I can’t think of a time when I didn’t write.

I could hold forth some more here at my own site, as I did in the last couple days, against my better judgment, in various comment boxes about how spoiled and entitled and willfully ignorant so many writers are about how to go about life as a writer. Then I came across some things I wrote down to say at Hudson Valley Community College last Spring, at the launch of their literary magazine called Threads. It’s a staple-bound affair, full of work by students, most  had never seen their name in print. There was a nice food spread and proud parents were there. I got a little choked up, actually, watching all these students reading their work.

Here’s what I said toward the beginning of the proceedings.

When Professor Noah Kucij asked me to come here to be part of your celebration of the launch of your new issue of Threads, I was of course charmed. I’m a professor, after all—one look at my nappy corduroy jacket and thick glasses gives that away—and we all love to talk. It’s what we thrive off of. But when Noah told me what he would like me to talk about, which is to put a name on this moment for all of you writers, many of whom are seeing their name for the first time in print, then I really got psyched.  Because what brings writers of all stripes and breeds together—from the humble haikuist to the sure-footed short story writer to the wild-eyed poets—is that we are all have this need, this physical crazing, for words.  Sentences. Paragraphs. Stanzas. Stories. You name it—if it has words in it, letters, we need to look under the hood and see how it works, how it could be better, how we can steal—err, borrow or be influenced by, with proper APA or MLA scholarly documentation—to make our own writing better.

I can’t think of a time when I didn’t write. Maybe second grade.  Maybe in the womb. I always thought of myself as someone who, at the end of the day, after all the stresses of life and family and working, I could write and everything would be OK. Like a lot of you, I have worked jobs while being a writer and a student. I’ve never not had a job while being a writer or student. I got my first job at 10 years old, mopping classrooms for my old parish, then worked at a car wash for five years. Those were the glamorous jobs. After that came landscaping, parking lot attendant, newsletter editor, proofreader, freelance journalist and this thing called “adjuncting” your teachers know all too well.

But I was always a writer. I’m not the first one to say this, but writing is as much a vocation or calling as it is a job, if not more. You don’t do it for money. You do it because you have to do it. To make one’s way as a writer is a whole other story, with all the joys and frustrations of any other calling.  I’ve been lucky most of the time—I have four books and I’m working on more, and have my poems and essays published in places that look just like Threads, and the thrill of seeing my name in print has never gone away.  Other times, I’ve felt like just giving up, either because I can’t seem to connect what I want to write about with the words that end up a page, or from the many outside discouragements all writers come up against. Someone told me when I was a college student that you know you’re writer when you can’t stop not doing it. If that makes any sense.  And that’s the way it is with me, and maybe there are people in this room who are similarly afflicted.  To those I say, welcome to the brothersisterhood.

So today I offer you my congratulations. You’ve sat down at a desk or a coffee shop, maybe on break from one of your jobs, and written something. Then rewritten it. Then showed it to other people. That’s nothing less than a gift to the world and, just as importantly, to yourselves. And now you’ve gone one step further and committed it to print—and that’s no small thing.  One of the things I teach to my student at The College of Saint Rose is a lesson I am still learning—that there is the writer and then there is the writing; that, as much as we might think our writing is a part of ourselves, that it comes from our minds and hearts and because of that it’s just as much a part of ourselves as our feet, our lungs, our hearts—there comes a time to let go, to cut the umbilical cord.  That time is when we let someone else read what we’ve written.  It’s at that point that one’s writing belongs not just to you and your notebook or computer, but the world.  That’s about as brave a thing a writer or artist can do. And that’s what you’ve done here.  If there’s one last piece of advice or I can offer is to really savor this moment, because it really is a special one. The name of this moment is the first time you’ve published your creative writing, and it’s a special one. Take pictures and party like a rock star.  Because while publishing your work isn’t what writing is all about, it’s certainly an awesomely cool and thrilling part of it.