Half a lifetime ago, I took a non-credit creative writing class through a local community college. I still have the introduction I wrote for that class:
If I were eight or eighty, I might know for sure that I wasn’t meant to be a writer. At eight I could have chosen to be something else. At eighty I’ll know I’ve succeeded or failed. As it is, I’m thirty, and the time between writing phases, no matter how long they are, can always be counted as gathering experience or learning to write. My life is constantly being re-written as a story in my head.
Nearly thirty years on, I’m still wondering whether I’m a writer. I write. I write letters and journals and story ideas and creative teaching handouts. I’ve started unfinished novels, a children’s book, an African memoir, a book on teaching, and several essays. I’ve written two short stories that feel finished, and a dozen more that don’t. So, does that make me a writer? Or do I need to be published for anything to count?
I am published, of course. I have two short bird papers in Malimbus, the Journal of the West African Ornithological Society – the smallest of small publications. I’m listed as an editor on a forestry publication or two.
Maybe keeping a blog is the next step. At least I’ll have to finish an idea, rather than letting it languish in my files. Would that feel like publishing? I don’t know, but I think I’ll try it for a while.
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I especially liked (understood) this section. I've so often had ideas challenging me to think of the right words to express them. But often feeling unsure of my ability, I've gone on to do something a know I can do (leading Scouts, working for the public library or Grace Center, becoming a librarian which earned money) and writing waited in journals and newsletters and now e-mails. Haiku has been satisfying. Now I hope you will believe in yourself and write.... we believe in you! Love, Mom
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