A Writer's Life

A Writer’s Life

Are you a poet, or a writer? Am I?

I saw a post recently about a post office in Japan to which one can send letters to people who will never receive them. I couldn’t stop thinking about what the existence of such a place meant and had to write about it. Here is the poem I wrote:

The Missing Post-Office

On the island of Awashima in Japan,

there is a post-office which never opens,

but receives letters never intended to be read;

letters written to the lost, the missing

and the dead. I thought it strange at first,

but all I can think of now is, if I wrote to you,

if I sent the letter, is it possible that I would miss you less?

Like many of us, I suffer from impostor syndrome. Even though I have been processing life through writing ever since I learned how to write words and sentences and still have my very first journal which I began aged six. Even though writing has been the one constant in my life for almost fifty years. Even though I have often considered giving up on my dream of becoming a published writer, and now have a publishing contract for my memoir. Even though I have at times tried to stop writing to see how it would feel and found myself drawn back to it again and again. So I’ve decided to stop doubting myself, to lean into the writing life and see what happens.

The journey has led me to examine what being a writer actually means to me. There is so much information out there about writing routines, about the discipline and dedication a creative life requires, that much time can be lost trying to fit in to what others consider to be the right way to do it. You might think you are not a real writer because you don’t write for a certain length of time every day; because you don’t produce a set number of words every time you sit down to write, or because you don’t submit, haven’t been published.

I have watched countless videos on writing, read all the Paris Review author interviews, have searched for the answer for years, only to discover, at long last, that being a writer is simply about living in the world a certain way, about processing life through the written word. It is having an inexorable need to record the findings of these explorations in writing and to share them occasionally with others, especially when you feel this interaction might inspire, console, or make another feel seen, make them feel less alone.

I write about my daily walks in the forest with my dog, Daphne, about all the flowers and birds we might see. About the foxes that occasionally cross our path, or the heather bushes that this year were late to flower. I write about love and loss, about the sea and migrating birds, about times when I felt broken and the most unlikely encounters that helped me put myself back together again. I write about life.

So, yes, I am a writer. I am also a poet, and although to many the two are considered quite different, to me they have always been the same. I write and sometimes it’s prose, sometimes it’s poetry, sometimes it’s a combination of the two, but it always stems from the same desire to write down in my own words what I see and understand of the world around me.

Are you a writer, or a poet? if the answer is yes, even an uncertain one, what does it actually mean to you?