The strange silence of being a writer

And how I've had to reframe my view of success

The view from my kitchen table—where most of my words come to life.

Sometimes, I feel like a fraud.

When I’m asked by a stranger what I do for work, I immediately respond with: I’m a writer.

I don’t hesitate. There’s conviction in my voice and yet, while I know the statement in and of itself is true—having worked as a writer for well over a decade now—sometimes when I’m sitting alone at my kitchen table, hunched over my laptop, I still feel like I’m ‘faking it till I make it’. And I guess, to some degree I am.

As a writer—particularly a freelance writer—so much of your time is spent speaking into the ‘great void’. Whether you are working on a commission for a digital or print publication, creating copy for a large corporation or independent brand or even just working on your own creative output for the sake of it—until that piece of work lands in a public forum, it remains an enigma. The words on the page are silent without a reader’s voice to carry them out into the world. And the sad truth is, as a writer, there are also literally thousands upon thousands of words, sentences and half-baked ideas that sit idle at the bottom of the drawer (or buried in Google Drive, as the case may be).

What I also find particularly tricky to navigate is how I’m supposed to measure my own success. In a more traditional workplace, you know where you stand in relation to your peers—not just in terms of how you role fits within the official ‘org chart’—but if you have a competent manager interested in your progression and growth, you can clearly track your success by ticking off your goals and KPIs. Your achievements and skills feel visible to those around you and hopefully, you are rewarded periodically for your work.

But when I’m sitting at my desk, a mug of cold coffee to one side and a collection of childrens toys strewn underfoot, it’s much more difficult to discern if I am ‘succeeding’. Rightly or wrongly, I am someone who tends to thrive on external validation—and yet with nobody to answer to except myself, I can feel adrift when I don’t feel like I’m succeeding in the more conventional sense of the word.

While there have been times over the last few years I have felt inundated with work, with new clients cropping up organically and writing projects generously coming my way—since having my second child, the pace of my professional writing life has slowed. In part, this has been a conscious choice as I choose to spend more time with my kids while they are still small—but it is also due to a somewhat dwindling economy. And this has been a huge lesson in surrender.

I’ve had to reframe what success looks like for me more broadly and accept that while sometimes it may feel like I’m speaking to no one—watching my words drifting out into the ‘great void’ itself without a life raft—I remain hopeful that at some point on their journey, a reader will find them. It will be their voice that will bring them to life. And this is what true success means to me now.

While I don’t have any hard-hitting advice for other writers out there who can relate to this sentiment—my advice to readers is to be loud about the work you enjoy. Champion the writers you follow and let them know when a piece has resonated with you. I promise, it will mean the world to them—and make them feel less like they’re standing on the edge of the ‘great void’, screaming into the silence.