I think I’m going to have to start allowing myself to be called a writer. I know, right? You’d think it would be easy, if for no other reason, then because of the 126 “Finding the Pony” columns I’ve written since I started.

I don’t know why I’ve bristled at being called a writer. After all, I walked into a newspaper office and got my first job there in the fall of 1972 and worked in newspapers off and on until my illness forced me to retire in 2013.

But, especially in the days when I worked for newspapers in New York, I really considered myself more of an editor than a writer, since my main job was the editor’s work of getting the newspaper to readers every week. I usually wrote something, but that usually seemed like “something else” that had to be done. So how could I call myself a writer? I had a hard enough time referring to myself as a journalist, though that is surely what I was.

Most people probably couldn’t care less if I think of myself as a writer, but an increasing number of people come up to me and say some variation of: “I’ve always had an interest in writing. Do you think you could help me get started?” Or, “I do a lot of writing and really want get better at it. Could you look at my work and offer me some tips?”

And the answer is no. I can’t help. I really can’t offer tips. I don’t want to say no, but it’s the only truthful answer I have since I have no idea what I am doing. I sit down, I think a lot, put a bunch of words together in a row, and out comes a column. I don’t think there’s much in that process that could help anyone.

I think, too, on the face of it, writing probably doesn’t seem like it could be all that hard. We all use words, and we all have to write things out, mostly every day. Notes to friends, personal notes on greeting cards, keeping diaries or journals. How much harder could it be to write in some kind of professional capacity? Well, it seems, a lot harder.

Of course I would like to help, but I have no magic bullet that will make the work easier.

All I can tell anyone is what happened to me. When I was a child, I was sent to my room a lot. Not necessarily for misbehaving, but because, I think, my parents wanted peace and quiet. There was no television in Scotland through much of the early 1950s, and even when it did become more accessible, most of it wasn’t very good. So, I went to my room and wrote.

You’d think another source of my writing development would have been in school, but you’d be wrong. I was glad to get a B; an A was rare.

The result was that I never thought much of my ability to write because I genuinely believed anyone could do it. When I became the executive editor of a group of 15 newspapers, responsible for hiring journalists and writers to staff them, I realized I was wrong. Not everyone can do it. Far from it.

I won awards from the New York Press Association and the Syracuse Press Club in the last couple of years I worked in New York. I was also given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the press club, all of which must have meant my writing was certainly OK.

But, in truth, it is only since I started writing about my illness and sharing it with you, that I have begun to feel like a writer. For one thing, I take every column seriously and work it and rework it until it’s as good as I can get it. I didn’t always do that before. That comes down to you as readers and the expectations you have told me you have.

On a completely different topic, I wanted to update you on my serious stomach issues. It looks like stopping the bone densifier may have been the solution we’ve been searching for more than a year. Since we canceled the last infusion, I’ve had quite a few nights (in a row, even) where I have not succumbed to nausea during the course of the evening. We are cautiously optimistic about this and ask that you continue to pray for us as we thank you for what you’ve done already.

Jim Arnold is a former copy editor for the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. To read more about his journey through cancer, visit his blog, findingthepony.blogspot.com.

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