Did you know that adjectives describe nouns? Did you know that adjectives don’t erase them?
For example, if I put the adjective “unpublished” in front of the noun “writer”, it simply describes what type of writer I am–the word doesn’t negate the fact that I am a writer.
This is a hard lesson for “new”, “emerging” writers to learn, and it’s one I re-learned during our trip to France.
In Nice, at a beautiful beach club on the Mediterranean, we encountered a couple of Canadians from Toronto–when you’re across the ocean in a foreign land, anyone from your country becomes a neighbour–so we got chatting.
I introduced myself as a high school English teacher. Christy introduced herself as a stay-at-home mom of three young children. We talked about our kids, we talked about our travel experiences (we both spent time in France as teenagers on an exchange!), we talked about our interests and families and histories. We talked all day.
Only when we were about to leave did Christy mention, in passing, that she also writes.
“Really?” I asked. “So do I!”
Turns out Christy writes young adult fiction. (She’s already self-published–check out her book Wicka and her website www.christydeveaux.com)
Turns out we had a lot more to talk about.
Now imagine if I’d had to courage to call myself a writer from the start–we would have had so much more time to share our writing experiences. But I’d gotten hung up on that adjective “unpublished”, so I chickened out.
And if it weren’t for Christy stepping up to say she writes, then I would have missed out.
So, new resolution: introduce myself as a writer. Because published or not, that’s what I am. One pesky little adjective can’t change that. 🙂