At Last

I am a writer.
It has taken me decades to say that, and when I do, I am not yet distanced from that beat of self-doubt, waiting for my personal omniscient narrator to call me on it. In the all-too-recent past, when asked about what I do, I’d offer up parenting or adjunct “real” jobs I’ve had such as coaching and evaluating college applications. I am a writer. It sounded like wishful thinking, as in a tutu-sporting four-year old claiming to be a ballerina. Sometimes I think the reason I can now state that I am a writer publicly, with a modicum of confidence, is that I have published books to prove it. But the truth is, I have been a writer for a very long time.
I was a writer when I started writing surreptitious notes in middle school. My notes were much more enthralling to me than balanced equations or the Industrial Revolution. My note-writing tone was snide and cryptic. Everything a meek thirteen-year old bookworm might suppress in an academic environment was expunged onto notebook paper, artfully-folded and passed under the desktop veil of secrecy to my friends. The student Laura may have been quiet and sedulous, but the note writer LK was fearless. Those covert missives were me, set free.
In college, as an English major, whatever time was not spent reading about writers was spent writing about what writers wrote. Oddly, I enjoyed it. I found loved the process of writing so much that the simple act of stringing words together was enough. I was one of those incredibly annoying people who wrote more than the assignment called for. This irritated not only my peers but my professors. “Chose an adjective,” was an oft-expressed red-inked notation. But with so many great ones out there, this edict was not only challenging, it was impossible. How could I limit/circumscribe/restrain myself?
My first job out of college did not involve writing. For that reason, and several others, it just about killed me. I did write letters, though, and as prosaic as that might sound, my letters sustained me. I ached to write to my family and my friends about my life, often right in the midst of living it. I suspect my letters were hyperbolic, but writing them was both cathartic and grounding. I got up in the morning and dutifully did what I got paid to do, but I lived in the contemplation and execution of the letters I wrote. In fact, my love of writing influenced the way I lived my life, since I was willing to do some wildly uncharacteristic things because I figured they would make good copy. Embellishment of reality as a writing method now has a name, creative non-fiction, and that’s what I wrote. To me, it wasn’t a deliberate genre, but a scrolling narrative of my existence, amplified.
When I was asked to write my first book, I was simultaneously thrilled and terrified. Like a farm-team player getting called up to the major leagues, I felt like I impressed someone at practice but in an actual game, I was in over my head to the point of paralysis. I struggled to write a coherent sentence. As much of a show-off as I was writing for loved ones, I wilted, writing for a paying audience. Thankfully, I adjusted, and now, I am seldom daunted by assignments.
The first time I felt like I wasn’t just some yammering imposter of a writer was not when I was sitting behind a table signing books at my first book-signing (during which all I could think was, why would anyone want me to deface a perfectly nice book with my signature?) or when I was walking past a bookstore and saw one of my books prominently displayed in the window with a bright yellow 20% discount sticker slapped on its cover. No, it was when I got a rejection e-mail from The New Yorker saying that my essay wasn’t quite right for them, but urging me to keep trying. My immediate reaction was to wonder why on earth would I need some editor to encourage me to keep writing? Of course I’ll keep writing. I’m a writer.
Being a professional writer is a job, like any other. I park my butt in front of my computer and get to work every single day. Some of what I write is stuff I’m hired to write, which requires discipline and occasional teeth gritting. There’s also my own writing, unassigned and inextricably connected to who I am and to how I see the world. Both types of writing have a common methodology –words- and a common purpose -to communicate, but one thing they don’t share is a common genesis. And, while it’s great to be employed, it pales in comparison to being inspired.