Reminder: I am a writer

Sometimes it's easy to forget that. Sometimes it's easy to not be - to just, well, stop doing what I love, which is writing fiction, and feel completely disconnected from it. 

Me and good ol' fic-ti-oni, we've got a love-hate relationship one-third of the time, and the other two-thirds we're like cousins who live on two different continents and every now and again one of us (me) thinks either fondly or snarl-ly about the other (who does not think and, therefore, does not think about me) in a sort of far-off way. Like, I remember that one time when . . . 

Grad school is draining, and it's hard to keep the creative writing going when all your mental energy's being sucked up by writing critical nonsense, but I don't need an excuse even half as good as that; I'd spend most of my time not-writing even if I weren't slaving away. It's what I do all summer while I sit on my hiney. In fact, I'm so good at not-writing that one might accurately label me a fiction not writer. 

But alas. This is supposed to be a happy post. And it will be. As of now. 

Okay, so I usually use a computer - but 
this just looks so much nicer! 

Last week, a writing professor at my school asked if I wanted to read in the department's reading series next year. It's not some big thing - usually just Pittsburgh writers or lit. professors who write creative stuff on the side, that sort of thing - but it made me feel really, well, good. And excited. 

It's not too often that somebody who actually writes and publishes fiction gives a darn about mine. He's never read my stuff - though he's offered to, which is really cool - so for all he knows (and all I know), I'm terrible. But the fact that he took me and all that darn MFA hard work serious reminded me that I am a writer. And it got me re-siked (def. not a real word) for working on that novel I've been fiddling with for not a short amount of time. 

To be a writer, all you need to do, I remembered, is write. It's not about how many pages you produce, it's not about if the piece gets published, it's not about what other people think about your work.

It's about writing. Pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, brain bouncing along. And that's a kind of freeing thing to think about.