A Writer

  Emma was a writer, in a loose sense of the word.

  You see, she had never really been published before – she had not had so much as one story sold – nor did she allow anyone to ever read her work. Her spelling was terrible, her penmanship quite atrocious and her understanding of the grammar rules of her own language was altogether pitiful.

  Yet a writer she was – and she was a writer because she wrote. (Inspired, I know.)

  Emma wrote every single day for nobody in particular; she spoke writer speech, she thought writer thoughts, and she dreamed writer dreams – she was a writer I tell you, right to her core.

  As a writer, she always had an eye out for writing competitions, and she entered every single one with the hope that this one, this one would be the one where it all changes.

  She never won, of course, but she wrote anyway because that is what writers do.

  Once, when she was suffering a particularly trifling bout of writers’ block, a new writers’ contest happened upon her in a funny bit of happenstance.

  She stared at the criteria and glazed over the promptings with not a single burst of inspiration nor any idea of where she might begin to look for some; but this contest was for writers, and Emma was a writer.

  So, with some soft instrumentals as her soundtrack, she grabbed one of her many notebooks and began at her scribbling with her trusty fountain pen. After all, it is simply impossible to be without ideas when using a fountain pen - all the greatest writers used them and the fact that ballpoint pens had not yet been invented in their time is completely beside the point.  

  She begun with a solid opening line; every good story must begin with a good first sentence. Emma knew this because she was a writer, and as a writer she had the authority to know such things – even though she was a writer whose stories no one ever read.

  She continued on with a menial introduction. With no clear story idea, she scribed down on that piece of paper everything she was doing, and everything she was. She let the utter nonsense run free and, in fact, she got so carried away by the utter nonsense that she quite forgot what the time was, where she was supposed to be, and the several other tasks that needed to be done.

  She found herself enveloped in another world, not a great fantasy world with a particularly intriguing plot, but in a world of consonants, and vowels and words, a world where she could piece them together in any way she liked, where she could make music on a page, music that suited her and only her. She was writing, not because she wanted to impress, not because there was money to be won, or book deals to be signed, but because pure and simply she loved to write, and writing was what she did.

  And so, Emma would enter that writers contest, as she had entered so many before.

  Because Emma is a writer, and that is what she does.