It might seem strange for a blogger to contemplate whether or not she’s a writer, but bear with me here.  I’m talking book and story writing for today’s purposes, and anyway, I’m reminded of a quote from the movie Contagion: “Blogging is graffiti with punctuation.” I believe that was the best part of the movie.

Ha. Moving on…

I’ve been pondering on what many would call the ridiculous.

I’m gonna break one of my own rules to complete this post, specifically the one about interviewing oneself. I need to in order to follow a line of logic.

A: A driver.

A: A teacher.

A: Are we talking published or unpublished?

What the actual hell?

Where’s the line between hobby and career?

There seems to be a ginormous gray area between writing and being published from which many writers never emerge.

Does that mean they’re not writers?

I’ve written two – yes, two – novels in the past five months. They’re the first two of a series, and I know the third isn’t far behind. I’ve spent hundreds of hours creating plot, dialogue, and revising my pretty little brains out. I’ve recruited friends, family, and author friends of family to read my first book. I’ve barely started the submission process. My heart quickened when a publisher asked to see my manuscript, and now I wait again. The reality of the publishing climate says I face scores of rejections and my books will never see the light of day, no matter how good they might be. And yet, I write on. It’s become an obsession. A passion, even.

So why won’t I identify myself as a writer?

If someone was to walk up to me on the street and ask me what I do, what would I say?

I’m a teacher.

Why? Partly because that’s my day job, but also because of the potential embarrassment of never getting published. It seems like everyone and their uncle at one point tries to write a book. It’s probably on millions of bucket lists.

Should my books never be published, would it be better to say I was never a writer and pretend they never happened? Pieces of my soul are in these books, and I don’t mean that in a Voldemort-y kind of way. I knew what was happening on the page as I typed the words, fully knowing where the plot was going, and I still cried. I was depressed for a day in the middle of my second book because it was so emotionally draining. Pretending they didn’t happen isn’t an option.

So maybe the next time I meet someone and they ask me what I do, I’ll have the guts to say, “I’m a teacher and a writer.”

And to my fellow writers, I suggest we come out of the writing closet and claim our craft. Writing is neither practically nor emotionally easy. Claim it, and be proud of it, even if it isn’t published.

I close this post with the following comic, because it’s oh so very true. Here’s to hoping that someday, we’ll get to see our writing in a bounded book as illustrated in the fourth panel (though without the accompanying self-doubt).