When I started taking writing seriously, I was hanging out with a group of poets, reading excerpts from Water In A Broken Glass at cafes. One day I made the mistake of saying that I wanted to be a writer, and a very talented poet named Juanita Jackson told me, “You are a writer.” I was confused because I believed that real writers were people like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Paule Marshall, Ntozake Shange, Stephen King, Judy Blume etc. I believed I had to be published by a big press before I could call myself a writer. But that is not true. I was a writer then as I am a writer now. The minute I started actually writing my novel I became a writer. So if you want to be a writer, the first thing you have to do is believe that you already are, whether you’ve been published or not. Believe it when others doubt you. Believe it when it seems like you are wasting your time. Believe when you can’t get that sentence quite right. Believe it when you read one of your favorite authors and doubt that you’ll ever be as big as her/him. Believe it with everything in you. That’s how you become a writer.