What does it mean to be a "writer"?

Everyone has written something.

Everyone I know wrote papers in school. Most people I know have kept a journal or diary at some point in their lives. Some people I know write Christmas letters, updating their friends and family on all the happenings of the previous year. Very few people I know write for enjoyment. In fact, I can really only think of one person I know, personally, that I would call a writer. That would be my beloved darling husband. He doesn't yet have a novel published, but has one short story on the bookstore shelves, and is expecting the contract in the mail any day for a second. He currently writes almost every day. Revisions on his first novel, new short stories, ideas or scenes for future novels, or at the very least he pens elaborate comments on a variety of websites from FaceBook to ReadIt. When we were dating he would frequently send me a creative "Word of the Day", taking the Merriam Webster daily vocabulary-building word and expanding it out to a full paragraph or sometimes a little flash-fiction story. He hasn't done that in a while, but I digress. The magnitude of his imagination is beyond human comprehension.


Thinking about Dwayne, I have to wonder, is creativity a key component of becoming a writer? I certainly hope not, otherwise I'll never make the grade. I read recently that a real writer writes every day. Do FaceBook posts count?! Is there a word quota? If so, do the words I back-space out of existence get subtracted from my tally? It would be nice if all the words I thought about writing were added in!! (I'm not even talking about the words I think-just the ones I think about actually writing!)

Does one need a reader to be a writer? Thanks to my supportive husband, and my sweet sister-in-law, I know I have a couple of readers, but is it necessary to have unrelated strangers read what I've written for me to don the "writer" title? Need I be published? Maybe an unpublished writer is merely "aspiring".



Hey, guess what? Today, I'm writing this and if someone reads it, then I'll have a reader and in order to have this blog floating around in cyber-space...I must first hit the "publish post" button! How about that?!

Today, I declare by the act of doing the thing I love that I am a writer! I hope that anyone who reads this will take my bravery as explicit permission to go and do likewise--do the thing you love and boldly proclaim "I am a...(fill in the blank)!!"

Thanks for letting me get my words out (some of them at least).