It's Who I Am

I am a writer. It’s what I do, it’s who I am, it’s how I breathe.

I started out writing stories when I was about seven or eight and filled up spiral notebook after spiral notebook with tales of my imagination. It was my escape. I was always the quiet, poor, new kid in school. We couldn’t afford the Cabbage Patch Kids, the Atari or Nintendo, or new clothes. Writing was my other world. In that world, I was anything I wanted to be. I was popular, rich, and one of the cool kids. I wrote stories about Heaven, about magic, and about family. I could fly, I could survive the wilderness, and I rode upon dragons.

As I got older, I started writing books. I wrote my first, still unfinished, novel when I was fifteen on an electronic typewriter that I bought with my own money saved from my after school job. In my maturing writing, I had children, my own family, and of course a spouse who adored me. I lost- and found- myself in books both in reading them and in writing them.

To no surprise, my best and favorite subjects were Language Arts, English, and Creative Writing. It was always so much easier to express myself in writing than it ever was in speech. But I never took it seriously. Of course I always wanted to be a published author but I never did anything to make that happen. Until I was about twenty nine and started writing again. I participated in NaNoWriMo, where I wrote and finished my second novel, Journey to the Rainbow. I bought writing magazines and I began submitting stories for contests. Never content with any career field I put myself in, I finally knew what it was that I wanted to be when I grew up. A writer.

I look forward to November every year for NaNoWriMo. I wrote and finished my third novel, Bound by Family Ties, and am in the process of editing it so that I can attempt publication. I found writing.com and I honed my skills. I had writing.com’s website pulled up on my computer all day long at my job as a litigation collector. It was my creative outlet. In between arguing with people to pay their bill, negotiating contracts, and leaving messages, I wrote. And though the internet is off limits now, I still write at work but just wait until I get home to submit and post my stories and poems. I refuse to give up my creative outlet.

I’ve finally taken my passion seriously and have never felt more fulfilled by it than I do now. I get such extraordinary feedback and it has stoked the fire of my confidence and built my ego over the last few months. I love my outlet, I love my passion, and I love my creativity.

I am a writer. It’s what I do, it’s who I am, and it’s the only way I can breathe.



**499 words**