Are you a Writer?

Many people often ask me, how do I know I'm a writer? The answer is simple. You write.  Wait, you say, many people write and they are not writers. Actually, they are. What they are not, is published.

This is a topic I have grappled with since I wrote my first manuscript. What makes me a writer? Or more importantly, what makes me worth reading? I went looking for answers on the internet. I found ways to structure my novel and how to make my dialogue snap. I found articles advising me to switch my adverbs promptly to verbs and to leave cliches on the shelf; to vary my sentence structure and leave out generic phrases such as could, maybe, and whatever. My writing contained all these infractions and more. So I began to ask myself, am I a real writer?

   
As they say, when you go looking for trouble, you'll find it. I found many websites written by accomplished authors on what exactly makes a writer good at their craft. One had me take a quiz. If I scored less then twenty percent, that meant that I wasn't a real writer.  I scored in the tenth percentile. Then another website was an angry rant from an author who no longer wanted to see "dribble" from want-to-be writers on his shelves. He had a list of twelve descriptions that make a manuscript not worth reading... or writing.  As you can guess, I was his top choice of authors whose work he would send straight to the trash.

I was devastated.  I love writing, it gives me purpose, fulfillment and more joy than any past time I could replace it with. But who was I kidding? The great sages of the internet had spoken. I was not qualified to be a writer. Old doubts of stupidity and worthlessness awoke in my mind and I gave into them. I placed my laptop in a corner and focused on any task that could keep me away from writing.  But stories and ideas kept swirling and forming in my head.  Finally, I couldn't fight the urge to write any longer.  I pulled down my laptop and began to write again. I knew that some might consider my work "dribble." I knew that my words didn't flow like cream from a carton.  Yet, I found I had to share my words with a page, even if I'm the only one who reads them.

That's when I discovered that I am a writer.  A person who can't keep their words inside. One day my words may be bound together in a book and I hope others will get to read what I have written.  Until then, I won't go looking for validation. I'm a writer simply because that is what I do. I write.