The other day, I asked out loud on Facebook whether my friends thought that writers were born or made.
Most answered some version of “born, but….”
As in: Writers are born with the creative spark that’s a prerequisite to creative talent, but it’s a spark that requires not only nurturing, but also education, practice, and perfection in order to mature into talent, and then success.
Mostly, I’d agree.
I think about my own journey as a writer, and sometimes, admittedly, I even hiccup a little calling myself a writer at all.
When I think of myself as a writer, I still think of myself as the girl who wrote love poems in a small, tear-stained spiral bound notebook that I hid in the back of a drawer.
When I think of myself as a writer, I still think of the jittery young woman who spilled coffee on her pants on her way to her very first feature story interview for a newspaper article.
When I think of myself as a writer, I still think about blogging as playing for a minor league team, and published literary novels as the World Series.
I still think of myself as a novice, and sometimes as a would be somebody if only I had the time.
Then there are moments, hours, days even, when I catch a scent of my destiny and it smells like poetry and Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and an antique oak writing desk facing a picture window.
The leaves casually drop from the trees as if there’s still time…
As if there’s only time.
…and words to discover.
Words slowly strung together like colored beads on a braided rope.
and yadda yadda, an aliyah blog 