Melissa Dinwiddie, Writer

From a post on May 9, 2010:

So here’s a funny thing: years ago, before I was a Renaissance Woman Multi-Passionate Creative Entrepreneur, before I even knew there was such a thing, back when I was lost and casting about desperately for something to be when I grew up, I decided to be a writer.

The only problem was I didn’t spend much time actually writing.

I thought a lot about writing. I read a lot about writing. But I didn’t actually write much.

Except in my journal (where I actually wrote a ton), and that didn’t “count.”

I was stuck in a box that said that writers either write fiction (my goal at the time) or magazine or newspaper articles. Personal essays, or sales copy, or blog posts? The first two just weren’t on my radar, and the last didn’t exist yet!

So I tried, half-heartedly to write fiction, but couldn’t seem to come up with any worthy ideas. And because I was young and impatient, it didn’t occur to me that writing might be a skill that could be developed over time.

As a result, I felt like an untalented loser who would never amount to anything.

Meh.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that I started putting my energies elsewhere, “procrastinating” by doing art projects, in fact. Apparently, I wasn’t meant to be a writer (I thought); clearly I was supposed to be an artist. A calligrapher, in fact, which seemed especially fitting: I started out wanting to write beautifully, and instead learned how to do beautiful writing. Or something like that.

Fifteen years later, it’s all come full circle. I’ve been writing for my businesses for the past decade and a half, I’ve penned articles here and there, and I never stopped writing in my journal (which does “count,” of course).

And now, thanks to my blogs, I write (and publish!) on an almost daily basis. Plus I actually make money as a writer from my copywriting business.

Go figure.

Turns out I was a writer all along.