Challenging Times

The challenge, naturally, sets out to be, well, challenging. Every day in May, (although slightly truncated by dint of the club meeting on the 4th), we are required (ok "required" might be stretching it, it's a challenge not a directive), to put words to paper. 

I'm often struck, in my professional life, by people coming to me and telling me, on being assigned a writing task, that they're "not a writer". I smile, then, because despite near on 25 years of being paid to put words onto paper (although scant few missives from me actually land on dead trees these days), I don't know that I consider myself one either. 

I have friends who make a living, writing books. Actual books, with titles and blurbs and pages and plotlines. I've always thought of them as "real" writers, and of me, well, I say "mechanically pretty good, I've got a few chops". 

I've been waiting, you see, for the story to arrive. 

Now, at 40 *cough* years old, I'm starting to wonder if maybe the stories have been walking past, and I just haven't been seeing them.