It’s time to weed out my book collection, which has grown by leaps and bounds this past year. It’s time to choose which books I want to keep and which ones will be sold to the second-hand bookstore down the street. Most of the books I decided to sell were the ones that were so crucial and biblical to me last year when I began my journey from Corporate dropout to freelance writer – the ones on how to write.

When I first began to write for a living, I wasn’t sure of the steps I needed to take to be a writer, sell my work and make money. I believed there had to be a right way to write and a wrong way to write, the way it was in my corporate days, when there were certain times I showed up to work, certain times I took lunch, specific ways I could write reports, and specific ways I could took notes.

At first, I needed direction, badly. I was certain that I didn’t know the right way to go about “being a writer.” I was so insecure and needed reassurance and I believed that I would find support from the voices of experienced writers who wouldn’t just offer me advice, but tell me how to do it. And so, my trips to bookstores became less for pleasure and more for work. I became obsessed with biographies, how to’s and self help books on writing and dug endlessly around bookstore shelves for answers.

One of the first books I read on writing was Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way. In her book, she offered the advice of writing several pages about anything on large blank sheets of paper each morning. Her idea was planted into my brain as a surefire way to help me grow as a writer and so each morning I began to write my “morning pages.” I was a dedicated morning page writer for about two days until I failed at it because writing on three blank pages at 8am does not work for me. I once heard a famous writer declare that she broke for tea at 9am every morning and then so did I, until would realise that 3pm works better for me.

After hearing the success of first time author J.K. Rowling, I immediately researched how she wrote. I found that she wrote in several large blank books of which I bought a dozen and she also mentioned how she wrote almost every page of each of her novels in a café. Of course, I had to try this despite the fact I knew I wrote better in solitude. I was afraid my writing wouldn’t be as good as hers if I couldn’t hack the romance of writing in a cafe.

Any author who gave advice on writing, I would take it. I thought if they were able to write a book about it, they had to know how to do it, and the only way I too could be a writer was if I wrote just like them. So instead of trying to find my own voice, I listened to those of others which made me feel less like a writer and more of copycat. By trying to write as others did, I began to feel like a failure because none of their methods fit me.

I couldn’t write with glitter pens, I couldn’t write in bed, I couldn’t write in cafés and I couldn’t write three large pages about nothing every day.

After eight months of little writing and lots of frustration I threw my hands in the air and tossed all the books to the back of the closet and gave up on trying to fit some image that I felt I couldn’t be.

When I did that, a strange thing happened – I started to find my voice.

I wrote as I needed to – in front of a computer screen, in silence with a small idea planted in my mind. I would begin to type out my thoughts out and nurture them along until they grew into words that would become an article. Then I would submit the article to magazines and to my surprise, some of my articles were accepted for publication.

By simple writing as I needed to, doing what worked for me, and seeing results from doing that, I was able to stop feeling as though I was doing it all wrong but in fact, doing something right.

The more I worked, the more comfortable I became with how I worked. And slowly I realised that the simplest, easiest way to “officially” be a writer was just to write.

Despite the fact I had been brave enough last April to declare myself a writer and leave my corporate job to pursue writing full time, I had been so insecure in the beginning that I forgot to trust myself enough to know how to write. I looked outside of myself for the answers and the knowledge on how to write, when the truth is, I knew it all along.

The schedule I currently keep isn’t found in any book. I start around 8am and finish up around 4pm. I break for tea at 3 o’clock without fail, and I actually take weekends off. I scribble haphazardly in fifteen million different notebooks – some blank, some with lines, some cheap, and some coloured marvelously. I don’t do morning pages and I stay out of cafés except for late night dates with my husband.

That’s what works for me and I no longer question if that’s how a real writer would do it because I’m a real writer, and that is how I do it.

So now, the books that were so vital to me in the beginning will be finding a new home this weekend. They weren’t all bad because they sprouted a few ideas that I’ve incorporated into my writing routine. This was the best way for me to use those books, instead of as gospel. Because the answers I seek, the reassurance I need, and bravery I crave will never be completely found in someone else’s book. Only mine.

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