What is a writer?

What is a writer?



I'll start off by saying that I very much meant to phrase that question the way I did. I find it more fitting to ask what a writer is instead of who a writer is. I believe a writer is made up of many facets. There are many things I draw from when I am writing.

Past experiences, future hopes, people, places, smells...they all add to whatever message it is that I am trying to convey when I sit down to my laptop. I have been blessed (and cursed) with a memory that rarely fails me. Because of that my posts generally start out in one place and end somewhere totally different. Not always, but in general. I tend to wander a lot.

I find it very insulting when people treat my writings as homework. As a way to learn things about me or because they think it will get them a foot in the door with me. Well, that's a little bit of a misstatement. I want people to learn things about me. To know what I like and don't like. But I don't like people to just scan my work so that they can act like they read it when they really didn't. They miss the whole message by doing that.

And I feel like I have a lot of messages to share. That my trials and tribulations and the way I handled them and rose above them could actually help somebody else get to where I am now. That perhaps my negative could help provide their positive. That's my hope any way. That I will make a difference to somebody, somewhere.

In my minds eye, I keep that hope wrapped gently in tissue paper and nestled into a small, golden box that is put away in my heart. There it will stay forever, safe and secure, only being brought out during times of sadness or loss. That's when we need what is kept in our hearts the most and so that is when I allow it to come out and hold me up.

So back to my original question: What is a writer? A writer is a storyteller. A dreamer. A creator. A simple person with a complex mind that wants to help people in any way they can, even if it's just to distract them from their every day existence. In the simplest of terms, a writer is hope.