Anything can be.  Aren’t those lovely words? Strictly speaking, they’re not true – there are some things I just can’t be.  I can’t be an astronaut, Miss America, or a brain surgeon.  But there are so many things that I can do.  All my life, I wanted to be a writer.  I said I would write when this or that eased up, or when I had something to say, or after my child was grown, or I didn’t have to work any long, or or or.

I suffered from imposter syndrome.  Wouldn’t call myself a writer because I wasn’t.  I told myself I had nothing anybody wanted to hear.  I told myself nobody was going to read my drivel.  I told myself that I had too many other things that required my attention.  But like the siren’s song, it called to me.  And one day, those things didn’t matter so much.  I still think, now again, who wants to hear my drivel.  And I still struggle with coming up with something meaningful to say. 

One day, though, I internalized Shel Silverstein’s “Anything Can Be” and I was off and running.  I took classes.  I started a blog.  I joined writing groups.  And inch by inch I got more comfortable calling myself a writer. 

I still resist the term author.  It seems to me that I need to publish a major work before I don that hat.  I’ve never looked up the dictionary definition of the two before.  I wonder what the differences are.

Okay… They seem to be identical other than author throws in the word professional.  Is it my profession?  I don’t know.  It’s my core being, but I’m not making a living from it.  Am I an expert at it?  Far from it.  But anything can be.  I do hope to supplement my social security check with my writing.  Anything can be.

I usually have a dozen or so things out on submission at any given time.  Right now, I only have four and they’ve been out since June.  I need to clean up some stuff and start the merry-go-round again.

Submitting doesn’t bother me – I expect the rejections — but I don’t think of them as rejections.  They are “not good fits”.  What I write, what I feel called to write is not trendy.  Publishers, agents, and journals seem to want edgy, ugly, angry, or sad.  Dark.  Foreboding.  Traumatic. 

I am Little Mary Sunshine in the matrix. Not a good fit.  In my personal rejections, they tell me that.  “We really liked this, but it’s not a good fit for our journal” or there was the one where they said, “The staff really enjoyed this and had fun with it but it’s not a good fit.”

So now I pay close attention to the aesthetic of a journal.  I just got a rejection from one I had high hopes for.  That kind of took the wind out of my sail.  Conversely, I did just get my short story Secondhand Smoke into a good home.  That story began 20 years ago.  These things take time.  Anything can be.

I want an audience.  I like reading for people and I like hearing that my words meant something to someone.  It fuels my ego, which satisfies my id, and keeps my superego on the straight and narrow.  It allows me to wear that label of writer comfortably.

Some folks write with no desire to share or publish.  Intellectually, I can understand and respect that, but my inner child doesn’t.  Don’t we all aspire to “Look, Mom!  See what I did!”  Or is that just me. 

Maybe my ego is out of balance. Perhaps I should want to write more just for me.  To figure out what I think.  To solidify my opinions, map my likes and dislikes, and explore my id.

But oh how I love an audience.  I think I’ll blame it on my astrological sign.  I am a Leo.

Anything can be…what sweet words to whisper to a child.  To my inner child.  Anything can be.