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The Embrace of Agency

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Someone recently asked me when I became a writer. I hadn’t put much thought into that inquiry before, but I felt compelled to address it. After a brief pause, I replied, “I became a writer when I told myself that I was a writer.” That response may sound like a quip, but smuggled within its brevity is an accurate depiction of the truth. Oftentimes, it feels like we need some clear signal to embody an identity. Perhaps you feel like you need to have written at least a hundred essays before you can assert that you’re a writer. Or that you need to have achieved a certain revenue figure to declare that you’re an entrepreneur. There’s this feeling that you need to hit certain milestones to give yourself permission to state that you are a specific thing. In some cases, this is sensical. For example, physicians must undergo rigorous training in order to append a few letters to their names. This is something that’s required for the safety of their patients, as no one would want a random person

The Embrace of Agency Archive ↓ Best Posts All Posts Recent Posts Newsletter Book Courses ↓ Thinking In Stories The Examined Writer Reflections The Embrace of Agency By Lawrence Yeo Someone recently asked me when I became a writer. I hadn’t put much thought into that inquiry before, but I felt compelled to address it. After a brief pause, I replied, “I became a writer when I told myself that I was a writer.” That response may sound like a quip, but smuggled within its brevity is an accurate depiction of the truth. Oftentimes, it feels like we need some clear signal to embody an identity. Perha

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