NONFICTION    
That is who I am  -  a writer.      -   Weebly.com                                    

Identity Crisis
by  Cathy Fiorello

​As I advance into life’s later stages, I find myself in the throes of an identity crisis. Fifty years ago, when I was asked at a cocktail party, “What do you do?” I felt no ambivalence in answering “I am a mother.”
 
Fast-forward to the present. My all-encompassing mothering years ended a decade ago. I have sent my children out into the world not as boomerangs but as arrows to seek their own identities. Having retired from full-time mothering, I am free at last to pursue my long-delayed writing goals.
 
So, how should I answer the “What do you do?” question today? After authoring two books and a steady stream of essays, after years as a published columnist, after speaking at gatherings of authors and reading from my works at bookstores, I still do not feel I have earned the right to answer that simple, probing question with “I am a writer.” My books have never appeared on a bestseller list. They were briefly featured at bookstores, then replaced with newcomers. Out of sight, out of mind. My fifteen minutes of fame came to an end.
 
I was not one of those wannabe writers who woke up one morning, decided he no longer wanted to be a lawyer and wrote a debut novel that had critics raving and went straight to the New York Times Best Seller List. My goals were much more realistic and I didn’t skip any intermediate steps on the way to achieving them. Starting as a promotion writer, I advanced to editing, then to a monthly columnist, then to full-time freelance writer, always hoping that someday I would reach the exalted status of just plain “Writer.” But writers work alone and our work remains in the dark unless a publisher throws some light on it.
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I have given much thought lately to where I do my writing. Has that affected the quality of my work, I wonder? I listen with great interest to accounts of the set-in-stone environments other writers require to do their best work. Some have only one place where they can communicate with their muse and must be there before they put pen to paper. Some need solitude, peace and quiet: no phones ringing, no sounds of family life penetrating their study door, no city sirens blasting through their windows. Others require the opposite; their muse thrives in the din of a bustling coffee shop. They need only a laptop and a steady stream of chai lattés to conjure up the next Great American Novel. Some can only write on the First Tuesday of the month, after they get their senior discount at Walgreens.
 
Then there’s my approach to putting thoughts and dreams on paper. I write at home, snug in my easy chair, just me and my pen and an inspirational view of San Francisco Bay. I have a simple, never-fail method of segueing into writing mode. I spend a half-hour or so reading stories I’ve already written and exclaiming to myself, Wow! That’s good! Norman Mailer said a writer should never be satisfied with her own work. But time is running out; I can no longer wait for the world to discover me—I’ve discovered myself.
 
Acknowledged or not, I continue to write. If writing is what I want to do, and writing is what I do, then that is who I am—a writer.
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​Find your passion and follow it!   -  Oprah Winfrey 
Cathy Fiorello’s passions are food, Paris, and writing. A morning at a farmers’ market is her idea of excitement and visiting Paris is her idea of heaven. And much of her writing is about food and Paris. She worked in publishing in New York, freelanced for magazines during her child-rearing years, then re-entered the work world as an editor. She moved to San Francisco in 2008 and published a memoir, Al Capone Had a Lovely Mother. In 2018, she published a second memoir, Standing at the Edge of the Pool. Cathy has two children and four grandchildren. Her mission is to make foodies and Francophiles of them all.
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Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University​.​
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