What? You Writing

By Bonnie White

Written en plein air at The Gorge White House, Hood River, Oregon

“Oh, you’re playing on your computer,” quipped the painter over her shoulder!

“No, I’m writing.”

“What kind of writing do you do: prose?” I was asked last week.

I now know that is what I am doing (after checking the dictionary). It doesn’t have to be creative, but it may be. It doesn’t have to be for some greater good, although it can be. My friend Linda says she likes to write things that people might like to read. I guess I’ve never looked at it that way. I just write what I want to say--whatever is bubbling to the surface at the time. It is like the thoughts are competing to get my brain’s attention, arranging letters to form words.

“Are you writing or painting?”

”I thought you were a painter, I didn’t know you were a writer.“

Just what is a writer? What makes you a writer? What makes you a painter? Who draws the line and where is the line drawn? What gave Hemingway, Salinger or Poe the distinguished title of writer? Who decided Van Gogh could call himself a painter? I bet some people called him a vagrant or a radical. He could have been called the man down the street, or that guy that wears the green hat.

One thing is for sure, most of us have been writing from the time we were old enough to hold a pencil. We write stories and recipes, we write notes, letters, assignments, papers, documents, grocery lists and emails. We write with crayons and markers and pencils and pens. We use typewriters, computers, ipads, and iphones. We write in the sand and dirt and sometimes scratch a message on a fence post or a tree. Writing, for a human, is almost as much a part of life as breathing and eating or sleeping and walking, how can it be so obvious but so overlooked. Of course I’m a writer.