About The Author...

Definitions of ourselves and who we are can be difficult to accept. It can be a challenge to change the way in which we look at ourselves that, from my understanding, has to do with the human ego.

My relationship with writing has been an interesting one so far. One of my greatest challenges has been with that pesky ego and how I look at myself. 

  I look at myself as a writer. Just a writer. A plain old warm beverage on a rainy day, just as comfortable as your favorite blue jeans or pajamas writer. It’s what I’m good at. It’s what I know I can do. It’s what feels good to me.

My mother is an author. Being an intelligent woman, she likes to discuss things. Sometimes, I do too. Today, we got into a conversation about how being a writer has become more challenging in recent years, especially with the explosion of voices on social media. We discussed various aspects of it. I shared how I felt like I was stuck in some awkward in between stage with my work. Many words followed. After a time she looked at me and said, “Some day you are going to have to accept the fact that you are an author.”

We’ve had this conversation before.

I said the same thing that I always do, “I’m not an author, I’m a writer.”

There we were, two intelligent women with two different definitions of the word “author.”

She feels the title author is something the creator of a finished written work is free to use. It is one I should be happy to embrace. John Steinbeck was an author, Ernest Hemingway was an author, Agatha Christie was an author.

I agree with her on that point, I should be happy to embrace it. The problem is that I have never seen myself as one.

True confession: Although I have been working for several years toward a goal of becoming a working writer vis a vis supporting myself with my writing instead of working a separate day job in addition to writing, I didn’t go into it expecting to become an author.

I see an author as someone who is deep and profound. They entertain you but also make you stop and think. They make you look at your life and wonder at it, wonder if you want to change it, or leave you wondering if you should be doing more for others. They leave a reader changed after they close the book. They look like matching suits or dresses with stockings, along with matching hats and gloves. They win Nobel prizes and their writing is required reading in college courses. Sometimes they give commencement speeches. Other times, they record battles on foreign lands or comment on major societal changes in their own home towns. In my mind, they rarely look like me. They rarely look like jeans and a t-shirt. Especially a t-shirt with a snarky comment on it.  I kind of have a thing for those.

My relationship with writing first and foremost, is a love story. I come to it because I want to, l love to, and some part of me needs to. Whether I am sitting in my Big Writing Chair in High Command, sprawled out on my living room floor with pages strewn all over, white board and diagrams at the ready or stretched out across my bed with a laptop, as I am now, it’s a quiet place, it is a place where all of the parts of me are accepted. Writing is home. As long as I'm writing, regardless of all other variables, I will always be at home. It holds few expectations of me. I expect less of it. I have a long list of hopes. They are just that hopes.

To find myself, here in my bedroom during the late moments of my quickly dwindling weekend contemplating finding a way to change the way I see myself; it’s one of the last things a person expects to find themselves doing on a Sunday night.

I consulted my dictionary tonight looking up both the definitions of a writer and an author in search of information to help me prove my point. There was nothing under the definition of the word “author” that read, “creator of great literary works that have won awards and critical adoration” or even one that reads “Not you HR.” Nor was there a picture of me next to the word “writer.” They appear to be very close and virtually interchangeable which begs the question, “Why is the title ‘Author’ more widely accepted while it also appears to have more weight and validity in our society? That’s probably a question for another time.

I hope it is not what I’m thinking about when I close my eyes tonight. 

Sleepy writer, needs rest. 

Thanks Mom for the discussion.

In the words of Captain Kirk, “It has been noted and logged.”

P.S. Seriously though, I’m working on it.