When do you feel like a writer?

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Some days, I'm not sure I'm much of a writer. My productivity is low lately. Putting word after word is difficult for me. The process of writing is not an easy one. At work, teaching at a local community college, I spend my days talking about how to make the writing process easier, but lets face it, it never truly becomes easy. At least in my case, once I start writing, the thoughts begin to flow. But, that initial sitting down to write is difficult. In today's world, there are so many things vying for attention - all the myriad distractions. So many things exist to divert our attention, while writing challenges us to channel our attention and thoughts. On a daily basis, I make excuses to stay in the world of diversion, mostly because it is easier.

I started this year hoping to write more in my spare time. I have been successful, but only by degrees. I thought I would spend more time writing short stories to fill my time, but have only had starts and stops in that regard. Where I have had some success is in finding time to gather my thoughts/feelings and chronicle my days in journal form. For me, journaling helps to empty my mind, clear a sometimes heavy heart - it's a catharsis more than anything. I don't write for long, and I don't write everyday, but when the spirit moves (perhaps, few times weekly), I try to put pen to page, and sort through the issues of my day.

Feeling like a writer is something that most writers struggle with. Some love the old platitude, "If you write, then you're a writer," but we know the heart of the matter is much more complex. As a younger man (college days and before), I desperately clung to the idea of myself as a writer. I was a writer. Or at any rate, I would one day be a writer. I could see introducing myself at dinner parties, perhaps with an air of pretension in my voice, "I am a writer." However, as I have matured, I know that the identity of writer is a heavy mantle to assume.

Even when I wrote for two Podunk weekly newspapers and book reviews for a small metro daily, I still didn't feel like a writer. A check came with my name on it. I was paid for my writing. By all standards, this should have been the moment I declared myself a writer. And, yet, that moment never came. For too many writers, I think writing is there to fill some void in the self. You may not even know you are filling it. But it is there. It needs to be filled. It could be the thirst for attention, notoriety , or the father-son projects you never had, but you need it for a reason.

As I have grown up, and matured, I realize that writing is less about how you associate with the identity, and more about how you associate with the process. Writing is an important process to me. There is a hunger to take part in that process. If that makes me a writer, that's all well and good, but assuming that identity and bolstering my sense of self is not what keeps me up at night. Maybe the platitude should be changed to, "When you write, you're writing." Break it down into almost Cartesian terms, and put the focus on the process.

I know I'm just riffing on an idea here. I know I'm not the first to go woe-is-me on writer's block. Folks probably suffered from writer's block even when they were writing on blocks. I'm just trying to make sense of my own little corner of the world, and writing this helped.