Are you a writer?

      When was the moment you felt confident to call yourself a writer? Was it when you signed your first book deal or when you first saw your book in Borders? Or when you won a writing competition? I wonder when that light-bulb  moment was when you suddenly felt,  YES I'm a writer...

Up until that moment inside your head the word has been bashing back and forth as you settle to write a thousand words a day. And every time you hover at Starbucks for a skinny latte and peruse the crowd for inspiration for your next would be hero or heroine. You laugh to yourself thinking hm, maybe you're a writer. 

When you travel, the landscapes and scenery take, you to another world and ideas for stories and plots take over. You breathe in deep, shake your head and smile. I must be a writer, or else I've totally lost it!!! 

You may even whisper to your friends, who already believe you're very strange and a bit of a recluse that you write, but you blush profusely when they look at you wide-eyed, and you just know they are thinking "Hm and I'm the Queen of England."

I have been writing for four and a half years, boy has that flown. I have published one short story through Amazon called The Vineyards of Allegretti as a sort of dip your toe in the water kind of experiment! I completed my first full-length YA romantic fantasy last year and ever since I have been re-writing it based on the advice of a couple of interested editors. I have an adult romance a quarter of the way through and another that is barely a couple of chapters. When I am not writing, I am reading. I have become, obsessed and driven by the need to improve and strengthen my writing.

I did last summer after receiving some horrible comments about my writing from someone close to me, almost completely throw in the towel and give up. However, I have always been a survivor no matter what life throws at me. I allowed myself to wallow for a time. I think mainly because I was hurt and shocked, and then I picked myself up and carried on.  I realized that what no-one can take away from you is the desire or the absolute love of what you do. 

I don't write because it's a job, or because I have to, or because I'm paid to ( I wouldn't mind), but no it's almost like I have no choice, my fingers tap over the keys, and I guess it's like creating music I see what words I can put together to make a beautiful song. It takes time, incredible patience, devotion and complete determination not to let those that undermine, ridicule and don't believe in you get you down. And it's funny because if the purpose was to make me stop it has only served to fuel my desire to continue and prove them wrong. I believe the only way to succeed is to not give up.   

 The moment I believed I was a writer truly only happened recently, and it wasn't because I had achieved anything. I was on a short trip away up in New Hampshire, and when I walked into our rented cottage by the lake, I just knew I was a WRITER. As I walked in I was transported to heaven. The scene that greeted me couldn't have been more perfect. The view of the lake was brought into the cottage through a wall of glass windows. It was eerily quiet, secluded and right in front of the window was an antique writing table. It simply beckoned for me to sit and write and that's what I did. Bliss. Sitting there tapping one word in front of the other I had no qualms about who I was any longer...