“Are you a writer?” asked the woman in the park. She’d seen my yellow field bag with the Ray Bradbury quote: You must stay drunk on writing so that reality cannot destroy you.

“I like to write,” I equivocated. It was my standard answer. It was true, after all, and got me out of committing to the word. And I had never published a thing, except for poetry and flash fiction on my own blog, which maybe fifteen people ever read.

***

“Who here is a writer?” asked the panel moderator.

I was at Long Beach Comic Con with the rest of the Yeah Write crew. It was the first time most of us had met in person. Rowan and I were sitting in on a panel about queer representation in the writing and publishing world before we went off to our own panel about storytelling in the internet age. The question took me by surprise. We looked at each other for affirmation or validation or moral support, and raised our hands.

***

“Are you a writer?” asked the man sitting next to me on the plane.

I was head down in my computer, wrestling with the final pages of edits on The Jade Dragon, the novel Rowan and I had been working on for years. The man was watching the World Cup quarter-finals streamed to his seat-back TV.

I looked up, a little irritated at the interruption. “Yes,” I said, and went back to work. Only fifteen more pages to go.