Very recently, I was chatting with a man who was in the comedy theater I intern at. “Are you a writer?” he asked me. “You seem like a writer.”
“Well,” I hesitated. How can I answer a question like that? What qualifies as being a writer?
Ever since I was in kindergarten, there was never a time in my life when I didn’t want to be a writer. There were some brief periods where I vehemently wanted to be a contortionist, a sign language interpreter, or a seamstress- but within a few weeks I would realize that I can’t contort my body into anything remarkable, sign language is harder than it looks, and I tend to stab my own thumb with a needle whenever I sew. I would always eventually gravitate back to writing.
In third grade, it was a series of Halloween-themed short stories about a boy named Chester who joined a clan of actual monsters. In eighth grade, it was humorous horoscopes for the school newspaper. In high school, it was angsty poems and television pilots. Now, in college, it’s jokes for a humor blog and articles for the Odyssey.
“You write for like two online publications, and your own material for stand up,” a friend interjected at this point in the conversation. “You’re a writer.”
Still, I hesitated. There is no published list of requirements for being a writer. To be considered a writer, do you have to get paid for your work? Do you have to be making a living with your work? In order to be a writer, do you have to write every week, every day? Or is it so simple that the only criteria to be a writer is that you have to write?
In April of 2011, when I was 13, a poem I had authored was published in a university’s literary magazine, still one of my proudest accomplishments to date. A small party was thrown to celebrate the release of this magazine, and at this party, I declined to have my poem read in front of the other attendees, mostly other writers and artists for the magazine. It didn’t feel real. My work being read aloud in front of all these other writers, people who were older than me by ten years, was too daunting. My poem was not enough to permit me to stand alongside these real writers and be a part of them.
“If you’re a writer, you have to step up and own it,” this man told me. “Even if you’re an aspiring writer. You’re still a writer.”
Am I aspiring? I want to write, yes. I write every day. I hand-write in my notebook, half-thoughts and concepts that I think of on the bus on the way to class. I type scripts on my laptop, Googling words I’m unsure of and watch an episode of Scrubs after I write 750 words. I bang out an article a week, and record my thoughts in a journal. Sometimes it feels like I never stop writing.
Looking back at my third grade self, painstakingly punching the keyboard, telling a story about how Chester and his friends were preparing for Halloween in 2005, she had something going. So did my eighth grade self, who edited for the school paper and had her own humor column. My high school self, who loved Edgar Allen Poe and Vladimir Nabokov. My younger self wanted to be a writer. She was a writer. She still is a writer.
“So, what do you do?” a patron of the comedy theater asked me later that night.
“I write.”
