Releasing the writer

“It’s a weird thing to call yourself a ‘writer’ before you’ve written anything that others have read,” Lower Hutt-raised Eleanor Catton, 25, tells the Calgary Herald. “I’m not sure why that stigma exists, exactly, but there does seem to be a real difference between saying ‘a writer is what I am’ and ‘writing is what I do.’ A strange shift for me came with the publication of The Rehearsal, when I found I could suddenly say, ‘I am a writer’ to a stranger and not have to feel ashamed or uneasy about that word. That experience was freeing, but also (I think) kind of dangerous, because it’s easy. I’m still not sure if I think of my work as a property of my ‘being’ or of my ‘doing.’”