You Know You're a Writer When... ✍

... you realize that the question is silly.

If you write, you're a writer. There are shades. Styles if you will. Bloggers. Essayists. Short story specialists. Novelists. People who write all of that and more. Screenplays. Games. All writers.

Until they stop.

When you stop writing, you're no longer a writer. You give up the mantle when you stop writing. Kind of like anything else. When you wake up, you're no longer sleeping. When you get home, you're not a traveler.

Unlike those kinds of things, easily delineated. Easily defined. Writing doesn't allow easy definitions of "this is writing. This is not writing." Especially in fiction, the lines blur in the back of your mind. Sometimes in front of your eyes. A scent conjures a scene. A tune triggers a memory that invokes a character. Stories swirl in the bottom of your coffee cup. The plot reveals itself in the tea leaves. 

None of that is putting words on the page, but all of that is writing.

Sure, at some point you need to write it down to see what you think about it, but don't get bogged down in the noise.

Sometimes you have to take a break. Step back. Try to not-write for a time. Re-fill the well, as Steven Covey says. Sometimes those breaks can be long. Weeks. Months. Even years.

It's an interesting challenge for a writer. Not writing. It's easy to not put words on the page. It's much harder to not tell stories in your mind. To not spin yarns from day dreams and dryer lint.

In the end, I think we're all writers. I think it's just that some of us can't seem to keep it inside. 

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