Claim it: I am a writer.

        In my world of thinking, I don’t always know the moment or the day that an idea will come full circle and get tied into that satisfactory knot.

        Today was the day for me.

        I am a writer.

        Every inch of my humbly raised, don’t brag about your own truth, or claim your claim to fame feelings said it is OK to say this out loud today.

        I am a writer.

        If not, pray tell, what are these?

        The journals on the left were filled in the last three years; the journals on the right, covered in cellophane, are waiting to be filled.  I am currently writing in the journal down front. There are many, many more that have been stored or even thrown away- only because I knew more would come. This does not include the  300 plus posts I have written.

        I taught writing everyday of my working life in a classroom with teenagers who all had stories to tell.

        My technique at teaching writing (which is almost like saying I teach SOULS-how ridiculous) changed over the years.

        It is true. You really do get wiser. I first played by the rules. That black and white thinking was a life raft in the maelstrom of teaching at the high school level.

        Jamming your heart and soul thinking into a five paragraph essay is a painful and futile exercise.

        Then something loosened.  Aah…

        I began teaching writing by saying

‘An educated person has the ability to manipulate his/her own language.”

        And then I would say-

“Get after it.”

        I am a writer. Not because I have a degree in English and Journalism, not because I am and always will be an English teacher, not because I have a masters degree or because I have taught at both the high school and college level, but simply because,

        I am a writer.

        I have the requisite thanks but no thanks letter from a magazine publisher to whom I sent an essay . The editor’s thank you note was even hand-written. What a contradiction in terms: civil negativity.

        Today I no longer categorize writing as something published by others.  I can’t afford to wait that long. The withering that might cause is a nightmare I can’t stand to think about.

        That to me would be like saying you are not a mother unless you have received an award.

        So this morning I say to all of you, in my own unique attempt at a DIY tutorial for anyone reading:

Claim it. Say it.

        I am a writer.