Is a journalist a writer?
Is a novelist a writer?
Is a middle-aged lady with a hand-me-down computer a writer or a hack?
Do you have to study writing to be a writer?
Maybe a writer is someone who gets paid for words.
Ah-ha! That’s me. I’m a copywriter.
But don’t bother looking for my name in the byline or on the jacket cover. I write quips and posts and websites. I ghostwrite blogs and emails and pamphlets. And I love it.
I’m a writer despite what Ms. T told me in 1989 in my Senior Lit class at Penn Harris Madison High School. The assignment? In 500 words, explain how Disney's Cinderella affects modern women's pursuit of happiness.
I never met anyone like Ms. T before. Her feministic worldview permeated classroom lectures. While small in stature, she loomed large and cranky as she marched around the classroom in worn Birkenstocks while the bun in her hair escaped the No. 2 pencil, mysteriously holding it in place.
She looked at my final draft from over the top of her bifocals and shook her head in frustration. Or was it disgust? I got a “D” on that assignment. She wrote across the top in BIG RED marker, “You write like you speak!” with a sad face.
And what I heard was, “Stephanie, you’re a terrible writer".”
As the story goes, my stint in college was aimless and short-lived. I didn’t know what to do if I couldn’t study where I wanted to be. Instead, I began my life, began a family, moved on, and never thought much about my education.
But all the while, friend, all - the - while I wrote. I have stacks of journals and letters, books of quotes, and copies of a little stint I did for the local newspaper. I’ve always written.
Am I a writer? What kind of writer am I? I’m a grown woman still musing over the concept.
What I know to be true is that I have a thing inside that longs to be set free. Is it a talent or … my subconscious? When I feel brave, when I feel most like myself -I crack open the chamber of my soul where it lives, and I let it out. I let it free, and it flies like tossed glitter.
It swoops up
and down
and around me, much like the magic that transformed Cinderella’s rags to ballgown.
But I’m not a princess.
In fact, I am spectacularly normal.
Aren’t most of us perfectly unspectacular?
Which brings me to believe that, perhaps, we all have a thing that lives inside of us.
Mine might be words.
You might live with a panache for:
leadership
mentoring
loving
imagining
teaching
creating
cooking
banking
playing
speaking
counseling
plumbing
developing or
parenting.
Maybe the thing I’m trying to describe is hope. Wouldn’t that be nice? If, despite what others can’t see in us, we believe in ourselves? Imagine allowing yourself permission to attend to that hope inside. Imagine living with hope. Imagine contributing your gift to the world - your family - our neighborhood!
Cinderella had hope. She had a little help, too. Those mice and Fairy Godmother really did right by her!
Too much time has passed, and I can no longer remember the angle I took in my senior essay. I only remember the discouragement I’ve let live in my head all these years. But I choose to believe that Cinderella was correct when she said, '‘They can’t order me to stop dreaming.” because, as it turns out - I am a writer.