Not a Writer

I've never considered myself a writer. Always a reader. My crowning achievement in the third grade was reading a Nancy Drew a day. In the sixth grade, it was that I read all 1032 pages of Gone With the Wind. In seventh grade I had an entire class devoted to reading. I read nearly 100 books that year, including The Grapes of Wrath, Go Ask Alice, The Bell Jar and To Kill a Mockingbird. Impressive, no? When I started college I had every intent of majoring in business. Until I took an English class and those books began calling to me. How could I NOT major in English? I NEEDED to know more about Shakespeare and James Joyce, the Harlem Renaissance and Post-Modernism. I NEEDED to read. Fortunately for me a part of the requirement for my English major was to take a writing class. I surprised myself by being not quite as bad at it as I had thought. Creative writing, sure I can do that. But I'm not a writer.



Then I read a book the other day. It was a perfectly acceptable book, I guess. A decent, though predictable, storyline, believable characters, interesting setting, etc., etc. It was a New York Times Bestseller, so it wasn't that bad, really. And yet, the entire time I read it I was furious. I would throw the book across the bed in frustration, whine and moan in annoyance. Because I could have very easily written that book. That book, with "New York Times Bestseller" written across the top. And all I could say to myself was, "Well, why haven't you done it?" So here I sit writing. It's a start I suppose, to see if I have the dedication and determination to write something, anything, even a blog. But I'm not a writer.