Identity is weird. I’m a writer, but saying that casts this weird spell on people. I think the spell comes from a good place, a place of compassion and curiosity.

But it’s a deadly spell.

“So… how’s the writing going?”

Immediately I feel a fraud. How is the writing going? I haven’t published to the blog for ages, haven’t sat down to actually put an essay together for weeks.

No, months.

Who says I’m a writer?

“Oh, you know. It’s going”

The deflation is palpable. They’re rooting for me, they want to hear about the progress on the novel, or the collection of short stories, or the self-help book, or the… something. Anything.

How can you be a writer without something to show for it?

And yes, that’s a point of view, but what they’re really looking for is whether my writing has become work yet. Am I cranking out words every day? Am I doing the reps? Am I putting in the hours? Do I have projects and goals? Am I going to do NaNoWriMo this year?

What’s the plan?

And there is no plan. Writing is not a job, for me. Making it a job will make it lesser. Neither is it a hobby.

It’s just a thing that makes me feel at home.

Sometimes in my life, I don’t feel at home. I feel washed away, adrift on someone else’s idea of what my life should be. In some seasons, that’s necessary, a journey away from home that brings with it some worthwhile reward, or some unquantifiable progress in some part of my life.

In others, it’s just exile. A meaningless drift away from what I hold dear. A drift of inches and degrees, where I’m suddenly in the middle of the ocean, lost, before I notice I’ve left the shore.

How does one become lost at sea? Two ways, slowly then suddenly.

Writing can sometimes be a lifeline in those drifts, a way to set sail for home, to remember the route, to follow the compass and spy land. But sometimes I’m so far from home that the writing itself feels alien and unfamiliar.

And there is nothing I’d rather be doing less in those moments than writing.

Does that mean I’m no longer a writer? Do we stop breathing between inhale and exhale?

Writing is home. Sometimes it can bring me home, but sometimes I have to fight to return before the writing can come.

And so I fight.

And then, I write.