... Or: Why I’ll Never Write Like Sue Bender
I’m a writer. People (especially people on planes) used to ask me what I do for a living, and I would say, “Well I’m sorta a geeky technologist with a firm grasp of social media ... and I like to write. One day, I’d like to be a writer.” And then, “one day” came. I started writing every day. I got published. Just a small angst-y piece in an anthology, but it was enough for me to own the label of writer.
Wearing that label caused me a lot of status anxiety. Reading other writers, especially writers who were my friends, I found myself constantly comparing my work to theirs. I never measured up.
Several years ago, I read a book by Sue Bender called Plain and Simple. It was all about her journey to live with the Amish. I was a mess for at least a week after I read that book. Her writing was so beautiful, so deep, so profound—and yet so simple. I thought, I’ll never be able to write a book like that. She makes it look so easy.
About a year later, I read another book by Sue Bender called Everyday Sacred. This time the theme was a begging bowl. Again I was swept away by the elegance of her prose. Just when I was about to lose all hope, I came upon this passage where Bender says that she’d spent her whole life wishing she could write like Joan Didion. One afternoon she was introduced to Didion at a conference and tells her that story, only to have Didion reply, “And I’ve always wished I could write like Henry James.”
I decided to keep writing.
Now a few more years have gone by, and I still don’t measure up. I worry that I have nothing original to say. I worry that someone else has already written my story ... my book. When I voice these concerns, a writer friend tells me, “I promise you, no one wrote your book. That’s fear talking you back into the corner.” I know instantly that she’s right.
No one can write my book for the same reason that I’ll never write like Sue Bender. To everything we do, to everything we create, we bring a unique part of ourselves. We are all originals.