I am a writer.

That's how people know me now. No longer am I the cancer girl, the victim, the one everyone tiptoes around.

But I find that with being known as "the writer," there are more and more things expected of me. "Hannah, can you read this over and tell me if you think it's any good?"

"Can you proofread this for me?"

"Can you help me with an idea I have?"

"Can you tell me what you think of this speech? And if you don't like it, can you help me rewrite it?"

Etcetera. Most of the time I don't really mind, but then there are the times when I just want to scream. I wonder if these people even have any idea what being a writer means. On the second day of being in New York last summer, the teachers sat us down to tell us what our classes will be like. One of the most powerful statements I heard during those two weeks was from Lisa Reardon: "Writer's are the keepers of humanity." While that sounds heady and self-promoting, I agree.

Think about it: we watch people, we see what they do. Then we write, preserving feelings and situations and people for all of time. [Or at least, until all the copies of our books are gone. (:] And as a result of this, we feel more. We become the people that others go to to vent, to tell about their problems, and instead of pretending that we know what it's like, and that we're feeling it with them, we do. Because by writing characters, we feel each of these emotions as strongly and as painfully as if they were our own.

And while being a writer means feeling all of those things to the nth degree, being a writer also means that we have to write. You can't be a writer without writing, and then rewriting, and then rewriting a bit more. And these things take time. So excuse me if I don't want to read what you wrote because I'm too busy writing my own shit so that maybe I can actually make it. Excuse me if there's no way in hell I want to sit down and proofread a million and one mistakes because I'm doing that to my own.


I'm a writer. So just leave me alone and let me write.