I am a Writer

A friend asked me recently to explain what I mean when I say that I am a writer. I wrote this for him, and then when I was done, I figured what I had written would actually make a pretty good blog post.

I am a non-fiction writer. I wrote fiction in middle/high school when it was assigned, but it is not something that I feel compelled to do or talented in. The stories I do love to share are true stories of people around the world who are making a positive difference in the lives of people around them. That is why I wanted to work in the communications department of a Christian non-profit.  There are so many amazing stories of what God’s people are doing around the world, and I want to be part of the crew of people who get to hear those stories and write them in accessible and compelling ways for readers.

Foundationally, I like writing because I love reading. I grew up reading as many books as I could – mostly fiction but I also would read biographies and books containing the stories of important social movements. I found this second group of books inspiring and challenging. They called me to be a part of a world bigger than myself and far more exciting than I could imagine as a girl in grade school.

It is quite ironic, actually, because when I was in elementary school my mom basically gave up on making me write. I was homeschooled starting in first grade. Sometime that year, we went to the zoo. When we arrived home, my mother asked me to write one sentence about what I had seen at the zoo. I started crying hysterically and hid under the dining room table. At a loss, my mother decided to just encourage my reading and hoped that I would absorb spelling, grammar, sentence construction, etc. (all the basic building blocks of writing) for the time when I would need to write in middle school and beyond. Her plan worked.

For me, saying “I am a writer” means more than “I write.” I love words. I love well-constructed sentences and paragraphs. A well-used vocabulary word, a properly placed comma, and a complicated thought made clear in an understandable sentence all give me joy.

I am an internal-processer – there are so many times when all the thoughts inside my head get jumbled up and won’t sort themselves out. When I take time to write it all down, my thoughts start to make sense. Rather than being overwhelmed by what’s going on inside my brain, I can start to own my thoughts and harness the power in them to positively change my life and encourage change in the people around me. As a writer, writing and thinking are inseparable. But I am certainly not a philosopher. Philosophy, thinking about thinking, theoretical propositions – all these either confused me terribly or bore me to death. I am interested in practical life application.

Right now, most of the writing I do is journaling. I also have this blog, on which I mostly share anecdotes from my life. I love making people smile – I think my sense of humor comes out differently in my writing. I’m not a comedian by any stretch of the imagination, but I think I have the ability to use words to show the humor in situations.

Overall, though, I feel that in journaling and blogging, most of the writing I’m doing is actually for myself. At some point I may feel called to write more for other people, but right now still have so many questions about life and so few answers that it would feel presumptuous for me to write authoritatively on any subject, other than my own life and experiences. I don’t think I will ever write a book – certainly not fiction and non-fiction is still unlikely. I am definitely the kind of person who wants to live life myself, not just write about it for other people.

So there you have it.

Just because, here's a photo of my Maine island. True confessions: I miss it.