10/17/03’s illustrious band:

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Brought to you by me. A few weeks ago I applied for a sort of writing grant -- in this case, time at a secluded retreat rather than money. As part of the application process, I had to write an essay describing how I came to be a writer. Here’s what I came up with:

Writing is not just what I do, but who I am. The written word is as clearly encoded on my DNA as my height and hair color.

My Grandma Clar was a writer, although she never described herself that way. She was merely the one who recorded the family stories; merely the one who fashioned the history of her home county into a self-published book; merely the one who wrote clever rhymes to advertise the bakery she ran with my grandfather; merely the one whose letters and postcards, read today, teach me what it was like to be a girl 70 years ago. Grandma Clar was “merely” nothing. She was a writer. She passed her gift to my father, a gifted storyteller, and on to me.

My Grandma Marie was a writer, too, though she never thought of herself that way either. But it was her newsy letters to my grandfather, stationed in Japan during World War II, that kept him connected to home. Her elegantly penned notes in birthday and Christmas cards were never complete without the latest family news and local events. Now my mother and aunts continue the tradition via e-mail and instant messages, as do their daughters and my sister and I.

My mother is a writer, although she waves off that description of herself. She always tells the complete story, whether in the lengthy letters she wrote her homesick college daughters or in jotting in her cookbook the occasions for which she makes special recipes. One of my earliest memories is of listening to Mom read the Little House on the Prairie books to me as I lay in bed, and of her writing quick diary entries on the sheets of notebook paper she used as bookmarks. Her words are still tucked between those tattered covers alongside Wilder’s. Her example showed me that actively writing stands side by side with reading; the two acts are inseparable.

So I am a writer, like the other women in my family. I’m a regularly published magazine editor. I’m an inveterate letter writer, like Grandma Marie. I’ve been a teacher, like my Aunt Jo and cousin Jami are. I publish a writing exercise in my blog each weekday and plan to collect the best of those essays into a book, like Grandma Clar did. I write down a private little piece of my life every day, like Mom did, and I instant-message my sister as she does her sisters.

Our words create our worlds, and mine is rich with stories.

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