A Little Bit of Everything

So I just finished reading over the five types of writers as described by Betsy Lerner.

At first, I thought that I might fall under the heading of the ambivalent writer; after all, I have a lot of trouble settling down to write much of anything. For instance, I've been struggling to come up with a topic for my Understanding Writing as Process class. After three submissions, I've finally settled down on a topic. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if my research takes another turn. But who am I kidding? My head isn't filled with tons of ideas. I don't have this irrepressible urge to create. I live and breathe even when I don't write.

I do, however, drive myself to distraction worrying that I am not creative, and that this somehow makes me a lesser writer. I fret so much that I neglect the assignments that I do have the capacity to complete. I agonize over all of my papers, never sure whether or not I've actually fulfilled the assignment. By the time the deadline rolls around, I just have to hold one hand over my eyes as I turn over my work to the critical eye of a professor.

In all likelihood, I am more of a neurotic writer than anything else. Still, I had my own brush with the "wicked child" syndrome this afternoon. My first attempt at this post discussed an old friend of mine, an ambivalent writer whose flighty approach to literature drove me crazy. While it wasn't a Philip Roth style expose, it revealed too much for my taste. What if this ambivalent dreamer found the post? What on earth would he think? What would my other readers think of me if I spent several paragraphs pointing out all of the faults in a fellow writer?

So in true neurotic fashion, I deleted it. (If any of you read it before I had the chance to erase it, please strike it from your memory. It never happened.)

My point in all of these ramblings, and I do have one, is that none of us are all one kind of writer or another. As Lerner points out, we are all a mixture of the addict, the wicked child, the ambivalent one, the neurotic one, and, of course, the self-promoter. I think that the key is to ensure that each of these characteristics is proportional to all of the rest. The trouble really begins when we start to believe that we are all one thing or another.