Tomorrow, I Will Write.

Today, I am officially claiming the title of “writer.”

I am not a writer because I am full of ideas screaming to break free (though they are), and it’s not because I have been published (though I have). I am a writer because I write.

Throughout my life, I have pushed against the title of writer. It felt wrong to claim it as I was no Jane Austen or Brontë sister. I didn’t write a massive series of mysteries like Carolyn Keene — Of course, now I know that was a pseudonym under which many people did ghostwriting, but when I was a kid, “Nancy Drew” was half of the stack of books I took out of the library every week. The background of the writer didn’t matter nearly as much as solving the mystery before Nancy Drew!

In my mind, being a writer meant too much to me. That title was a thing to aim for, not a thing to be grasped. However, despite the loftiness of the title of writer in my mind, I still wrote.

I wrote because it leapt out of me. I wrote my heart because it felt like I would burst if I didn’t. I wrote because no one was there to hear me, and I wrote because I didn’t want anyone to hear. I wrote because life is hard, life is beautiful, and life is strange. I wrote because they say there are never enough words for all the feels, but if someone didn’t try, how would we know? I wrote.

So today I claim the title. Today, I admit that I have been a writer for a very long time.

And what about tomorrow?
Tomorrow I will write.

Katrina