I’m a writer. There, I said it. Like the first step of AA, the first step to becoming something, anything, is to admit it. But a writer? Me? John Steinbeck was a writer. Alice Walker is a writer. Poe, Dickinson, Whitman, Eliot, Fitzgerald, Dickens…they were writers. And I’m supposed to say with great gusto and clear conscience, along with the larger-than-life grand-daddies and grand-mamas of literature, I am a writer?

Yes…according to some, but not all, of my writing profs. “You are a writer because it’s in your heart,” one teacher told us, idealism and passion dripping from her tinny voice. “It’s deep down. You are a writer because you have something to say. You are a writer because, if – if you didn’t write, you could not exist. It’s like…it’s like…breathing. That’s what makes you a writer. Not a publishing deal or a paycheck. You are a writer.”

OK then, I’m a writer. And I write. As much as possible. And I read often, but not enough.

But I am a writer. So I pull dusty technique books off my shelf that I saved from college – half-read and dog-earred – and wish that I was still forced to write the way I was in school.

Still, I am a writer. And I write in my head sometimes when I’m sitting in a staff meeting or sipping tea at Barnes and Noble; I write snapshots of what people are doing and saying, or I describe someone’s hair and clothing.

And I am a writer. With instincts, inclinations, style, voice, a personal vocabulary and dozens of microfiction pieces and memoir chapters fighting to stay in my brain until I can get them down on paper. Reminding me that I am a writer.

I think if we only called ourselves what we are when, and only when, we reach the summit, we would never be called anything except maybe failure or really-hard-tryer. For now, I’m not a best-selling writer. I’m not a Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer. I’m not even a published writer. But I am a writer. And I’ve got the scars to prove it.

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