I am not a Real Writer by Alin Sengjaroen

Every year in school, I would be handed a thin stamped notebook with boxes to fill out. One of the sections included the top three jobs I want to pursue when I’m old enough to choose. Every year, I’d always pick three, ranging from the one I wanted to be the most to the least:

1. Teacher

2. Comic artist 

3. Pianist

I have never considered writing to be something I’d like to do. Writing wasn’t something foreign, in fact, I used to spend days typing in Microsoft Word or penning a story in notebooks, but I never considered myself a writer. It was easier to call myself an artist.

The Exam by Leonid Pasternak

I wasn’t much of a novel reader either. I only read books that have little text and many pictures – mostly comic books. But when I said I wanted to be a comic artist, I meant that I wanted also to write the characters’ dialogues – or maybe, I only wanted to write dialogues and draw a little bit. So, I just wanted to be a writer, but the word completely slipped from my mind.

Years later, during 7th grade, there was an English class in which I was given a prompt: an image of businessmen stuck in an elevator. We were told to write a story from that. The story I wrote was far from short – from the 10-line space they gave us, I wrote a total of 3 whole A4 pages. When I got home, I knew that I had a special passion for storytelling, much more than the average person. 

From then on, I addressed myself as a writer. I wrote stories and showed some of them to my online friends. I had writing buddies and would spend hours writing prompts with them. That year my goals changed:

1. A Real Writer

2. Teacher

3. Comic artist

Yet the more I wrote the more I began to hate it.

Before that, I used to write as a way to talk to myself and my characters. I wrote as a way to understand the world and why I feel a certain way. I wrote as a means to communicate. Now that I’ve become a Real Writer, I have to be conscious of every sentence I write, every word I choose, every sentence structure I use, every rhythm, every click of the keyboard. I have to make up new stories, characters, and plotlines as opposed to writing the same things over and over again. 

It takes months or years for me to create a storyline with characters that I’m truly satisfied with. I only enjoy writing stories that consume my brain even during unconventional times. If I don’t lose sleep, thinking about the characters, plotline, and story setting, does it even mean something to me? But I MUST write new stories every day, as all successful authors advised, and have a schedule… Explore other writing styles… Write in proper grammar… Format everything in a certain way… Write as good as my peers… I hated those aspects – I hated being a writer.

When I showed my writings to people back then, they’d usually say “Great” or “That’s interesting” without giving it a read – it was obvious! I had no genuine feedback, so in a technical sense, I was neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad.’ If I was neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’, then I am nothing, and that nothing is bad – worse than writing terrible stories and embarrassing myself. 

A writer’s greatest fear is not receiving negative feedback or being rejected. It is to be invisible. To equate to nothing. Works worthing to mere papers. Fear that everything I’m doing is in vain and that this passion I’ve never felt before, this feeling that I so longed for, is the equivalent of lazing around.

It was as though these stories piled up in my brain and didn’t exist to others. It was as though I sounded crazy to them. When I took a brief break, they’d scurry to me, saying, “Finally done playing?” and “It was time you grow up,” and those years, I felt so craved – so hungry and starved. Years later, my habits haven’t changed. All the kids I knew grew up to pursue their dreams of a teacher, a comic artist, a pianist, a doctor, an astronaut, a scientist – everything I used to say as a means to escape the confession that I, someone who teaches, draws, plays the piano, and aces science tests, want to do nothing else but write. Not as a professional Real Writer. I want to write without a care in the world. Without having to worry that I have to do so every day, so long as there is one reader, I’m willing to take the risk. 

Re·al Writ·er

/rē(ə)l/ /ˈrīdər/

noun

• a person who has written a peculiar text, has a daily schedule and minimum word count goals, has gotten great praises, has won medals and grand prizes, and most importantly, a person who has an audience."You can’t expect a stable life as a writer if you aren’t a Real Writer."

If to be a Real Writer is so, then I am not one, I am just a writer. Someone who writes and pens stories. 

Since after all, you don’t need to be a Real Writer to be a good writer.

Writing isn’t all about writing. It’s about connecting and discovering the nuances in our lives. For the longest time, I’ve gained no reader because I myself was no reader. For the longest time, my stories were stiff because I myself did not listen to stories. It wasn’t just them that was flawed, it was me too. To be a writer is to have empathy and it’s to care about the world and the people living in it, like how I never cared for new stories, new settings, new people, and only the ones I grew up with.

If I truly do nothing but write, not caring about anything else, then everyone won’t care as I did so. If I shut myself away to reach my daily minimum word count goal, then the doors will remain shut and no one will open them for me. If I’ve never even declared my name out there to the world of writers, who will be the one to recognize Alin Sengjaroen? 

If no one cared about my writing, then they will now, if not now, then in the future. Someday, there will be someone who cares, but to earn that, I must also care for others.

Now, I’ve gotten into a University – an art major specializing in the field of languages and cultures. I have my works published in several places. I’ve experienced more aspects of life compared to almost half a decade ago when I was still worried about being a Real Writer. 

The imaginary, crumpled, school-stamped book opened. A question engraved in bolded ink in the style of my handwriting.

Alin Sengjaroen (she/he) is a writer, screenwriter, and poet from Thailand. She is currently 17 years old and strongly passionate about classic literature. His works have been published/forthcoming in The Coalitionworks, The Pastel Serenity Zine, Rewrite The Stars Review and more. Alin is also an editor at Flicks and Frills Magazine. His favorite books are Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Furthermore, Alin has also been learning French and Russian for years. To contact him, you can email  alinsengjaroen1408@gmail.com or follow her Instagram @cl3fleur!