Join me today with others writing here at Lisa-Jo Baker’s blog “Five Minute Friday”. Our prompt for today is “Writer.”

Planning my wardrobe for next week’s Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids, Mi, I have to stop and ask myself:

Am I a writer?

Sure, I blog and I write for a couple of local publications. And I hope someday to see my byline in a national periodical or (gasp) on the front of a published book.

But am I a writer?

I’ll be surrounded by great writers for three days next week, some whose names make my heart skip a beat (Anne Lamott, James McBride, Rachel Held Evans, Bret Lott, Luci Shaw) and others I’ve yet to discover. Heady company for a lifelong bibliophile.

To be a writer, what words must one write? And who must see it?

The words that have given me the most satisfaction are those of my father, spoken to me in afternoons spent at his kitchen table, capturing his life on video and in my notes. Those memories of growing up during the depression, of serving his country in the United States Air Force, of raising a family and delivering the mail — those words are the ones I treasure most.

I gathered Dad’s memories, wrapped them around collected photographs of the handsome soldier, the industrious little boy, and entrusted them to a local printer. On Father’s Day 2012, I gave Dad his gift — 50 copies of his life in words, “One Man’s Work”.

It won’t win a Pulitzer, but the slim volume of stories made Dad a celebrity in my home town. All 50 copies were given away or sold, and now Dad’s offspring, for generations to come, will have a record of their ancestor’s life in a little Midwestern town.

Am I a writer?

Yes.