Be Who YOU Are As A Writer

jesscio
2 min readMar 13, 2022
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

I’ve been on Medium for a while now. But I’m not an advice giver. You won’t find a list-cicle from me or a “how to” post. Other people are great at offering that kind of assistance to the general reader, but whenever I’ve tried, I’ve always failed miserably.

I’m a storyteller. My writing is here to illustrate, explore, examine the human condition. I’m here to have a look at myself, my experiences in this thing called life and tell the story of them in hopes you might recognize your own plight or joy, or that of someone you know.

And when I see someone or something on the street or the subway or otherwise out in the world, I might write a story imagining what it would be like to be a person confronted with that situation.

For those familiar with the Myers-Briggs assessment, I’m an INFP and it tells me regularly that my ideal job is novelist followed by therapist, social worker, teacher — all roles that empathize with people. Often I’ve referred to myself as the friend to the disenfranchised because I’m just sort of naturally drawn to the outsider in any situation and I find myself making an effort to help him or her feel seen.

And that’s what my writing does, too. Or that’s what I hope it does. I’m not here to tell you how to be, I’m here to encourage you to be all that you already are by maybe recognizing yourself in one of my confessions or my imaginings. My stories are tiptoeing toward the illustration of our shared human truths because, to me, that’s why we are all here on this great spinning orb suspended in space, to be people for all that it means.

We are the creature of language, and through language we affirm ourselves, we find out about the world, including ourselves, through words, and we share with one another through language.

-Robert Coles

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jesscio

Novelist. NYC. Debut novel: Sometimes A Soldier Comes Home out now! Order online where ever good books are sold. jesscio100@gmail.com