Is There A “Writer Type”?

Sometimes I think I have a weird personality for a writer.

I’m not emotional enough.

Not artistic enough.

Not introverted enough.

Instead, I’m a Type-A personality. Driven. Focused. Blunt. Organized. Business minded.

I set goals quarterly and focus on the future and have professional goals outside of publishing.

Because of this, people often discount the creative in me. They are surprised that I write. They are surprised that I struggle with depression. They are surprised that I feel things on so many levels at the same time. Surprised that I internalize my emotions.

“Oh, I wouldn’t have guessed that about you,” is something I hear often.

And it’s been that way my entire life.

I used to think that writing was just what everyone’s go-to outlet was. That it was normal that I obsessively wrote in my journals as a teen. That it was normal I penned poems on scraps of paper and then threw them away in between class. That everyone needed to write out their emotions in some weird poem or story to understand what exactly they were feeling.

But I wasn’t a writer.

I was going to be a lawyer. A businesswoman. A politician.

I wasn’t creative enough to write.

And so that’s what I believed for years and years.

Until I grew so tired of telling myself I wasn’t a writer that it forced me to realize that being a writer was all I ever was.

So maybe I’m not the classic “writer type.”

Maybe I’m not traditionally creative and maybe marketing comes easier than beautiful prose.

But I’m still a writer.

I write to explore the world around me.

I write as an answer to the stereotypes that push against me.

I write to discover who I am outside of labels and categories and expectations and fears.

I write because that’s how I answer my own questions about faith and love and forgiveness and pain and bigotry and motherhood and so much more.

I write for me. I write for you.

I write.