Has Amber ever said that as a child she wanted to be something when she grew up? (sorry, clunky construction, but I can't think of another way of writing it)
She has always wanted to be (or more precisely, has been) a writer since tumbling out of the womb. Some of her carefully crafted prose appears a few pages back in this thread. If I might stick up for our gorl writer, I will attest that her writing is comparable to that of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech in its use of anaphora.
Such talent did not spring overnight; she has honed her wordsmithery for decades, across bales of journals. She once said he had been writing since age 7, but also once claimed "from birth"
To what ends she writes, she has never made explicit. She has never expressed a desire to write a novel or a short story. She has never claimed to write fiction. She has alluded to poetry, but none beyond a bit of doggerel she put on Instagram has surfaced. She has never discussed making money with her writing. She has never talked about a publisher or literary agent, or 'zine, or any venue for publication. However, she is very adamant that she is a writer. Just two weeks back or so, she claimed there was no weigh-in because she was
so busy writing in her journals that she literally did not have five minutes to step on a scale.
To me,
that spells dedication. Charles Bukowski was known to have pissed into an empty beer can or two on some hungover mornings, so that he wouldn't have to leave his typewriter to take a leak. Kerouac may have done that too, and I bet even Henry Miller was guilty of it. Amberlynn is
that kind of writer.
She has never mentioned any other occupation, except a vague reference to "social work". No dreams of being anything, no desire to learn anything, no interest to do anything. (The criminal justice thing was pushed on her, and she has never displayed an interest in it) She's a writer; writers know there is nothing else for them to do.
