MÜELLIF: Why I write
The final part of the series where I write about writing! This week: my motivations and ulterior motives
Out of all the characters in 2021’s Gossip Girl, I think I hate Kate Keller the second most. (Rafa is #1. Jail!) Kate is the English teacher of Constance Billard Private high school and runs the Gossip Girl Instagram account. We slowly find out that she always had aspirations of being a writer. She’s always wanted to be famous, she explains later in the series, be the best at anything, and writing was just what she was always good at - except one day, she met her “Meryl” and realized she will never be effortlessly great. At some point, she rejects submitting to the prestigious The Paris Review because Gossip Girl is where she thinks she has a voice and can reach people, be influential and yada yada honestly she’s idiotic. 24 years old and clinging onto her Instagram account like a life raft, even though she has a job. Sounds like she needs a therapist!
But she says: “I just wanted to be the best. At anything. was terrified of being ordinary.” And that, I get. Why lie?
It’s the last post of the Müellif series, the writing about writing series that I started three weeks ago. I explained what the series would be about, shared a below-average short story I got rejected on; I shared how I write my fics and my stories; I shared what inspires me and what I write about the most. This week, I put the question I hated the most at last: what does writing mean for me? When I wrote the introduction post, this was a pretty cringey question to me. In a way, it still is? I like talking, I really like talking about things I have opinions on, but I don’t like talking about emotions, least of all about something as personal as writing. But now it’s been announced, now it’s my obligation, and I’ll get over myself.
First, and I think this is an obvious one, it’s something I’ve become decent at. I don’t cringe at things I write and I haven’t for a few years now, if that counts for anything - and my taste has not magically gotten worse (in fact, I think it’s sharper compared to my teenage years?). I’ve mentioned I don’t always knock myself out of the park with the things I write, but then there’s lines like these and I think I can hit a chord:
You’ve always hated him. You’ve always hated everything that has loved you unconditionally. Because to you, love is a debt you can’t ever repay.
Or:
The less I was, the better. I helped society this way, I figured.
Those nights I thought unbecoming was quite arousing.
I may not be great. Sometimes I allow myself these ultra-cool sentences at the end of paragraphs that I hate on some other authors, only I do them well in a way that may remind you of a killer soundtrack underscoring a good scene. And they’re good. I’m good. And at this age, I really value being good at something. It’s its own kind of comfort, to me, not to feel like you’re messing up more than getting it right. Writing is like a tightrope, and the safety net in question is closing the tab and pretending you never wrote anything ever. I’m at a point where I don’t need that safety net. Drawing is fun, and my improvement since last March is apparent, but I’m still not meeting my own standard, or a standard that can be considered good the same way my writing is. It’s good… being good at something. And I feel like I can encourage people that aren’t there yet to continue writing and prosper - not in a way that I feel would sound like needless platitudes, but like actual reassurance. At least I hope so! I’ve been bad at it before, so I know how others feel. I know the doubt. I know the self-loathing. I know the compulsions. I’ve been there.
The other benefit of clawing myself up to a position where I think I’m good is that I can now write stories and not worry I’m not meeting my own standard. And my stories, those I really like. A society that lives in a high-rise while the world is in a new kind of Ice Age? That is really cool. A ghost that really is just part of somebody’s actual soul? It’s interesting. A whole town frosted over? I got that for you too. And that’s nothing to say of my characters! An insane stunt double killer? I write that! Characters that are fleshed out and have strange relationships with the people around them and project feelings onto the city they live in? I write that too! It’s fun! I have good ideas, interesting spins on things that aren’t retellings on things, and I’m glad I can put them on (digital or real) paper and not worry about whether I do them justice or not, not anymore.
The second reason why I write is because I’ve never grown up reading about people like me. You know… Viennese people? Viennese Turks? Just Turks in science fiction and fantasy in general? I never grew up with that (that is not to say Turkish fantasy & science-fiction doesn’t exist, it just means exactly what I said: I didn’t grow up with any), so I want to write about them, and I do. I get to write about Turkish food and I get to reference Turkish music; I get to write Turkish honorifics and lan and that makes me happy! I can’t represent anybody but myself, so that is what I do with my writing. It removes the need for representation for me. I think at this point, I could never not write stories without Turkish characters in some form, even if they’re just names of characters. It also removes the need for other people’s validation: you either get it, roll with it, or my work is not for you. I’m not here to explain any of it. I really don’t see the need to.
I think in this manner, a good portion as to why I write has to do with self-indulgence. I want to make myself happy, with my stories and just through the act of writing, so I do. I’m not exactly the kind of person to gift myself my writing for my birthday (I knew a person that did that on Tumblr ages ago), but I don’t feel ashamed of any of my stories and I’m always happy they exist. To say writing makes me happy would be an overstatement, but it does help silence the bad feelings. It helps to focus on something for an hour solid, be in a totally different headspace, and - strangely enough - work through your own emotions that way. I think I relate to Tyler, the Creator’s albums having alter egos so much for this reason… with the distance comes the clarity to process emotions and maybe even some trauma, but in a way that isn’t really you anymore, not really. The characters become their own people that you, even as the author, can only relate to but never really identify with. When I don’t write for days on end I feel the world’s weight on my shoulders; it becomes progressively harder to go through the next day. The job’s annoying enough. The world is a hellhole -- politicians and governments and the black hole that is imperialism and capitalism making all systems hell, but also the world in a literal manner. This is my reprieve from the world. It’s also the way I can digest the world and make sense of it: myself and others.
That being said, of course, it’s not as though I’d be content just writing for me. I can’t do it. Some people may do it and feel like none of these things need to see the light of other people’s days ever, but I need other people to read it. I need to! I may write stuff that I like, but I know I’m not the only person that likes what I like. At least, that’s always my base assumption. And because I know that, I also just throw story snippets to my friends and hope they like it. Here’s what “writing without anybody seeing it” would be for me: like masturbation in a way where you never get in the mood, every movement feels wrong, everything is always just a little bit painful and full of doubt, and the orgasm doesn’t really hit. I don’t need to be validated, I said earlier, but for me, writing - just the act of storytelling - is a dialogue, and I can’t have a dialogue with myself. People should have the chance to read my work, regardless of whether they could hypothetically afford it or not. People should have the chance to engage with it. And hopefully, they’ll like it. I think out of all my friends, Jenni might be the one that gets to hear and read from me the most, every fleeting idea and even the most garbage bullshit. If I am at a point where I don’t crave validation, a good 60% may be because of her unwavering support. It’s good to know you have someone in your corner - no, not just know, but see and read and feel it. It’s good to know that she’s not running away from my strange stories, and never did. It’s good to know I’m not the only person laughing or crying at the nonsense I write. I could send all my stories just to her, but I think she’d tell me to shut up and try my hand at submitting. Always did. In either case, I truly believe that only when somebody reads your work does your work become.
If other people read what I write, they can confirm my existence at its most distilled. Whether they like it or not - whether they love it to death or hate it so much they would never hear of me again - at least when I die, somebody can say, Elif wrote this story, and it made me feel something. There’s a good word I heard in German: Existenzberechtigung, which is just 2 nouns stringed together meaning “justification of existence”. When I was younger, living without doing anything and just the sheer idea of dying made me panic. I needed to leave my mark to the world, whatever that was. Writing became that. Do I still feel like I can’t just live and die without doing anything? Not exactly. But one of the reasons I write is definitely because of that. It is my dream to be a writer, even if “writer” is probably not full-time, may never involve film and series adaptations like in my daydreams, and may never go beyond cult status. Still, it is what propels me to sit down and write almost every day. That is what I work towards. I think this is why I get Kate, even if she’s also a massively unsympathetic character. I write to be seen, and to be seen, I need other people. The most selfish I allow myself to ever be is to expect that people will remember me after my death. I don’t see a need to lie about that either. I made a whole Substack just for this, for God’s sake.
The final reason almost made it to my last week’s post. I don’t necessarily endorse watching something “for comfort”, or avoiding things that are uncomfortable, but I do know what it’s like to watch something and see myself in it - doubts, fears, maybe in some roundabout way this very specific moment in life that you went through. It’s not a comfort so much as it’s knowing you’re not alone out there in the world, and that is the best sort of reassurance you can get. Whenever I feel like I have the most ridiculous thought in the world, and I see somebody else have the exact same thought, I feel… relieved, kind of, that I’m not strange or weird or altogether alien. That I’m not alone out there. That, all things considered, I’m doing fine. (If that sounds like I just copy-pasted things from my G.O.R.A post, I did not! But it does prove my point) I write characters that are loners, feeling outside of society for whatever reason, always yearning for the normal, and I mentioned that there’s always that moment where my characters feel flabbergasted they have friends. Of course that mirrors me to some extent, but it also mirrors why I write - the reason underneath everything I just said. I write to make people feel less lonely in the world. I write, I told myself back rather early in my writing endeavor, so people don’t have to feel as lonely as I did.
I guess in the end, I write to stay alive and to have a proof of my livelihood and to make other people have their reprieve from the world’s ways: with odd characters and cold situations and Vienna re-imagined a hundred times over, like a kaleidoscope showing many different forms, always a different shade of loneliness and belonging, the push and pull that dictated much of my life thus far.
It has been a wild ride with these posts and I never expected people to enjoy it as much as they did. If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading and commenting. If there’s a topic I missed or you want me to elaborate, you can let me know in the comments or on Twitter @theturkishrug. This has been Müellif, and I wish you a happy final week of August.
I really liked this series. I found your experiences very relatable, and that is a reassuring feeling.