Sometimes I think about what I learned in school. It’s hard to quantify, exactly. Yeah, I learned about cells and rhombuses and World War II. Mostly, I learned how to get good grades.

I learned this quickly, so I did well in school, so teachers said I could “be anything.” But the older I got, most subjects seemed to close themselves off.

I liked the solar system, but it felt like there was nothing I could do about it.

I liked stories about immigrants passing through Ellis Island, but history seemed like it was all over.

In math I often got right answers, but as one of my favorite child narrators says, “I don’t even know what equations’re for.”¹

Then one day the answers starting coming out wrong instead of right and I didn’t know why. It didn’t matter.

In a way school taught me something I already knew: that I wanted to read and write.

English was the only school subject that felt real to me. As if it held more “for” me. Books were portals. Writing felt infinite. Learning new words like “compromise” and “vicarious”—I got chills realizing there was a word for each of those abstract ideas. Plus, their pronunciation—how beautiful!

Meanwhile, teachers and wall posters said random adults said:

“You can be whatever you put your mind to.”

“If you can dream it, you can achieve it.”

I used to think those were supposed to mean that any career was available to me, and I could be equally awesome at any of them. I could be a prize-winning chemist or a darn good accountant or a formidable lawyer. It was just a matter of deciding. If I failed, it was because I hadn’t tried hard enough.

But I think there’s more nuance to those cliches than I realized. Maybe they’re talking about the things we genuinely feel called to do. Maybe something that doesn’t intrinsically interest us really isn’t open to us.

Realistically, not everything is achievable to me. But I think in the realms where I feel the most pulled—writing, traveling, making music, drawing, diving deeper into my own perceptions in order to tease out discoveries (this is synonymous with writing, or good conversation)—those things are achievable. They’re also the things beckoning to me.

Maybe “I can be anything I want” as long as “anything” is something I feel intrinsically called to do.

I think this applies for anyone who’s thinking about writing.

That’s a lot of people, yet a lot never pick up a pen or open a Word doc because they think things like “Writing is something other people do, not me.”

I hear that all the time in some form: “I’m not a writer.”

“I’d like to write but I don’t know how.”

Well, if the inner pull is there, I say follow it. There are ways to work around pretty much anything: uncertainty, self-doubt, not knowing how to write a book. The only part you can’t fake is the inner pull part. If you feel at all motivated to write, I hope you do. And I think you’ll be glad you did.

If you could use some guidance, structure, and support while you set about writing your book, let’s chat.

I offer writing coaching as well as ghostwriting—whatever it takes to get your book written.

1. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell ↩︎