As regular readers of this blog know, I came late to taking my songwriting – or any of my writing – seriously. This had a lot to do with feeling I didn’t deserve to be a writer (though inside I felt I was one); to take up that space which says the creative ideas I generate might have a claim on others’ attention.

These days, sometimes I find myself talking as a peer with other writers I respect. Though I don’t lay a claim as to the quality of my work (I do the best I can; I’m not the judge of how good that is), I do know I am a writer.

How do I know this?

Because I write, and have written.

Not because I talked myself into it or because my self-esteem has grown mightily (although doing what I always wanted to do has increased my comfort with myself). Not because I convinced myself I’m a writer.

It’s because in the last twenty years I’ve written hundreds of songs and performed a lot of them. Because I’ve released 3 albums of my music (with more in the pipeline). Because I’ve written over 400 of these blogposts about songwriting. Because I’ve published a book about songwriting and a book about screenwriting (see here).

I guess I must be a writer!

I’m not tooting my own horn. I’m just saying that I can believe I’m a writer because… I’ve written. And published.

That I’ve written a bunch of stuff can’t be denied; it’s a fact, however I might feel on a particular day about my level of talent and skill or my ‘right’ to be a writer.

A friend of mine, a great and experienced musician, said to me years ago, “Songwriters write songs”.

Man, that irritated me at the time… because I wasn’t writing my songs (and whatever else I needed to write). But he was correct – writers write. Not all the time, but they manage to produce work, one way or the other.

For me now, most of the time I do write and, as long as I keep writing, I feel I can call myself a writer.

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