be developed. A non-writer will do anything  in life that has to do with words—except write them into books, essays or poems. Although each non-writer non-writes in his or her own particular way, there are certain activities and tools used by all of them at one time or another to keep safely away from the writing keyboard. They prize the tools that help them remain the writers that they are not.

The most frequently used is the reading-about-writing ploy. A non-writer ferrets out every single book about writing that can be found—at the library, bookstore, second-hand bookstore, Amazon.com.

We read books about:

• writing crisp, succulent dialogue,
• creating characters that will not only intrigue but make readers love or hate them—heroes bigger than life, villains for whom death is not good enough
• inventing plots that twist and turn, amaze and astound
• writing descriptions that put the reader right where the action is (in blizzards so real that when the reader puts down the book she finds herself wearing her winter jacket, or by the lake on a summer evening so hot the reader throws off his clothes and swats at the mosquitoes); books telling you to stand aside and let your characters tell the story (your job being simply to take dictation)
• crafting suspenseful mysteries, creating thrills and chills that keep writers up all night or force them to sleep with the light on; and tomes on writing science fiction that takes readers to worlds hitherto known only to those few privileged to see beyond the pale
• building the background for our masterpieces or how to do the research that will make our work scholarly as well as scintillating.

And for those non-writers who really aim high, there are books that tell us how to sell what we don’t write to the highest bidder.

A corollary to the book-buying frenzy is the magazine-buying frenzy. There are enough periodicals about writing now—neatly divided into genres—to satisfy any type of non-writer—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, screenwriting, playwrighting, journaling, travel writing, true confessions, romance, and on and on. These are especially good on road trips (passenger use only), or when the non-writer is dining alone or collecting dust in a dull waiting room. These paper advice-givers have special appeal because they can be tucked into handbags, back pockets, and backpacks—fast food for the non-writer.

The computer is another great non-writing tool. Searching for quotes on writing by famous writers for the epigraphs on chapter-opening pages, or quotes on the subject the non-writer is non-writing about. And, oh, is the computer good for research! Doing research can take endless amounts of writing time—since proceeding from link to link to link will give us not only immense amounts of background information that we need because we never know when we won’t have the time to get back to it, but lots of fascinating information we will never need at all.

And then there is the office supply store. Next to bookstores and libraries, this is the non-writer’s favorite place. Here for the buying (limited only by available coins) are notebooks of every size and shape; fancy fountain pens or smooth comfortable ballpoints in inks of vibrant reds, greens, and purples as well as the more prosaic blues and blacks; packets of highlighters in neon rainbow (for marking up all the books on writing). If plain old No. 2 pencils are the preference, a pencil sharpener is also necessary. There are also the odds and ends that populate any non-writer’s desk—erasers and white-out (though these two are getting increasingly more difficult to find, sigh), one or two only, being rarely used; rubber bands and all sizes of paper and binder clips; manila envelopes and #10 envelopes, some already SASEd; and Post-It Notes in every size and color. Stamps are optional, since nothing ever leaves the non-writer’s desk to journey out into the world.

Another useful tool is joining writer’s groups, but only going once or twice. The non-writer can thus speak with authority about such groups. An added benefit is that she can use group members’ contributions (names changed to protect the guilty) in stories to use in the ploy that follows.

I’ve saved for last the very favorite ploy of many non-writers: talking about writing. Most who do not write (and they are many) tend to regard those who do—or say they do—with some awe. When speaking to these awestruck ones, we non-writer writers get a lot of mileage out of discussing and/or pontificating on the book that we’re going to write, the book that will, if not transform life as we know it, at least daze and amaze the world—as soon as we have the time to write it.

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Jean, you are onto us and our favorite excuses:

• not enough time to write
• not a good enough reason to write
• fear of what others will say if we write
• fear of what they will say about our writing
• fear of what we will think of our own writing if we see our words on the page
• fear of what we will learn about our feelings and thoughts if we write
• fear of reliving what we’ve lived if we write
• fear of ….

I am sure we can all add more reasons not to write to this list. But why belong to the non-writer writers’ fraternity? Time’s a wasting. There is no one who can write the words and thoughts you have in you to write–although there are like-minded, like-hearted people out there who have lived something similar to what you have, they need your words to fully realize the significance of their experience. Even if there are writers out there who have written on topics close to your heart, only you have experienced the things you want to write about in the way you experienced them, with the people you were with, and in the places you experienced them.

Do not leave this world without sharing your voice. Remember, it is often people you do not know who read your words like a note in a bottle, who gain the most from these messages from another time and place. A writer’s life is an important life. Give generously!