How we spend our days is who we are. Or maybe it’s how we’d like to spend our days. And while some people measure their credibility with degrees, workshops and residencies, or publishing credits, here’s a list of my own criteria to help you decide if you’re a “real writer.”

1. You feel naked without a notebook and pen. Worse, you find yourself isolated and scribbling away at parties, family gatherings, and work meetings.
2. You read like you’re holding an X-acto knife, ready to carve out anything useful or impressive, so that you can study techniques and strategies.
3. You study book releases and NYT Best Seller’s lists the way a fisherman studies his tide charts. Knowing where trends are moving toward, or away from, is critical as you pin yourself and your work to the shifting literary map.
4. The favorites bar on your web browser has links to GalleyCat, Theseaurus.com, Fake Name Generator, word frequency counter, or Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips. Whether you’re looking for the perfect word, the perfect name, or the proper use of lay vs. lie, you’ve placed these sites at your fingertips.
5. You belong to a writers’ group or guild, like Association of Writers and Writing Programs, The Author’s Guild, Society of Childrens Book Writers and Illustrators, or a local group.
6. You have read your work out loud in front of audiences, with or without Ativan.
7. You won’t answer the telephone when it rings, but you’ll send multi-paragraph text messages composed with complex sentences, anecdotes, and allusions.
8. On trips you pack more books and notebooks than changes of clothing. You are not distressed by wearing the same shirt twice, but completely lost if you run out of things to read.
9. You have 7 tall bookshelves and it’s still not enough.
10. You write daily, even if some of it consists of beautifully described journal entries and grocery lists.
11. You measure success of your day by word counts.
12. You talk about other writers and books as if they are members of your own family.

Consider yourself a writer if 3 or more on the list accurately describe you. And please share your own favorite signs in the comments below.

Writing and Listening — an Interview with Brooke Randel

1 week ago

As a young girl Brooke Randel knew little about the Holocaust—just that it was a catastrophe in which millions were murdered, and that her grandma Golda Indig barely escaped that fate. But her Bubbie never spoke about what happened, and the two spent most of their time together making pleasant memories: baking crescent roll cookies, playing gin rummy, and watching Baywatch. Until an unexpected phone call when Golda said, out of the blue: “You should write about my life. What happened in the war.” What results is a fascinating memoir—about one woman’s harrowing survival, and another’s struggle to excavate theRead more…