The Writer Within

I have spent long hours in my life contemplating what I am supposed to be when I grow up. I’m 38 and still thinking it over…

All my life I have clung to literature and writing. The written word has always been a friend to me. The only thing closer to me than reading was to write the words myself. Sometimes I would hear a soft sound in my ear saying You’re a writer but I don’t think I could quite hear it. In school I wasn’t the best student but when it came to English Lit and Creative Writing I was in heaven-always A’s and B’s. In both high school and college, I had instructors say “Maybe you should do something with your writing skills.” I thought to myself “What would I do?” and again the soft sound in my ear You’re a writer. When life dealt harder times I turned to notebooks and journals. When I had emotional things to say to people-I said it in letters and notes. The soft sound was still there whispering you’re a writer but I wouldn’t listen. I wasn’t a writer. Writers were edgy, artsy figures. They backpacked across Europe, they lived and breathed Hemingway, they were loners, they were rebels, they defied the system, they were observers of life, they had Masters degrees, they were PUBLISHED. Writers weren’t thirty-something, middle-class mothers from the Midwest--car pooling to soccer practice and meeting with the PTA. That’s not a writer! Is it? I had to stop and think about that. What is a writer? Could I be a writer? And if I were a writer-what would people think? What if I never got published? Or worse, what if I DID get published?! What if they didn’t like my stuff? All the what if’s. Finally I give in and say to myself “what the heck, I’ll try it on for size.”

“I’m a writer” I say aloud to myself in the mirror. “I’m a writer” I whisper to myself as I fall asleep at night. “I’m a writer” I say to myself as I wash the dinner dishes. “What did you say Mom?” I didn’t know my 8 year old was standing there. So I sheepishly repeat “I said I’m a writer.” She stares for a moment. And then “Mom, you’re not a writer-you have to be an author of a book to be a writer.” And so I kneel down to her level and say “That’s not really true, honey. I write stories and articles, I write my thoughts down in several ways, I send my work on to publishers once in awhile and I.....you know what.. it’s not really about that. Being a writer isn’t as much about what you do as who you are.” And then the light bulb comes on in my head. That’s what the soft sound was. I’m not supposed to BE a writer. I was BORN a writer because it is how I organize my thoughts and make sense of the world around me. It’s not what I do, it’s who I am. It doesn’t matter if it’s ever seen, it doesn't matter if no one likes it, it doesn’t even matter if it’s any good. It’s just me-plain and simple-that’s all. She says, staring at me eagerly with big blue eyes “Mom, I'm like you. I write lots of stories and I write in my journal all the time. i love to write” So I lean over and whisper in her ear “Then you’re a writer too…”

Quote of the Day- “Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.”