How do I become her?
Marianne Rosen is a writer.
She exists in the world as a person who writes, who has published books, who gets up in the morning at a stupid hour and wakes up in front of Scrivener.
(The writers reading this will know what I’m talking about, and I’m going to show you why that matters in this essay.)
But she didn’t exist 8 years ago.
Marianne Rosen was created on a cold blustery day in January 2018 on the doorstep of a home in Hay-on-Wye.
She was created by me.
At the start of January 2018, only one person knew she existed. Me.
By the end of that month, she existed in the eyes of other people. Fifteen to be exact.
Once we have begun to know, inside, that we are not satisfied with the life we have built, and may have an idea of what we want to move toward, we encounter the vast gap of reality; the space between who we are and who we want to be feels too big.
But we can’t know who we are going to be in the next chapter of our lives from within the existing one.
Yes, we may have some ideas. But we cannot actually know who we are going to become by thinking and idealising it.
In this essay I’m going to show how this process happened for me, and the key ways in which you can explore this for yourself. Most importantly though, you’re going to learn this:
You can’t answer the question hypothetically.
In January 2018, it was time to show up.
It was almost two years exactly since I had made the decision to close my business down and told my staff they had as long as they needed to find new jobs.
While I supported them through that process, I kept my business running as normal to fund their wages. It wasn’t until they had all found new work (it took nine months) that I began to inform my clients I was closing my business. It took another 15 months for my clients to leech every possible job out of me that they could and for me to realise that I couldn’t close my interiors business and leave all my clients happy. I had to set an end date and stick to it.
I’d taken one month out in that two-year process to scratch another old itch, the teenage wish to be a TEFL teacher. Partly because I wanted the idea to go away, partly because I was avoiding the big itch. I tortured myself through one of the hardest training courses imaginable, to discover that I hated the profession with a passion only one month into it.
Itch, scratched.
As the end of 2017 rolled round and I wrapped up my business for good and closed my workshop, I knew that it was time to face the big itch. While I’d started to corral some of my ideas for a ‘book’ into shape, it felt huge. Utterly unscalable.
Yes, I wanted to be a writer. To have my books published. To be an author.
But how on earth was I going to actually become that version of myself?
I knew who I was. A designer, a maker, an interiors guru with a loyal client list and a workshop. I had the skills to organise and motivate myself. But it felt like the most ridiculous indulgence to sit in front of my pc and spend several hours a day ‘playing with words’.
It felt farcical to me that I might ever actually become that hallowed vision of myself on which so much hope for life satisfaction was now riding. And it felt impossible to share that hope with others in my life. I was sure they would laugh at it or tell me to get real. I was totally alone with the task. Trying to become another version of myself in the psychological space of the current version of who I was.
Over Christmas 2017 I sat with that deep sense of overwhelm and decided I needed to create the author, before I could create the authored works. Somehow, I had to step into the shoes of who I wanted to be long, long before I actually had the evidence to claim her. Perhaps it was because my personal goal, to be a writer, was inherently a long-term process. I knew I wanted to write books, and books take time. An accumulation of words into sentences into pages into books that cannot be rushed. If I based my goal on being an author, I knew it would be years before I reached that.
The gap was just vast. I needed to see something solid, sooner.
I decided to join a writer’s group.
See how easily I wrote that out.
It conveys nothing of the sense of terror and arrogance that I felt in contemplating it.
I decided to walk into the dragon’s mouth (aka, join a writer’s group) and I researched my options over Christmas before making a choice and reaching out to the Secretary of the group to request attendance.
I was lucky in that the group I chose allowed you to attend for two free sessions before deciding if they would offer you membership. Not daunting at all.
I told my partner what I was doing (he was the only one who knew what I was aiming for, and fortunately, felt my goal was so ridiculous he willingly kept it to himself), forced myself out of the house and took the near hour journey to the first meeting.
Every minute of that journey I nearly talked myself into turning the car round.
But I wanted so much to find a way to become that next version of myself that I couldn’t turn back.
When I say I know how scary this part of change is, please understand that I know every mean thought you have about yourself. Every fear magnified that seems insurmountable. Every possible nuance of that peculiarly feminine curse, imposter syndrome. [Link to original research or book about this].
I walked into that first meeting, a 44-year-old successful businesswoman, gripping a notebook for dear life, virtually mute with fear, sick to the gunnels, with no idea of what I had let myself in for.
Which is lucky, because if I had known that I would have to not just write something there and then, but SHARE IT. Out loud. In a room full of strangers. I would never have gone.
So how did I manage to face all those fears and inadequacies?
I did not go as myself.
I went as Marianne Rosen.
I introduced myself in my first email to the group Secretary by my chosen penname.
I dressed in an outfit I decided I would want to wear to future book signings.
I brought a new notebook and pen, not using anything that belonged to my existing life.
And I went as far away as it was logistically possible for me to travel twice a month from my existing life.
On the trip there I repeated my new name to myself.
I practiced an introduction that outlined who I wanted to become, with no reference to who I currently was.
I decided that, if I was capable of fooling a room full of strangers, then I might just be capable of fooling myself into my new life.
My imposter syndrome was thrown out of the window in the very first meeting.
Despite the tremor in my voice when I shared my brief response to the warm-up prompt. As I received brief feedback from each member, I was almost reduced to tears by the response of one of the oldest writers, who simply told me ‘Well, it’s clearly evident you are a writer. You’ll fit in very well.’
Even now, remembering that, I still choke up.
To be seen for who you want to be, by others who have done what you are doing for many, many years, is something I wish on you all. I took my oldest dream, dressed her in threadbare clothes, and was fleshed out in that group of writers. It was not just the first time I felt seen, it was the first time I truly saw myself for what was possible.
It was only me who thought I was pretending.
Exploration showed me that an already existing part of myself, that had been latent since I was a child, needed a different environment in which to become visible.
Marianne Rosen was made by the Hay Writers.
Not by the version of me that existed who wanted to become her.
That group taught me what I needed to become her.
But why was it so profoundly important in writing my next chapter?
Despite having wanted to become a writer since such a young age, I carried a vast weight of anti-belief.
This is the psychological version of anti-matter.
The accumulated evidence of why you cannot be that version of yourself that you want to be which sucks away the capacity to actually become it.
(Ok, that’s not an actual thing, I just made that up. I am a writer, you know. But trust me, it exists in you just as much as it did in me.)
For over forty years I wanted, while believing I could not be. When I first set out to actually write, I did it in secret, still believing it was a pipe dream. Not daring to tell anyone what I truly wanted. Covering it up by going for interviews for more suitable jobs. Quietly writing at the start of each day, before spending the rest of the day “properly.” In theory, I was working toward being a writer, while still deeply believing it was impossible. The anti-belief was sucking my potential away.
What I had to learn was that becoming is not hypothetical.
I didn’t find out if I could be a writer alone, I found out in a room of other writers. I discovered it through committing time to be that new person in that new place (embodied), engaging with others to discover what I did well and where I needed help, such as discovering Scrivener writing software (relational), and being recognised and encouraged openly in my capacity and progress (emotional).
To this day, I am known by two names. My birth name. And my professional name.
It causes some confusion to a few people who have crossover in my life. You’re either one or the other, they say.
But I know differently. I am both. Always. At the same time.
I know the woman I was.
And I know the woman I chose to become.
In my story now, those earlier chapters are still there. The actions I took in them still run on in my life. Just as the writer in me was always latent in them, ever since I was a child.
The first step I took toward who I wanted to become, was becoming her long before the evidence for her was present.
Exploration expands our sense of potential
Both that potential latent in ourselves, and discovered through connection to others.
While creating a penname and stepping into that persona may seem more suited to the desire to write, this is exactly how we make the journey toward ‘becoming her’, no matter what we desire.
We can find people to relate to, who do what we aspire to. We can garner emotional support from those who are on the other side of where we are now. We can begin bringing the actions of our future self into our current chapter.
That journey is not necessarily about being super clear about what we want and simply stepping into that persona.
When I first took the name Marianne Rosen, I had no idea of how my scrappy story was going to evolve into a published four-book family saga series.
This exploration phase of becoming is often not clearly visible at the start. Yes, clarity can help massively in the process but, for many, clarity is not something that we have at the start. At the start, we often feel as though we are peering “through a glass, darkly” at the next version of ourselves.
I have always particularly loved this quote from Corinthians. I don’t claim it from a theological perspective; Paul was writing about the fuller knowledge of God that comes in the presence of God. But I have found it hugely instructive in how we can embrace what lies beyond what we currently know.
““For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.””
I explored who my future self might be through the simplest of starting points; Who would others know her as?
When you think about the confusion of what lies ahead, or what you desire, how might you identify one key area that you can explore to expand your relational, emotional or embodied sense of potential?
How might you begin this exploration?
Where next?
The Rewrite Philosophy
This essay explores Belief 7: Exploration expands our sense of possibility
If you feel you are not yet ready for this exploration, you might benefit from reading Belief 6: Awareness reinspires authorship, where I explore how there is often a gap between knowing we are ready for change and taking action toward it.
Or you may particularly benefit from the next essay in this series, exploring Belief 8: Curiosity matters more than certainty.
From the Rewrite Bookshelf
The book I’d hand you immediately after finishing this essay is Becoming by Michelle Obama.
The heart of this essay is about how our emerging identity can become real through lived experience. Obama's memoir explores that process across very different circumstances, showing how identity continues to develop in relation to circumstance.
Rewrite Today
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