are you a writer?

If you’re a surgeon, you help fix people. You stitch bodies back together; sew the bits that have torn away into their appropriate places, plug the leaks, realign the breaks, remove the tumour, take out the shrapnel and place it, covered in blood, in the little metal kidney dish.

Are you a surgeon when you’re not operating? Of course you are. You’re just a surgeon without a scalpel in your hand.

“But are you really a writer if you’re not writing right now?” someone asked me once, when I mentioned a two month period when I barely put a pen to paper.

It’s was a good question, as needley as it may have felt the time. The advice that almost all successful writers give is to write religiously; write every day. It’s a hard habit to take up, probably because the step from concocting a story to writing the story often feels like a giant leap into the unknown.

When your mind is running at a hundred miles a minute, and there’s monologue and dialogue and thousands of words popping up in your path, but all you’re doing is sitting, silently waiting for a bus, can you call yourself a writer still? What if sitting, silently waiting for the bus goes on for a long, long time?

Are you a writer when you’re not writing? Of course you are. You’re just a writer without a pen in your hand.