If you write, you’re a writer. Publication, recognition, and pay are subjective, capricious, and out of your control. What you can control: you write. Lovely and vulnerable piece here.
By Diane Lowman,
Can I call myself a writer? I have a dozen published pieces. I am constipated with essays that back up in my head and want to come out onto the page. My stream of consciousness – when it takes a break from thinking about my kids, or what to eat, or how I really want to lose five pounds – churns narrative constantly. In my head I’m a writer; I’m just reluctant to say it out loud. Perhaps it’s the distinction between the verb and the noun. I write. I am a writer. The former is unequivocally true. The latter conjures Hemingway or Shakespeare, and I lack the arrogance to put myself in that stratosphere.
I recall that when I was just a homemaker and mother – by which I mean CEO, COO, and CFO of an empire and its inhabitants – people would glaze over or…
View original post 352 more words
The Literary Life 