Last night I was the hostess for the monthly meeting of the writer’s network, a friendly meeting of self-sustaining writers in my area.

After we had gathered and before the formal meeting began we introduced ourselves. I hate this moment in every meeting. I hate to promote myself, but I also know that if I don’t offer a self-promotion, those listening will mentally dismiss me.

I struggle between wanting to lie and sticking with a more or less accurate version of the truth. I want to be able to rattle off some amazing statistics about my accomplishments (published nine books, three of them nominated for prizes, one little Pulitzer under my belt, all by the age of 35) and the TRUTH: I am just a fledgling, working away in my office day by day, trying to make prosaic sense from my scrambled brain.

There are of course things I can mention: I write respectable journalism. I get paid to do it. I love the process. I love meeting the people I interview, getting a window into their lives and struggles and accomplishments. I love crafting a story that will be clean, efficient and still have a soul that reaches out to the average reader.

I put my heart into everything I write. No word can sneak onto the page with me standing as the vigilant gatekeeper. And yet I am really just a novice and (sigh) novicehood may last a lifetime.

Writing is a vulnerable pursuit. I can hardly hate anyone’s writing knowing what it is to unburden oneself into a faceless abyss. Yet I know also that venting alone is not the signature of good writing. Words must be unpacked coherently, and in such a way that is personal, universal and touching. And to be a Writer we must be read.

In this month’s issue of The Sun magazine a contributor wrote about her experience as a visiting home health aide to a “writer wannabe.” The author crafting the story claims she is not a writer and yet there she is writing, and published in a magazine high on my desirable publications list. Her essay is about her own travails with writing and nursing and addiction. Now on the better side of recovery she has supposedly given up writing.

The patient she visits is a woman in her late 80’s, who labels herself a writer, living a bohemian lifestyle, penning thoughts throughout the day and casting them into the morass of her room. According to the author, her “self-delusion” helps her find meaning and purpose in an otherwise purposeless life. It seems to the author she should just give it up because she will never succeed as a writer at this late stage.

We have two characters: one a “Writer” because she is published as a writer, the other not a “Writer” because she is not published.

Who is the writer? The writer who writes to make sense of her dwindling days or the writer who writes to prove she is a non-writer? Whew. It’s a mess.

As a wannabe “Writer” myself, I decide both are writers. A writer is anyone who writes!!! Even a writer who writes but says she isn’t a writer and a writer who will never be published.

The question isn’t who is a writer but who has an audience. Must a writer have an audience to be a “Writer”? Does the proverbial tree fall in the forest and still make a sound if none can hear it?

As just the reader, I can’t judge. Instead, I applaud the author for her beautiful piece of descriptive prose, crafting two characters struggling to find self-worth and beauty in a difficult world. And I also like the patient, heroically maintaining a respectable identity beyond one that society would assign to the old and sick. In the end there is a little twist, no spoiler here. It is worth reading on your own! The Sun Magazine, “The Endless Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour” by Sybil Smith, April 2015.

By my definition, I can call myself a writer because I do write and at least I don’t (yet) leave them in piles in my disheveled room. And as long as I can lick a stamp I still have hope of finding an audience.