Are You a Writer or Want to Be?

I have had a passion for writing for as long as I can remember. I think I wrote my first poem when I was four or five. I really got intense about writing poetry during my high school years, when I first became acquainted with angst. I rarely shared it with anyone as I had already learned that I would never “be a writer”. I did not find favor in the eyes of my English teachers or college professors and I somehow came to believe a writer had to have a “gift” and I just didn’t have it!

It didn’t stop me from writing, at least for myself.  Journaling helped me keep my sanity through  heart breaks and the difficult twenties.  More angst.  It was also probably my joy of writing that made up for my other deficits when it came to completing my college and grad school course work. I was able to take the little bit of time I spent on research and spin it into a twenty page paper in a flash and usually got a decent grade. I didn’t consider this a gift at the time. I considered it luck.

Writing is just in a person’s blood. I think that’s the only part of it that is a gift. The rest is just plain hard work and persistence; it’s writing until you’re good at it or until you no longer have anything to say, whichever comes first. Writing is a craft.

So if it’s in your blood, write on! And, forget the naysayers both real and imagined.

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