An addendum to yesterday's confession

Yesterday I confessed that my first meaningful writing experience was a lie. Those of you who commented (thank you very much!) basically said that I was just a kid at the time and that I really should just get over it.

Rational me knows you're right, but neurotic me sees it differently.

That copied poem was the cornerstone of my writing. Therefore, my writing life has been built on something that is tenuous at best. It's like pouring a concrete foundation without rebar to support it. The slightest tremor can cause the seemingly solid mass to crack and crumble into worthless pieces of rubble and dust.

And so it is with my writing. I keep waiting for that tremor that will break my seemingly solid base apart and reveal the imposture on which I built it.

But continuing to look at this transgression in such a way serves no positive purpose. So, I'm going to come at this unfortunate, life-altering event from a new angle. I'm going to turn that negative into a positive.

Right here. Right now.

Copying that poem and claiming the words as my own was wrong.

That's a given.

But I copied that poem because I yearned to write such expressive words myself. And look at what it did...it made me start writing poetry myself. That lie was the catalyst that made me start putting my own words on paper, expressing myself my own way without having to sift through the words of strangers, hoping to find the phrases that said exactly what I wanted them to say. What I needed them to say.

Now I know what Katie-Anne meant in her comment to yesterday's post. I didn't get what she was saying at first, but now I do.

That childhood lie was NOT the cornerstone of my writing foundation. That lie was what made me start writing in the first place. Those ten-year-old-girl poems that I attempted to write after that fateful Christmas...THEY are the cornerstone of my writing foundation.

And a sturdy cornerstone they are.

Maybe I am a writer after all.

Scratch that.

I am a writer.

Watch me grow.