An uncomfortable question worth contemplating is, do you actually want to write, or have you absorbed that desire from somewhere else?
The French thinker René Girard spent his career studying what he called mimetic desire — the way humans learn what to want by watching others want it. We don't generate our desires independently. We copy them from models: people we admire, envy, or simply observe.
This is how children learn to want toys — the moment another child picks one up, it becomes desirable. It's how teenagers absorb the aspirations of their peer group. And it's how adults end up competing for prizes they never consciously chose.
The writer's life has a powerful mystique. The image of the solitary creative, wrestling with words, producing something meaningful. It's romanticised in films, in biographies, in the very writing advice industry that produces articles like this one.
That image can become a model — and the desire to be a writer can be borrowed rather than authentic.
Why it matters
Borrowed desires don't sustain you through the difficult middle of a novel. They don't get you through the tenth revision. They don't survive the first round of rejections.
If you're chasing someone else's dream of being a writer, you'll find the actual work hollow even if you succeed. You'll achieve the thing and feel... nothing. Or worse, you'll feel the need to achieve more, because the satisfaction you expected never arrives.
The test
Ask yourself honestly: Why do I want to write?
Not why writing seems admirable. Not why writers seem interesting. Not why you'd like to have written. Why do you want to sit alone and put words on a page, day after day, for years?
If the answer is something like "because there are stories in me that need to come out" or "because I can't not do it" or "because I've been doing it since I was twelve" — that's authentic. That's yours.
If the answer is more like "because writers seem cool" or "because I want to be the kind of person who writes" or "because I imagine how good it would feel to be published" — that might be borrowed. It might not sustain you.
This isn't gatekeeping
Borrowed desires can evolve into authentic ones. The point isn't to discourage anyone from writing. It's to encourage examination.
Know why you're here. If your desire is genuine, the work ahead will be hard but meaningful. If it's borrowed, you might want to examine it before investing years in pursuit.
Wear the silly shirt. Tell people you're a writer. But make sure you actually want to be one — not just to have been one.
This post draws on ideas I explore more fully in my books, The Silly Shirt Manifesto (from a writer’s perspective) and Someone Else’s Dream (from a personal development perspective).