I am starting to think that I was born to write short stories, but not like real short stories that have a beginning , middle, and end.  I was born to write first chapters to novels.  I know this sound ludicrous, but I have done it twice before on paper and millions of times in my head.  I come up with an idea for an excellent novel and it is all written in the recesses of my brain in an instant.  I know the arc of the story, the climax, the plot twists.  I know the mission and the audience.  I pound out the first chapter in minutes on my keyboard, sit back and admire how easily it came to me, and then that’s it. 

The story dies before it even takes one breath.  I feel drawn to be a writer, to be a real author with a weighty book in my hands that I labored over for a year.  There was a time when I was part of a writer’s group and the leader hit me with a truth bomb I never expected.  She was commenting on her methods of writing and how “Type A” she was.  I nodded in agreement, in solidarity of all of us Type A people.  She stepped back with almost a surprised look and said “You aren’t Type A though, right?”  I feebly attempted to say that I was.  She went on to say “No, you are definitely Type B!”

Type B?  What even was Type B?  I looked it up just now, years later.  The characteristics of Type B are as follows: Flexibility, Low stress levels, Relaxed attitude, Adaptability to change, Even-tempered, Laid-back, Tendency to procrastinate, Patience, and Creativity.  I had never in my life been described in this way.  I after all was the right-brained, highly analytical, mathematician who only played sheet music on piano and never by ear because I didn’t have a creative bone in my body.  I was not an artist.  I was not lazy.  And low-stress wasn’t a term I would use to explain how I handled my environment.

But when I take a step back, I can see it.  I have always taken the path of “Everything will be okay and work out” in life.  Whether I truly believe it to be the case often wars within.  But I suppose that is how it is with any personality assessment.  Nothing can truly assess the honest position within ourselves versus what we put out into the world.  I could answer every question on a personality quiz with my true and honest inner feelings, but that isn’t my personality.  My personality is what I construct and what I show the world I am.

At that moment, I felt her comment as an insult, a jab at how long it had taken me to actually write something and submit it for group critique or how I was always talking of my dream of a memoir but never actually producing more than a page or two of content during our writing exercises.  I believed in her eyes I wasn’t a true writer.  And she could have had some sense in all that.  Am I really a writer?  Can a Type B person be a great author?

I was always convinced the thing that held me back from writing was my perfectionism.  Perfectionism aka Type A person.  And there is a sliver of truth there, I believe.  But what is perfectionism, other than fear of failure?  I was never afraid to fail.  It really didn’t cross my mind when it came to writing.  I was only writing for myself after all.  And that is 100% ingrained honesty.  Of course I wanted the world to hear and be changed by my words, but really more than anything I wanted to tell the story for myself.  I wanted to be able to pick up what I had written and see the journey my life had brought me on, the lessons I had learned, and the impact it had made.  So the perfection I sought was only in relaying the honest truth to myself and I hesitate to trust myself in that.

I think one day I will come to accept my Type B personality. Patience, after all, is a characteristic of the personality type I can’t quickly accept. For now, I think I will stick to writing the first chapter of every book I ever dreamed of writing. Maybe one day it will stick.