Keep It, You'll Grow Into It

I am a writer. There I said it. For the longest time I did not like the idea. Friends, family, and many teachers have attempted to encourage me to embrace my writing skills. But during grammar school, high school, and most of college, writing was either one of two things: a necessary evil to excel to the next academic level, and/or a means of extracting emotions and ideas (mostly Dear John letters, poems, and angry letters to my mom when I was a teenager). I never enjoyed writing.

One of the biggest reasons is because authors were never glamorous enough for me. I wanted to be a singer, a dancer, an actress.... a person in the spot light. I wanted beautiful clothes, to be interviewed, to be looked up to, to be rich, popular, beautiful and fun. And an author, to my knowledge, was none of the above. Before Carrie Bradshaw, my visualization of writers was... scary. Knitted sweater wearing shut ins with type writers and glasses. Often times, I would envision Jack Nicholson in "The Shining" or James Caan, in "Misery". Those images just didn't quite...do it for me. I could not identify with those actors' portrayals of authors.

Sure, there are plenty of female African American authors. I have seen their books on many shelves, and read my fair share. But my impressions of the life of writers were embedded early in life, via films like the ones I mentioned.

But as I have grown... mostly within the last two years.... I fit better and better into my writing clothes. When I originally received the clothes, many years ago. They were too big, not my style, and made me feel uncomfortable, like clothes that did not belong to me. But as I advance in age, those clothes begin to fit better and better. My sense of style has matured, so the clothes suit me now. Now I see these clothes as mine, not just something that was given to me.

For those of you who find yourselves with talents, potential, or "clothes", that don't seem to fit; I have a suggestion. Hang on to them, try them on occasionally, you just might grow into them, and grow to love them.