My profile on the “About” page had the following text: “I have been writing since childhood.” I removed it because I don’t really like the ambiguity of the content. On the one hand, I make it clear that I have been writing for a long time, and on the other hand, everyone started writing in childhood (who had an opportunity).
Therefore, I decided to write separately about how I was formed as a writer, how I came to the point where I created this writing blog and began to actively engage in all writing things.
Childhood
Simply put, yes – I have been writing since childhood, like most children, when they began to obey their parents or first teachers. One day they put a pencil or a pen between my fingers and I started writing. Did I become a writer then? No.
Conscious writing began around elementary school. Then were small poems I dedicated to anyone and anything. They were about everything in a row that surrounded me.
I also remember well I drew a lot. Even more than I wrote, because it had a much easier way.
School years
My writing abilities began to manifest more actively during school, when I began to read actively: 7, 8 years and beyond. As I grew older, books, plots, and the nature of my involvement in fictional worlds changed.
I associate the first writing manifestations with a typewriter. My mother worked in the HR department at a construction plant. She sometimes took me to her workplace, where I got to know this miracle device. It looked something like this:
What did I write on this typewriter? I took one of my favorite book with me (R. Kipling’s “Mowgli” for example) and just typed the text from there, although sometimes I wrote something of my own, but I have no clear memories and records. I don’t remember exactly how many such visits there were to mother’s workplace.
In high school, I started keeping a diary where I wrote my teen experiences or events. This habit of communicating with paper remains with me to these days, although now more and more text appears in electronic format.
During my school years, I write a lot of poems. To anyone and about anything. Rhymed, unrhymed, all in a row. Prose works remained like homework on Ukrainian and russian literature. I also liked to write explorations by hand (although the first printers were already appearing at that time). Long handwritten notes of several books still remain, one of it is Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends & Influence People”.
In the period of the last two years in school, I begin to be fascinated by the computer and the possibility of writing with keyboard. I took the first steps even without a monitor, using an old keyboard from my first ZX Spectrum gaming computer. Yes, I wrote programs in Basic as a child, but does programming have anything to do with writing? Perhaps, but the keyboard became my first training device specifically for writing.
I took some paper (newspaper, magazine, book) and sat down to type it, pressing the necessary buttons. I just sat and stroked the plastic, thinking that I was typing on a full-fledged computer.
The keyboard was designed specifically for Basic programming and the letters were hard to see, so I removed each button and taped my paper letters, so my fingers would remember their positions.
It helped me to have the best typing speed in programming courses in grades 10-11 at school, which also influenced my future success in programming.
Writing in student years
The freedom touched creativity as well, enveloped my life in another city. Here I did begin to look for myself in the epistolary genre, poems take a back seat and gradually evolve into songs. I start communicating online, discover virtual chats, dating sites.
Many letters are written by hand, as well as electronic ones. I wrote at every opportunity and to almost everyone who happened to be on the way and stayed there for more than a week.
The early 2000s was my second phase of computerization. I wrote in clubs (hourly payment), at my sister’s house on a home PC, visited friends, and wrote on paper at home.
Living most of the time in the hostel, I feel firstly a musician and singer by myself, which became the foundation for the appearance of a whole series of songs.
In 2006, I made my first attempt to write conscious prose. It was a group of stories about a fictional character. His name was Paltai, something like that. Later, I began to work on a novel about him, but it did not reach completion. I remember many different notes on A4 sheets with a pencil, a ramified completed plot. Everything ended as quickly as it began. I never returned to this work (as well as to the character).
When does my writing journey begin?
This is a good question, because I cannot answer it specifically for myself. On the one hand, I started writing since school years, but I cannot call it full-fledged writing. I didn’t feel like a writer then. I just did things I liked and didn’t think about what it was called.
“Vova, you must write…”
The first mentions “official” writing date back to 2011, when an acquaintance started talking about the fact “I must write” against the background of my extensive letters and a photo blog. For several years in a row, I ignored these wishes and engaged in my other affairs, which were only remotely related to writing.
The first work
In the 2011, my first prose appeared, marking a symbolic countdown to my writing career. But even then I didn’t call myself a writer, it wasn’t my life, I still didn’t feel like a true writer. I was anything but a writer.
Diaries
From 2017 to 2020, I wrote a lot in my diary. Almost every day and on different topics. I reflected on these two full years in my regular entries. I revealed many topics there, and I do not rule out that some of the records I will later publish on the site or use in works or blog posts.
Am I a writer?
My wandering through different paths of life leads to a state where I begin to perceive myself as a person who writes, creates something with words and will continue to do so. I’m starting to think about becoming a full-fledged, real writer. Without this stage of self-identification, nothing could begin. And this period of my “birth” (2020) will last a whole year. I am starting to develop my own site, which I see primarily as a literary environment, an author’s blog. But it will take a long time to reach realization.
Author’s official birth
The official writer birth is dated June 21, 2021. It was Volodymyr, but not Zagnybida. I had a different name, which I changed exactly a year later. In the autumn, I wrote my second prose, which in terms of volume fit into a big story. The work is not published anywhere and was written personally, it was read by only one person.
Volodymyr Zagnybida
As Volodymyr Zagnybida, I appear in the writing world in the middle of the summer of 2022. In the fall, I finished work on my own website, and begun to engage in writing on a larger scale. By the end of the year, activity gradually but surely turned into exactly what I imagined as a writer.
I wrote, wrote a lot, thought about my works, fantasizes, planed, wrote and wrote again. In December 2022, I started a writing marathon, the goal of which is a completed prose work. At the time of writing these words, I am already a third of the way there and confidently moving towards my goal.
I wrote several impromptu stories, which I immediately published (in English), during two months of this blog existence. You can find it in the corresponding section.
When did I become a writer?
The first work, which I consider complete, could probably testify to this. This one appeared in 2011. It was a story I wrote in a couple of hours and sent to just one person to read.
Before that, I never considered myself either a writer or a poet. And later, my writing “career” takes a huge break, because my next prose will be written only in 2021.
What have I been doing these 10 years?
Gained experience, lived, observed, enjoyed life. During this period I was writing. A lot in a diary, a lot of letters, a lot of jotting down various ideas that may become full-fledged works in the future. Several poems, songs, articles, but it did not reach my understanding of the writer. I didn’t live by writing, I didn’t think of myself as such, I was anything but a writer.
My life, my views were not like that, although since about 2013 I could call myself that word only because in general I wrote a lot, it was part of my work. So I was writing, I was practicing and perhaps growing little by little as a writing unit.
Literary modernity
In the summer of 2021, I finally decided for myself that I am a writer. Two months later, my first substantial work, written in russian, appears. It is dedicated to a specific person, and it is not a fact that this text will ever be seen by a wide audience. A 24,000-word story written in a few days. After that, I no longer doubted that I am a writer.
The next stage, a new level
Today, this “title” or even a profession has new meanings for me. I want to be published. I will consider myself a real writer when the world sees my paper book, when my works appear in publications, literary collections, when my prose brings me some profit at least. Up to this point, I feel more like a blogger than an author.
When I will start making money by writing works, getting published and having my own readers – that’s when I will not only call myself a writer, but be one for others, in all senses of that word.
My Path to Writing continues
Of course, I can consider myself a writer since childhood, but these words and statements have nothing to do with my self-awareness as such.
I have felt like an author for about a year, and I believe that I am just beginning my journey.
Maybe there are just silent whispers, unspoken thoughts, and my aspirations may be thwarted by the callous modernity that sometimes disregards our desires. However, I am the sole custodian of what I will pen for the rest of my life, and I cherish every aspect of it – from the rhythmic tap of my keyboard to the comforting scent of paperbacks. Let’s wait and see what the future holds.
Today, I refer to myself as a writer. This self-proclaimed title doesn’t interfere with my other passions in life. Regardless of who I become in the future, no matter what I do, I will always be a writer, pouring my thoughts onto paper every day.
And, if I am unable to find my place in the professional writing community, I will still continue to write on my blog, honing my craft and sharpening my writing skills.
Are you willing to devote your life to telling stories, knowing that you may get nothing in return? And if the answer to that question is “no”, well then you should go out there and find yourself something else to do with your life because you are not a true writer
The quote was heard in the biographical film about the outstanding writer “Rebel in the Rye” (2017).
I asked myself this question many times, and each time I had one unquestionable answer…
