Are You a Writer?

                Is there anything special about a writer?  Are we different from everyone else?  Do you consider yourself “odd”?  Would being a geek be a step or two up?  Were you always this way?  What makes a writer?  What does a writer look like?

                Do you have trouble getting your point across with your mouth to other people?  Tough to find the right words?  Stumble and stammer a lot?  Does it take you 1,500 words to tell someone something it should take 50?  How about texting?  You’d think texting would be a natural for us.  Not me.  I’m horrible at it.  I can’t possibly get a good point across in a text and I tend to ramble and come across as a lunatic.  If you’re in this boat with me, you’re a writer too.

                When you were young, did you doodle?  Did you draw figures?  Did you write stories and hide them?  Did you write countless stories about virtually nothing?  Was English your best subject and you were ashamed of it?  Did you watch the news and verbally correct the newscasters use of their language?  You’re probably a writer.           

                When you are out in nature, are you completely content?  Do you notice things others don’t?  Have you sat with a laptop and written a thousand words about your backyard?  When others are fidgety and get up and leave, are you fine with staying and watching what God gave us?  I love to fly-fish.  I know I could write five thousand words about the fifty degree spring-fed trout stream that is so clear you can see the fish lying on the bottom of a pool ten feet deep.  Or how you can hear the breeze whipping through the valley long before you feel it.  Or the magic of doing something you love with a cousin that is like a brother, your son you adore, and your son-in-law that is so special in your life.  We don’t speak.  We don’t have to.  When we do, it is to cut each other down. This is called fun.  Words on paper to describe this?  We all have experiences like this and if we can relate them, we are writers.

                When you grab the keyboard, does the spouse or significant other roll their eyes and leave the room?  Are you going to a world they just don’t understand?  Do the kids “just not get it”?  Do you get strange looks from the family pet?  Does the goldfish even make different bubbles?  You’re probably a writer.

                I believe writers feel.  Writers are not in a hurry.  Writers try to find the truth in a unique way.  Writers try to write a new story, in a new way, from a new angle, that has never been seen before.  Writers can be seen as strange, complicated, weird, even eccentric people.  Yeah, imagine that.  Some of them shunned as adults by people they thought were their friends.  I can relate to that myself. Think of the works and the artists of the past.  Not all, but many were and are considered to be nut cases.  Think of the writers and of their lives as kids. They were not any different as you and me.  Did they doodled too?  I’m sure they dreamed.  I know some of them were ridiculed.  I’ve read stories of some who were shunned by adult friends, made fun of.

                Hemmingway, Twain, Capote, many, many more.  Where can you go to feel normal?  Three places.  The pharmacy at Walgreens, an art center with a writing unit within it, and a writing group like the one we are a part of.  I didn’t say I WAS normal, I just said I felt normal.  Find other writers.