Blogger or writer

I write, but am I a writer? I've been mucking around with this question for quite some time. Then, being the good blogger I am - I decided to blog about it. Or is that write about it?

Anyone who knows me can tell you what I did next. – Yep – I Googled it – using the search terms "can I call myself a writer". There were 19,700,000 hits. That's right, over nineteen million. Since this topic has been so thoroughly covered, it seems a bit redundant to go over all the same stuff, so I'll just touch on a few thoughts about my own writing.

I like to write – well, sort of – in a masochistic, therapeutic, self-purging kind of way. Maybe 'like' isn't the right word. Sometimes it's an excruciating, paper-cut-bathed-in-vinegar, wrench-it-from-my gut process; and sometimes it's an intense, pounding-on-the-keyboard-'til-it-smokes race to the last paragraph, sentence and period. Occasionally, the words and ideas flow – the metaphors make sense and precise words conveying exactly what I mean pop into my head without the aid of a thesaurus. The latter doesn't happen all that often – at least for me. Maybe it's because I've been only dabbling at this writing thing on and off and not taking it very seriously; maybe it's because I'm just not very good at it. Whatever the reason, it's not always easy.

So why do it? Because I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea that I'm afraid I'll forget if I don't write it down; because when I haven't written anything for awhile, ideas and topics keep surfacing that beg me to write about them; because it's a way for me to think out loud and analyze my thoughts in critical black and white; because, one day, I'd like my children to read my deepest, inner thoughts; and because I need to get the words and thoughts out or I'll explode. -- So, I write.

Mainly, it's a hobby. Would I like to be published? You bet. I have this fantasy that I'll become the oldest newly published author in Canada – but I'm not holding my breath. Meanwhile, I'll just keep on blogging, doing little writing exercises, journaling, and filing away all my little bits and pieces that I write between midnight and 3 a.m.

Does any of this allow me to call myself a writer? I still don't know. Writer sounds too presumptuous, too professional, too Stephen King, Amy Tan, Kazuo Ishiguro.

Maybe I'm just someone who needs to get the words out and it's why I find blogging so appealing. There are no constraints, no deadlines and almost anything goes.

I think Woody Cavenaugh expressed my confusion most succinctly, "Am I a blogger who writes, or a writer who blogs, or a writer of blogs."

And so ends, another ramble.