Removing the quotation marks from writer

The word ‘writer’ often comes attached with quotation marks. The focus on a lucky handful of ‘writers’ able to make a comfortable living as authors automatically creates a divide between those considered professional and those considered amateurs.

All cultures tell stories. Storytelling is hardwired into human DNA; from drawings, to oral traditions, humans have always been storytellers.

Consider yourself, you tell stories everyday - whenever you talk to another person about what has happened to you, when you talk to yourself.

There is power in storytelling. We develop self-compassion, we learn empathy as we tell stories from the point of view of others who are not like us, we develop clarity of thought, we boost our mood and our self-confidence through sharing our stories with ourselves and others.

You may want to write a novel, or you may just want to dip a toe into the water, I want to encourage you to give it go and remove those unnecessary quotes. As the poet Pat Schneider observes ‘a writer is someone who writes.’