Dorothy Parker said, “Writers are always selling someone out.” I agree. I eavesdrop on your conversations; I’m a voyeur in your living room; a spectator in your tragedies, all to garner material for my work. This pisses people off. It leads to a fairly singular existence. Not sharing me, only absorbing you. But that’s what I do. The loneliness of it is another day’s problem.

            Truthfully, I’m not lonely, even if I am singular. I’m inside my head with the characters from my stories, my deceased relatives (who I’m quite sure are utterly cheesed off at me for the things I write), my living relatives (who aren’t yet cross, but soon will be). In my head, I rearrange their miscarriages, divorces, deaths, extra marital affairs, addictions into a whole new world. A world where I’m Supreme Being.

            It isn’t a power thing (yes it is); it’s more of a finding my voice, my place in my life. But it’s more than that. It’s looking at the grit, the hardest of things, and making them beautiful through razorlike descriptions. Making them unusual. Where you can’t avoid a raw, visceral response to what I write. It’s a challenge. Maybe that’s why I like it. I can’t back away from a challenge (yes I can, particularly if it bores me).

            A friend of mine was remembering his mother’s last days in a nursing home. She’d been living with dementia for many years. She asked him what her feet were. He replied, “Those are your feet, Ma.”  She thought about that for a moment and responded, “But don’t they have to be cooked first?” I excused myself and typed that exchange into the Notes application on my iPhone. Tucked it away for future reference. I didn’t give a thought to how awful that must have been for my friend (yes I did). I couldn’t wait to claim it. Own it as my particular pearl.

            So yeah, I’m a thief and a pimp. I generally ask permission (no, not really) to co-opt the stories and snippets that I hear, but when I’m at the coffee shop, I’m listening, watching, waiting for you to give me fodder. I jot it down and catalogue how I felt when I overheard you. What you looked like, so that I can describe you in perfect detail. You never know.

            I worry intensely what my thievery will do to my relationships. I hide my work. I think if I ever get published, I won’t tell a soul because I don’t want my friends and family to hate me. I have tried, believe me, to come up with work that’s utterly original. Yeah, it’s a no go. AND it sucks as far as craft goes. It’s only when I’m selling out my loved ones (or unsuspecting strangers) that my work resonates – it feels like it’s worth writing or reading.

            Does this make me a bad person or the quintessential writer as defined by Dorothy? Or neither? I guess I really don’t care (yes I do – I’m HORRIBLY insecure). I want someone to tell me that it makes me a writer. I am a writer, aren’t I?