The Writer Who Should Never Have Been

FREELANCING | WRITING

My high school English teacher told me I would never be a writer.

Unbelievable, right? Especially since that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing for more than three decades.

In hindsight, I think there may have been a bit of shadeism (colorism) going on. She was the daughter of a prominent citizen. She had also excelled in one of the few professions that was open to women of a certain class at the time.

I, on the other hand, was a dark-skinned Black girl of no particular account. As far as she knew there was nobody of national importance in my family (true), my complexion wasn’t the right shade, and I was only half-Barbadian (if you were feeling generous). Plus I wasn’t one of the top students in her class.

An Inauspicious Beginning

Her dismissal wasn’t the most auspicious start for a would-be writer. I was 15 at the time, and her opinion counted. I was crushed but felt compelled to keep writing anyway, if only for myself.

In my late teens, I had a journaling phase. I didn’t write daily, but I wrote often. Some of those entries turned into poems. These stayed private, and trust me, everyone should be grateful for that. My early work was, err, early, and pretty unpolished. I look at those poems occasionally to remind myself that all writing gets better with practice.

I studied languages at university, spent a year in France, then returned home to look for a job. My stint as a teaching assistant had convinced me that teaching wasn’t the profession for me (quite ironic, given what came later).

But in the absence of anything else, I was just about to cave in and see if I could get a teaching job when I heard about a vacancy at a regional multi-lingual newspaper. Despite my lack of journalism experience, I got the job because of my proficiency in French and Spanish.

First Steps in Journalism

That’s where my real writing training started. I made the painful transition from writing academic essays to writing news stories and feature articles. Every piece I submitted to my editor came back looking like the aftermath of a slasher film — covered in red gore. But although I didn’t realize it, I was constantly learning and improving.

Six months in, I got an article back with a grunted “good”, and I knew I’d made some progress in my chosen craft. From then on, there was no stopping me. I even got to edit a whole edition of the paper when my boss was on vacation. At 23, I thought that was a pretty big deal.

In the next few years, I continued to hone my craft. I worked at trade publications in the UK covering metals, design and technology education, and youth work. I held jobs as a writer, magazine sub-editor and editor, and a book and journal editor.

The breadth of approaches and topics gave me a well-rounded formation in the craft of writing. And my editing experience was a secret weapon I’d later use when submitting work to other publications. As a writer, it never hurts to know how editors think.

All the while I kept doing my own writing: mostly poetry, but also short stories, and occasional opinion pieces. Again, most of that stayed private. I might have been working as a writer, but I could still hear my English teacher’s voice in my head. Even lived experience doesn’t stop you from having impostor syndrome.

Taking a Break From My Writing Career

Then a toxic work situation made me re-evaluate my career options, and I decided to take a break from writing. For the next five years, I taught others how to write. (I did a tiny bit of freelancing, too, just to keep my hand in.)

I co-developed practical journalism courses for the media school at Coventry University, helping several would-be journalists to take their first steps in the profession. It was always a thrill when I saw a student truly get it, and I still treasure those memories.

Reinvention as an Online Writer

But I also made a discovery: I missed writing. So, I jumped back into the fray and made another transition from being a print-based writer to an online writer. (It’s common now, but it was a big deal at the time.)

The rest, as they say, is history. I’ve been writing and freelancing online for about 15 years, continuing to learn and grow. Writing’s a great profession for adding to my personal knowledge-base, which is one of the many reasons I love it.

Now, once again, my writing career has shifted direction. I’ve become an anti-racism writer, and I feel that everything in my writing life has led to this moment.

Today, the creative well is overflowing, and I’m happy to say now that my high school English teacher was wrong. I am a writer, and I have a lot to say.

Thank you for reading.

© Sharon Hurley Hall

Sharon Hurley Hall is an anti-racism writer, a professional B2B writer and blogger, and co-host of The Introvert Sisters podcast.