"A writing-life is not a life."

That's what Joyce Carol Oates says in the Fiction 2010 supplement to the most recent issue of The Atlantic. It's from an except of a novel she has written about widowhood after the death of her husband of 48 years.

Oates' point is that when people see OATES on the spine of a book, it has nothing to do with the person she is in real life. She goes on to say that "being a writer always seems to the writer to be of dubious value."

I know this to be true. Many children's book writers feel sheepish about calling themselves writers. Until they get validation by publishing, it feels too lofty.

Then Oates said that teaching writing is different.

So, teaching writing is a life.

The difference is, according to Oates, that "teaching is an act of communication, sympathy - a reaching out - a wish to share knowledge, skills; a rapport with others ...; a way of allowing others into the solitariness of one's soul."

It got me thinking.

I would never call the fact that I write children's books a "writing life." The writing life went out with Hemingway. It's my job. It's what I do to express myself, yes, but it's also my profession. And it helps keep my household afloat.

But aren't my books, or any writer's books, "an act of communication, sympathy - a reaching out - a wish to share knowledge, skills; a rapport with others; a way of allowing others into the solitariness of one's soul?"

And doesn't reading them make children better writers?

If so, does that make us all teachers?