writers

What’s a “writer”? You don’t necessarily have to be published, much less occupy an author page on Goodreads or pontificate on news programs about your field of expertise. Raw talent and an appetite for well-placed words are necessary but not essential (if that makes sense). What makes a writer is the compulsion to write.

Speaking personally, I didn’t want to be a writer until my mid-twenties, but even before then I sometimes felt compelled (outside of English class!) to put words on paper. Even back then, what pushed me was a sense that time was passing, experience flowing through my fingers like water, and I couldn’t claw any of it back. But I could make a record of it. The right words, in the right order, might capture some of those fleeting moments and hold them in graphite until someone—maybe me—threw them out.

You may know how to write well, but are you a writer? Here are a few indications:

• You catch yourself editing ad copy, cereal boxes, and electric bills.
• Coming up with the perfect simile makes you happy for a whole day.
• Getting to know your characters is like falling in love.
• You experience plot resolutions in the shower.
• At least once for every page of the latest best-seller, you think, “I could do better than that.”
• Your first rejection letter feels like a Rite of Passage.
• No sooner have you given up on getting one novel published, you’re thinking about another.
• You hate doing it, but you hate not doing it even more.

Can anybody relate?