what it is to be a writer

Five or six days a year, I call myself (to myself) a writer. I tangle with nothing but words. No phone calls. No client engagements. No volunteering. No outreach. No bills, no laundry, no gardening, no dusting, not even the making of dinner (maybe). All day long, I do what writing is—fill the backs of scrap pages with sentences and scratches, think of myself as making progress, put my head against a pillow and wait for sleep, which is to wait for the dream, the black ink of my open-capped pen waiting.

The dream blurs. The pen stains. Most of what I write will be discarded later. The pages upon pages will distil to a handful of sentences and the scene I thought I was writing will prove to be nothing more than preamble. A tease. A misdirect. A different opening.

But. I get closer, period by comma. I get closer and I remember, on those sacred days, what it is to be a writer.