Write Stuff Cafe

I like to do an activity where I trace my writing timeline. I think back to all different writing that I have done throughout my life. Even as far back as when I was in elementary school. There are certain assignments I remember. And then through my career there is different writing I have done, either as a guest blogger for sites or with some of my teachers or even some articles that I have published in education magazines. And then more recently, I have been a contributing author, writing both a vignette for one book and a whole chapter for another book. Actual books that are on my shelf in my home library. Books that I have contributed to and can physically hold in my hand,

When I look back over the years, I feel like I have “accomplished” a lot of writing. But am I an accomplished writer? Maybe. I think my issue is that I have wrongly thought that being an accomplished writer means that I am a published writer. For a long time, even though friends and colleagues have referred to me as a writer, I often described myself as a “wannabe writer.” I have been a reader of our writers’ words. I have spent decades devouring other people’s writing. But still I don’t see myself as part of that group. Published, successful writers. 

I think being in the MFA program for Creative Nonfiction Writing has helped me realize that I need to stop adding the “wannabe” to the beginning of my description. I am a writer. I have several published pieces out there in the world. People have asked me to produce different writing, and I have produced writing on my own. This program has helped push me to produce even more writing. Whether or not everything has been officially published somewhere does not and should not define how accomplished I am as a writer.

Will I ever consider myself a successful writer? I don’t know. How do we measure success? That is actually a question that I have spent a lifetime trying to answer as part of my career in education. We are always asking…how do we measure success? Student achievement. Teacher growth. School improvement. It’s a challenging question to answer. And to be honest, I don’t know if we actually want a final answer to that question. In education, are we ever really at a endpoint with successful learning? So when I turn that question towards my writing and my new label of for myself, writer, without the “wannabe” part, do I want to reach an endpoint where I define myself as successful? Or do I want to always be striving for that accomplishment, that success, that endpoint?