Today, a little girl, not more than six years old, came into the bookstore with her mother. While her mother perused the poetry section, the little girl bounced over to me.

“Are you a writer?” she asked.

“Yes, I am.”

“How do you know?” she said, fingering the novels on the shelf next to her.

“Well, because it’s one of my most loved things to do in the whole world.”

She looked me straight on. “Do you think I’m old enough to be a writer?”

“Do you write?”

“Yes. A lot. So much.”

“What do you write?” I asked.

“Beautiful things!” she said, but then her face dropped. “And sometimes sad things.” She climbed up on the red chair next to me, crossed her purple cowboy boots and said, “Once I wrote about a rock named Pebble who lost his mom because someone threw her in a river…to see if she could skip. She couldn’t skip. It was a very sad story.” She shook her head and it looked like she might cry.

“Do you think you’re a writer?” I said.

Her young face opened. Brown eyes full of believing. “Yes!”

“Well then, I’d say you’re a writer.”

She gasped, hopped off the chair and began racing all over the store shouting, “I’m a writer! I’m a writer! Hooray!”

May she repeat that phrase many, many times before she meets her first critic and may it seep so deep into her being, no one can ever take away the truth of it.