Daughters, it took me a long time to understand the kind of writer that I was.
Knowing who you are is not easy. That sense of certainty, the safety of belonging, those are important things that way too many people are denied because of their race, or sexual orientation, or terrible parents.
Especially in something as hard to quantify as writing, deciding whether you are good at the things that you love... it can be problematic. It can give people all kinds of problems. Do you belong with the people you love? Are you worth anything?
And I had those problems, so many problems until I figured out what kind of writer I was. I still had problems afterwards, of course, but not related to that one aspect of my chosen path in life.
You see, I wanted to be a writer like Granny Weatherwax. Granny is a witch, the kind that even other witches respect and fear. She is extremely good at what she does, and no one is better. She never speaks, but when she does, everyone else listens.
Granny is lean, mean, and has been scoured clean by life until all that is left is hardness and decisiveness, knowing what is wrong and right, the weight of being the one in the witching hour with the courage to make the right choice and take on the consequences. Once, she was bitten by a vampire, but instead of acquiring a thirst for blood, she was so stubborn and powerful that she ended up instead infecting an entire vampire coven with a thirst for tea. Granny is badass. It was with great sadness I realised I was not a Granny. Yet.
Nanny Ogg was my next choice. Nanny, also a witch, is the diametrical opposite of Granny. Expansive, happy, with a huge family she controls mercilessly, Nanny is funny, outrageous, and a people magnet. Everyone loves Nanny.
They all love Nanny until they realise her power of planning and manipulation. By the time anyone realises that Nanny is like a dark spider whose web you've just stumbled in, it's too late. Nanny, she is also pretty damn cool. It was with great sadness I realised I was not Nanny.
Hells, I'd have settled for being Tiffany Aching, a young witch with her head in the clouds, with the sense of exploration and daring that only children possess, with the balls to walk into the dance between the powers of seasons for a spin on the floor with Winter itself. And with the mystical connection to a greater reality to pull off saving the day.
It was with great sadness that I realised I was not a Tiffany.
It was with even greater sadness I realised that I was a Magrat.
The least impressive of all witches, Magrat doesn't belong. She means well, but she doesn't get it. She is a witch who wants to use crystals and positive thinking instead of magic. She sucks. The other witches see the potential in her and try to turn her into a real writer. But, well you read the bit about her not getting it. About being useless.
Except there was this one time. A power so great, so disruptive that even the gods feared to fight it, had invaded their home, and it was too powerful for even Granny to fight. Too insidious for even Nanny to counteract. It attacked Magrat because it wanted what was hers.
This power stood before Magrat and struck at her mind, intent on ripping it to pieces, to reduce her to nothing. Against this storm, Magrat could only stand defiant. One piece at a time, she had her life ripped from her, her certainties removed, like an onion losing its layers.
To everyone's surprise however, Magrat's core, it wasn't an onion, it wasn't a silly new age girl. It was a real witch made of night and shadow, and she wasn't in the mood for silliness. Magrat's core, once bared, simply punched the great power in the land, and won.
I am that kind of writer, it turns out. For most of my adult life, I have written as part of my job. First, it was business communications to clients. Then, it was reviews for video games and then hardware. Then, it was stories in video games and to people. Then, it was writing out big, large dreams so that many people could take part in them together.
None of those were writing for me. I was never a writer. I was a reviewer, a marketer, a manager, a director, but never a writer. I wasn't a real witch.
Until the year my business imploded. I spent nearly a year worrying myself sick, trying to figure out how to pay rent, without a car, without the certainty I could feed you. I felt I had lost everything.
Of course I still had you, daughters, but the joy of having you in my arms was somewhat muted by the terror that you might starve in my arms. Eventually, my family helped with the car. I got a job, it paid enough to not go to jail and eventually catch up on rent. Things became better slowly.
But something else happened in between. With nothing to my name - I am dramatic and I was being exceptionally dramatic back then - what I did was write. Every night. At the living room table, I wrote. And I went to writing meetings, and I ended up completing the first novel I finished since I was 18.
And there, in the middle of the storm that was trying to rip everything from me, I found my core. Like Magrat, I am mostly useless. I mostly don't belong. I mostly have no idea what I am doing. But, like Magrat, I am a writer inside. It's the thing you cannot take from me. Telling you stories, writing this, being me.
I started calling myself a writer only after I was almost 40 years old.
And being the worst kind of witch isn't anywhere near as bad as not being a witch at all, or now knowing what you are.
I've told you many times about finding your centres and stuff like that. It's important to know who you are, and who you want to be. Because now that I know that I am a Magrat, I can trace the precise, exact path I need to reach what I want.
Knowledge is mandatory. Acceptance is not. I don't have to remain a Magrat, though I could die one mostly happy. The point of this piece is to let you know that you can't have dreams until you know where your feet are planted.
And that you should always know who you are. You should always be yourself. Unless you can be Mistress Weatherwax. Always be Granny Weatherwax.