Me, in three persons or Of me, her and the girl in the corner

Me:

I am a writer. I always have been and likely will ever remain so. I write poetry and journals and business letters for friends. I write notes to my children and my lovers and my family when needs must. I have taken courses and read fervently books that speak to me of techniques and style. I have a couple of pieces that were published years ago in an obscure trade magazine for convenience stores. I have attended Duke University's conference for writers which was a real treat For years that was my dream, to be a writer. I never really defined that dream...What constitutes being a writer? Being Published makes one a writer? I suppose. I have refined my own definition of a writer as "one who writes". It's in my blood. When I don't write I am meaner and more vicious. I am confused and sometimes go for months without any means of marking my progress. That brings a sense of desperation to one so fully dependent on the process. How do people remember things, the small details of a scenario or of a person that can only be caught for that instant in time? The important details must be placed squarely on that rectangle to be assimilated. Some days my only entry is "bleh" but I remember that "bleh" when reading through the journal and quickly turn to the next page.

I don't specifically have any course expectations or hopes. My writing will improve, I know that to be fact. Mostly I am excited to just let the whole experience bring all the triumphs and failures, all the self defending punctuation errors and "huh"s that I know will come and be glad just to have had the balls to do it.

That's me.

Her:

She wasn't confident. Her movements indicated that she was a bit withdrawn but trying to peer from beyond those glasses into something bigger than she felt. The words were there for her but getting them out, putting them out there for anyone to read, that was a different matter. What if they could peel back the personification and see the person? Would they laugh at her words? Would they judge her by them? She had a knack for coyly distributing her ideas in conversation without really being committed to them. That was her art. Age would refine her. Make her less self conscious and more brave than youth ever could. Experience taught her compassion for those words that drove her. She learned to believe more in herself and less in the artful dodgings that so peppered her youth. She was never really published. No books to her credit, no public audience that sang her praises. Her writing was a personal journey into self. And it was enough...

For her.

The Girl In The Corner

You're young. You can be anything that you dare should you follow it up with effort. You have words that fly from your fingertips to electrify the page. Everything comes so clearly and easily for you. Your mind coils itself around an idea or a word or a phrase and won't let it go until you can feed on its promise completely. Everything about you in that room means business. You cut and carve your way through paper after paper, some landing in the stack neatly by your arm. Others litter the floor with their unimportance and irrelevence. You breath and eat and sleep those bastard words until you give them a family and a home and a name by which to call them. You hunger for more when the sheet is blank before you. What now comes? What now? For you there will be no end to the want for more for you are

The Girl In The Corner