{"id":4276,"date":"2015-11-19T01:00:03","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T08:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=4276"},"modified":"2015-11-18T10:46:33","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T17:46:33","slug":"what-is-a-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/what-is-a-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is a Writer?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sheri<\/a>Guest Blogger Sheri Graves writes about the obsession with writing.<\/p>\n

The moment of clarity occurred when I was in a doctor\u2019s office seeking help for carpal tunnel syndrome. The condition wasn\u2019t getting better and my ability to use my hands was diminishing with each passing day on the job as a newspaper reporter.<\/p>\n

The physician examined my hands and arms for perhaps the 30th<\/sup> time, looked at me and asked, \u201cHave you considered doing something else for a living?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cHave you<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on to explain that his profession was a \u201ccalling\u201d and he had to spend many years in higher education and training to get where he was. His assumption he was important and I was not hit me as narcissistic. I wanted to punch him in the throat but couldn\u2019t make a fist.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing a writer isn\u2019t just what I do,\u201d I scolded. \u201cIt\u2019s what I am. I could no more stop writing than I could pull a jackrabbit out of my ear. If you feel the same way about being a doctor, you do understand my predicament. I can\u2019t simply switch careers.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1990, he did surgery on both of my hands. It took about three years of therapy and drugs and special exercises and no small amount of determination, but I finally regained the use of my hands to be able to continue with the love of my life: Writing.<\/p>\n

Although I retired from The Press Democrat<\/em> in 2004 after more than 40 years on the job, I still write every day. I couldn\u2019t stop if someone held a gun to my head.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been writing ever since I can remember. I started with poetry because that\u2019s what my mother was writing. In school, whenever a teacher assigned students to write a 500-word essay, I groaned along with the other kids. But, they thought a 500-word essay too much to expect, whereas I couldn\u2019t think of anything I could write in only<\/em> 500 words.<\/p>\n

Every writer has his or her own way of doing things. Some have a distinctive method. Others are casual about it. For me, writing happens all the time, every day, every minute.<\/p>\n

I have tried dictating to an assistant, to a tape recorder and even to a computer program designed to type the spoken word. For me, that process is too slow, infuriating and unsatisfactory. My writing process is much more organic. I fe<\/em>el<\/em> the words within me.<\/p>\n

When I sit before a keyboard, words form in my brain, flow through my body and down my arms, finally shooting out the ends of my fingertips like lightning. The words come faster than I can type, and the words keep coming and coming. I can\u2019t stop them. They come to me while I sleep. They come to me while I\u2019m driving a car. They come to me all day and night, and if I don\u2019t make time to let them escape, I get cranky.<\/p>\n

I write articles. I write memoir. I write books. I write. I write.<\/p>\n

I write novels. I create people in my mind and they all run amok in my head. I can\u2019t control them, but I\u2019ve learned to rein them in, to give them some direction, to flesh them out into living characters facing their own dire situations fraught with peril.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to be present in my life. My attention is elsewhere, off in a fantasy world of my own making. To get these fictitious folks to stop talking to me, I read books and get myself involved with a whole new set of characters. Then, when I sleep, the new people from the book I\u2019m reading mingle with the old ones already running roughshod in my mind. The resulting dreams can be disturbing, at best.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to believe other writers don\u2019t go through this bizarre process, but I think some of them do. I\u2019d love to have a mind for business, promotion and making money. Instead, my mental circus pushes all sense of practicality out of the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cAren\u2019t you afraid of going crazy?\u201d a friend once asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m afraid of going sane.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Deep<\/a>Sheri Graves<\/a>, author of Deep Doo-Doo<\/a>, <\/em>won The 2015 National Indie Excellence Award for Crime Fiction. Sheri has been writing for publications more than five decades. Her 40+ years with The<\/em> (Santa Rosa, California) Press Democrat <\/em>included 29+ as a reporter and 14 as a copy editor. As a reporter, Sheri won numerous awards for journalism and writing excellence, including first place prizes from the Press Club of San Francisco, the California and National Newspaper Publishers Associations, and California Medical Association. Sheri is also an editor and memoir writing instructor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Blogger Sheri Graves writes about the obsession with writing. The moment of clarity occurred when I was in a doctor\u2019s office seeking help for carpal tunnel syndrome. The condition wasn\u2019t getting better and my ability to use my hands was diminishing with each passing day on the job as a newspaper reporter. The physician […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[104],"tags":[783],"class_list":["post-4276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","tag-sheri-graves"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-16Y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4276"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4281,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4276\/revisions\/4281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}