What is a Writer?

What the hell is a writer? Is it someone who puts words down on some type medium? Is it someone who has his or her written word published? Is writing a means to convey ideas, provide information, inspire an emotion, to waste paper, or to impress the opposite sex? I have no idea myself. I just know I have wanted to be one since I was in third grade. Mrs. Jones, my third grade teacher use to read to our class every day after lunch. She read everything from Pippy Longstocking (not sure if that’s her real name) to adventure stories about Kit Carson, Lewis and Clark, Davey Crockett and poems by Shel Silvertein she read everything that was third grade appropriate. I remember what those stories did to me and how it affected the rest of the class. I found myself living in fantasyland or day-dreamville most of my elementary school days because of Mrs. Jones and the stories she read.

As I grew older I was forever impressed how certain words could affect people in certain ways. It amazed me that words like “love” were often avoided, the word “fuck” was usually followed by a gasp, or disdain and I was amazed how words worked people’s emotions. By the fourth grade I started playing hooky from school so I could stay at home and write pirate stories in spiral notebooks (that no longer exist). When I was a kid I spent a lot of my time in the Shriner’s Hospital where I did a lot of my writing. I use to write five to six page letters to my grandmother and to my classmates just so I could communicate through words on paper. I wrote hundreds of letters to friends that were never responded to with a returning letter. The usual response was a friend asking me why the heck did I write such long letters. I had no response to that. All I could think of was I was trying to include them in my experiences and wanted to be as vivid as I could in describing the experience and how those experiences made me feel. My grandmother, always a fan, just smiled and commended me on how well I wrote and how nicely I told a story.

Before I discovered the blog world I use to write letters to the editor. I went for pot stirring angles such as questioning ex-Presidents receiving the Noble Peace prizes, or what the hell’s wrong with being a Cowboy pertaining to GW Bush. I’d see my words in print but what I really enjoyed was the responses to the letters. There were some that triggered weeks of letters denouncing my position, or me and as many that supported me. It impressed me how words could develop energy in others, enough energy to make them respond. I liked how someone could be reading their newspaper at their morning breakfast for example and my letter would generate feelings that drove that person’s thoughts for the day. Once that person was affected they would go about their day thinking how to respond and how they felt about what I had written. By the end of the day they would most likely rush home to put their feelings down on paper and then put it in an envelope, buy a stamp, mail it in and alleviate their angst towards me by giving me the middle finger by responding. There were letters I would actually get telephone calls for writing. Never in support but rather to tell me how much of an asshole I was for daring to have a difference of opinion than this complete stranger who called me. Some of the calls were from whacko types others were seriously concerned people that were just beside themselves because I had written something that conflicted with their personal beliefs.

I think that maybe what a writer is is someone that can inspire others. Or someone who doesn’t have anything better to do.