Today is my birthday, and I’m on the other side of the Atlantic for the first time in a decade. I haven’t done much writing this trip, but I’ve managed to get in some reading. Last Sunday, the day we arrived, I read Elif Shafak’s The Library of Unwritten Books, which is beautiful and moving.
She begins the piece by describing a fictional place “where all the books in the world that have been imagined and developed inside someone’s mind, but were never actually written or printed or turned into any kind of digital format, all these books that have remained as a mere thought, a wish, a secret, a dream, this is where they are collected, catalogued and kept for eternity.”
Her words sunk into me like water on parched soil. The large fictional library she describes houses an unwritten book of mine, one that has lived in my mind for years. As you can probably guess, it’s about names. I’ve tried to start it several times but then I tell myself I am not a writer yet. Be more realistic, I say. Perhaps with more time and more practice, I can one day write a book. That’s partly why I started this Substack, to give myself more time and more practice.
Then there is my 12-year-old daughter, who plunged head-first into writing two books, something I marvel at and encourage (despite not offering the same to myself).
Shafak highlights how free children are in their creativity. They already see themselves as writers, poets, and artists; it’s not something they aspire to when they get enough training or practice. My daughter sees herself as a writer, just as I once saw myself. As a kid, I wrote poems and essays, which I eagerly shared. I called myself a writer until, eventually, I stopped calling myself that.
As children get older, Shafak points out, they stop calling themselves artists and writers because they stop seeing themselves as such. “Society tells us all the time that we cannot be poets, that we cannot waste our time doing ballet or making music or writing novels. It can be a nice little hobby on the side, but nothing more.”
She continues, “They tell us, no, they drill in us the fear that we will be judged by others if we were to follow our hearts and produce art. The fear of being judged is insidious and toxic, it paralyzes us from inside. Little by little, we let go of our creative side. The poems we were penning, the paintings we were drawing, the novels we were planning…. we keep them to ourselves, we watch them wither and die.”
I absorbed this message. Fear of judgment paralyzed me from the inside, and, little by little, practicality loosened the grip on my creative side. It wasn’t an automatic switch but rather a slow burn, and it started when I was a little bit older than my daughter. To think of her losing her creative confidence and freedom - to stop writing her books or calling herself a writer - makes my heart hurt. It’s because of her that I am writing this.
I once overheard her telling a friend that I am a writer. My first instinct was to correct her, but then something shifted. I saw myself through her eyes. My daughter sees me as a writer, without preconceived notions or any societal messaging, simply because I write. She helped me realize that my creative side was not lost; it had simply gotten quiet. This Substack is my way of helping it get louder. And it’s a hope that my daughter will never let hers go quiet.
Yes, I have an unwritten book in the library of unwritten books (at least for now), but I have plenty of things I have written. Most of them live in another kind of library, one reserved for unshared pieces of work, which is just as insidious. These ideas braved the task of being created, yet they remain hidden from the world. If I want to show my daughter how to keep a firm grasp on her creative side, I will have to pull harder on mine.
Today, I turn another year older, but I am choosing to embrace my younger self. I’m pulling out some written pieces I’ve kept tucked away in the library of unshared work. Today, I am sharing a few haikus (which I said I might do) and another poem I once wrote. Next time, I will share an essay I wrote two years ago that I weirdly love but for which I have never found a home (or felt it was quite complete).
This is for my daughter and my younger self. And your creative side, too.
And if this moment could be bottled forever would you still love it
It took me a while but I've learned to do nothing. Isn't that something
Short and constraining, some thoughts in five, seven, five, my friend, the haiku.
Full
Today was full
of words
and ordinary moments,
of crisp fall air and
sunlight in my eyes,
of music softly lingering
and the ease of a Sunday
(with only a few gentle reminders it's Monday).
If our hearts can be full,
why can't our days?
But do not confuse full with
filled.
Filled is to put in as much
as can be held.
To cause to swell
or billow.
To be full is to be complete
(not busy, not productive, not at the brink).
To be complete is having
all the necessary parts, so
what better way to
describe a day than as
full.