What it means to be a writer

Writers feel deeply. We listen, absorb, observe, learn, watch, and feel. We feel when our friends suffer. We feel when our families hurt us. We feel pain, joy, ecstasy, and rejection organ-deep, soul-deep, bone-deep. We feel.

And when we feel, we write. We write, and we revise, and we re-write, and we consider as we feel. We think about larger implications and small moments of significance. When friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, and random strangers relate their stories, their experiences, their pain, and their joys, we listen, absorb, observe, learn, watch, and feel.

And when we listen and absorb, we relate these moments to other moments, making connections (always making connections), considering how one moment or idea relates to another, sometimes seemingly unrelated, sometimes painfully and directly related. Ideas. Moments. Experiences. Stories. Felt stories.

Felt stories become part of our fabric, challenge what we think we know, push us to question what is right and wrong, unrelentingly demand to be acknowledged and used for a greater purpose than a singular, individual, selfish one. Great stories deserve to be heard, told, repeated, and shared. Small stories deserve to be heard, told, repeated, and shared. Because there is always a lesson.

And when there is a lesson embedded in a story or experience (and there always is), writers ruminate and mull and question and feel and often take that story or experience and find a way to work it in to their writings.

Because that is what writers do. We feel. We respond. We question. We challenge. We write.

If you want to be a writer, this is the only path. If you are afraid to challenge, to question, to listen and absorb and observe and hear stories and then share those stories for a purpose beyond yourself, then you will never be a writer.

If you fear censure, shaming, embarrassment, job loss, death threats, shunning, others' moral high ground, and negative opinions of your character, then you will never write anything of interest or import. You will not be a writer.

When you are a writer, you must take risks. And knowing that everything you write for public consumption might be shunned or cause heated response is essential to your survival as a writer. To be safe, and write easy, friendly, happy things is not to be a writer.

Writers push boundaries. Writers make moves, tiny to massive, in order to influence what other people think, to challenge conventions, to require of our fellow citizens a greater questioning of everything we accept and consider sacred. For a writer, there is no such thing as a sacred cow. All subjects must be open for exploration and use. If they are not, then you are not a writer.

To be a writer means sticking your chin out to the world, your spirit quaking with resolve, feeling the icy wind of disapproval, and writing anyway. To do anything less means you are not a writer.