For as long as I can remember I\u2019ve wanted to claim the identity of writer. To come out of the closet, so to say. To stop thinking my obsession with stories and words has to be private. I\u2019ve written and written and squirreled away hundreds of pages over the years, everything from conversations to descriptions of the cities I\u2019ve called home. I\u2019ve read about other writers\u2019 process, and listened to radio interviews, and read books with an eye to metaphors. But I\u2019ve always been afraid to call myself a writer.<\/p>\n
What does it take, to claim what we\u2019ve always wanted, or known ourselves to be?<\/p>\n
For years I ached to have a child. In 2012, I had my Basil at last, a squirming, sunshiny boy who\u2019s now 10 months. I claimed the identity of mother instantly and completely when I pushed him out, worried over him in the NICU for 48 hours, brought him home to our snug apartment. But then I claimed it little by little as I got used to how others saw me, what it was like to go everywhere with him. I continue to claim it as I learn about naps, and cooking for a family, and what it means to parent with JJ, and how to be myself while caring for my child.<\/p>\n
Claiming the identity of writer has never been instantaneous or complete. I heard Barbara Kingsolver once say in an interview that she didn\u2019t imagine she could be a writer as a kid, because only dead, white men were writers. And look at her now. In Animal Dreams<\/em>, her fourth book, she writes as part of a letter from one sister to another:<\/p>\n “[T]he very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a \u00a0distance, but live right in it, under its roof (p.299)”.<\/p>\n I figured out a long time ago that I hope to write. It\u2019s time now, at the dawn of 2013, to live inside these writing hopes, occupy them as a place where sunshine can pour through windows, where flowers can bloom, where writing can become something that belongs to me.<\/p>\n A new year. A new beginning, on this blog. An essay|story|post here, every Tuesday.<\/p>\n Want to join me? What do you hope to begin, this year?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For as long as I can remember I\u2019ve wanted to claim the identity of writer. To come out of the closet, so to say. To stop thinking my obsession with stories and words has to be private. I\u2019ve written and written and squirreled away hundreds of pages over the years, everything from conversations to descriptions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,133,92,21],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":936,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions\/936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfieldnotes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}