I defend my right to write

“The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge.”
—Gore Vidal

I want to talk about this one for a bit. What makes a real writer? Extensive travel? Interesting parents, background, etc.? Exemplary intelligence? Does it take having something 'special?' Luck, perhaps? All of the above?

If so, well, I'm in trouble. Often when I meet or read/hear about other writers, there seems to be a cloud of "interesting-ness" (I'm aware that I just forged a word) surrounding them. Their fathers were award winning professors who drank a lot, their mothers were mentally unstable poets, they've been married and divorced ten times, they lived in Sri Lanka for two years, and Venice for three. Now they live in either a bustling, ambitious, intellectual city (i.e. New York) or in some lovely country home--lakefront, oceanfront, etc.

I have no clue where I'm getting this from. Of course it's not even true. But somewhere in my mind, I believe it is, especially in comparison to my own life, which I'm readily willing to admit is frankly, ordinary. Happy, safe, wonderful, but ordinary.

Yet, I'm still a writer inside, an intrinsic writer that is. Is there a difference between a 'real' writer and an 'intrinsic' one? Can one decide to become a writer at a point in life after an array of odd and uncanny experiences? Is that possible? Or does the urge always have to be there? What if it's all one's got? No therapist's dream of a childhood, no complexities of love or of the heart, no real travel except for 5 nights in Las Vegas for a friend's wedding (OK, I've been to more places), and no living abroad. Just the natural inclination to write, write, write?

Well then, I suppose that's all there is. I defend my right to write.