The title of this post is a repeated line in House Valerius and A House Divided, used in a few variations. Some recent things have made me think about this line in relation to myself.

I’ve often thought who we are is a combination of factors, but at least one of those is our innate interests, what seems to come naturally to us. As I said in my first post here, I’ve been writing, in one form or another, almost as long as I can remember. So I guess, by my own definition, I am a writer.

Now whether or not I’m a good writer is something I’m not planning to address here. Those of you who have read anything I’ve written, you can make your own judgement on that. But writing is something I love to do, that I always come back to. I can still remember some things I wrote in primary school (that’s elementary school for American readers). I remember asking for a typewriter one birthday (that probably ages me a bit more than I’d like). I wrote a short story in secondary school (fourth year, if I recall correctly) that later became the seeds of the House Valerius series. One of my favourite writing memories concerns that story; when it came time to review it, the teacher started by saying he was disappointed with it but by the time we’d finished going through it he’d given me an A.

My father died when I was 17. One of the ways I dealt with it was by writing, dozens of short stories, some based on what I was feeling, some written on request/suggestion. Shortly after that, I began work on my first attempt at a novel. The chapters of that book  have gone through a number of versions but are still around somewhere. I also began writing poetry, which I also have on a shelf somewhere. And now I have House Valerius.

Every so often I have ideas for things that are not connected to House Valerius (I’ve had a couple just recently) which I’m not actively pursuing. But once I finish my first draft on A House Divided, if any of those are still kicking around my brain, then I might play with them a little.

Anyways my point on this, assuming I have one of course, is that a love of writing, of stories, has always been with me. That is who I am…