When Did You Know You Were a Writer?

“Once upon a time there were four lit­tle Rab­bits, and their names were
Flopsy,
Mopsy,
Cotton-tail,
and Peter.”

So begins “The Tale of Peter Rab­bit.” So begins “The Tale of Peter Rab­bit.” When you were a child, did your par­ents read those words to you? Mine did. And I read them to my chil­dren. Although, as they grew older, we donated most of my children’s books to var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions — sev­eral boxes of “Goose­bumps” sto­ries went to our local ele­men­tary school, for exam­ple — there were a few that I sim­ply could not part with. And our six-volume set of Beat­rix Potter’s most pop­u­lar sto­ries was remains on the bookshelf.

I recently watched “Miss Pot­ter” again. The 2006 film tells the story of Beat­rix Potter’s refusal to con­form to late-Victorian soci­etal norms and deter­mi­na­tion to see her sto­ries about her ani­mal “friends,” as she called them, pub­lished. She was a nat­u­rally gifted artist who, as a soli­tary child, escaped into her own imag­i­na­tion, devel­op­ing the char­ac­ters and sto­ry­lines that would ulti­mately make her the most pop­u­lar children’s author of all-time. It is a charm­ing movie fea­tur­ing excep­tional per­for­mances by Renee Zell­weger, Ewan Mac­Gre­gor, and Emily Watson.

Pot­ter was a story-teller and artist from early child­hood who strug­gled from her early 20’s until the age of 36 to get her first book pub­lished. In 1902, “The Tale of Peter Rab­bit” defied pub­lish­ers’ expec­ta­tions and secured Potter’s legacy.

Beat­rix Pot­ter found her call­ing as a young girl and chan­neled her inter­est in nat­ural his­tory, mycol­ogy, arche­ol­ogy, fos­sils and farm­ing into her delight­ful sto­ries about Ben­jamin Bunny, Samuel Whiskers, Tom Kit­ten, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Mr. Tod, and all the rest. She had to draw — and write.

Watch­ing “Miss Pot­ter” again caused me to pon­der the point in my own life that I knew I was a writer and would con­tinue to write through­out my life. I real­ized, not all that sur­pris­ingly, that I have self-identified as a writer my entire life. I lit­er­ally can­not remem­ber a time when I did not enjoy writ­ing or feel com­pelled to write, although my writ­ing has taken many dif­fer­ent forms over the years.

When did you know you were a writer? Was there a moment or period in your life when you real­ized that you were meant to write? Did a spe­cific event or occur­rence com­pel you to write? Or, like me, have you just always con­sid­ered your­self a writer? Leave a com­ment or a link should you decide to write about this topic on your own site.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Col­lo­quium on Writ­ing, Ezine Arti­cles Expert

On the Same Topic:

• Does Blog­ging Make You a Bet­ter Writer?
• The Value of a Diary
• Con­nected Lives (Part Six)
• Con­nected Lives (Part Five)
• Con­nected Lives (Part Four)