What makes a writer?

I remember years ago, when I was a little girl, my mom was watching something, and someone asked someone what they did. The person responded that they were a writer. The host, of course, immediately asked "Oh, what have you written?" and the person responded that they had not yet written anything, but they wanted to and were working on something.

I clearly remember my mom scoffing and saying that they were not a writer if they had not written anything. Anyone could want to write something, but wanting to write did not make them a writer.

Years later, when I began working to make a living as a writer, my mom encouraged my efforts. I was not yet a writer, but I wanted to be one. Then one day I got a check in the mail. It was not much, only $25, but it was a turning point in my efforts. I no longer wanted to be a writer, I was a writer. I was being paid for my ability to form words into something that others could read and understand. Into something useful for others.

My mom was proud of my work, and there were times when if I had not been earning a living as a writer that we might not have made it from one month to the next. Even today, my work as a writer is keeping me afloat and going forward in the wake of the passing of my parents.

So, what makes a writer? At one time, centuries ago, a writer was someone that knew how to mix stuff together to make pictures on rocks or cave walls. Later it would be someone that was able to use a stick to make records on wax or clay tablets. Years later a writer would be someone whose hands were stained from the ink of his quill pen. Then they sported stains from the ink in the cloth ribbon of the cranky typewriter that they worked on.

Today a writer can no longer be easily identified by the stains of ink, but you can still spot them if you know what to look for.

I have not had long fingernails... ever. I have to keep them trimmed back for typing. Well, I have to keep my index and first finger and right thumb trimmed, the others will, on occasion, grow longer since they are rarely used in my typing. A writer can type, even when they do a hunt-and-peck typing as I do, without looking at where the keys on the keyboard are at - and type fast. You have to, if you type slow, you waste time. And a writer will have a worn out keyboard that they still refuse to replace, despite the fact that the keys are half worn away and there is a groove cut into the space bar. Why? Because it is comfortable, all of the use they have put the keyboard through they know the keys, they know where they are and what pressure they need to get the keys to type.

Writers, in my experience, are creatures of comfort. We like our writing space to have certain comforts. A comfortable chair, a comfortable keyboard, a comfortable mug for our choice of beverage.

Most importantly, how to define a writer from any of a million other various types of people that wear out keyboards (such as gamers), a writer has the ability to actually earn a living from their writing. They might take jobs no one else wants, but someone has to write the ad copy for the local septic pump company - right? The important thing, at the end of the month, is to be able to say "I was paid to write." That was the measure my mom held up, and how she defined me as being a writer. I was paid for my writing, and paid consistently, month after month, so that we could depend on getting a specific amount of money from my writing work to see us through a month.

I am a writer.