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Being a writer...

Submitted by I was framed on January 31, 2006 - 3:21pm.

I try not to make it a habit to post twice in one day, but this topic came up and now it's eating at me a little:

What does it mean to be a writer? When I attended Hanover College in southern Indiana I was fed the idea that a writer was someone who expressed despair, angst, and a longing for an end to depression through dark stories and cryptic symbolism. The idea came because that is who was who was published on campus and that is who hung out in the coffee house. I thought since I wore jeans and sweatshirts to class and enjoyed a pick up game of basketball as much as a good novel that I couldn’t be a writer. I though I was too happy.

I was wrong.

If you want to be a writer, you need only to put pen to paper and start moving your hand. The only other prerequisite is that you do a little reading. The only reason I even bring that up is that to truly understand what it is to communicate through writing, you must see how others do it. To swing a golf club, you need to see someone else do it, not just pick one up and go, and so it is with writing well.

I am not a great writer. I weave a good yarn from time to time, and have even contemplated testing ideas in this blog (but then again I already do that somewhere else so I’m not sure that’s productive), but I keep writing because I am a writer. My publishing credits do not extend much beyond a poem here and there, ghost writeen web articles, and a spot or two at www.ritro.com. However, I am still a writer.

Talking about writing does not make you a writer; complaining that you will never get published and not writing doesn’t make you a writer; being published is not the only criteria of being a writer even; the only way you can be a writer is by writing.

The kids in the dark clothes at the coffee house at Hanover are no more writers than I am, and they weren’t at that time either. I may publish a book some day, or maybe I won’t be. I will, however, always be a writer because I put my pen to paper or my fingers to keyboard everyday just to see what happens.

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o ceallaigh's picture

re: being a writer

Submitted by o ceallaigh on January 31, 2006 - 4:10pm.

If you want to be a writer, you need only to put pen to paper and start moving your hand. The only other prerequisite is that you do a little reading.

Agree fully. I would add only one other thing: do a little living. Otherwise you're at risk of writing only what others have written about. Or what goes on in your own head, uninformed by "the outside", and you'd be shocked just how much what goes in in your head is just like what goes on in everybody else's. On the other hand, the mix of your experiences and your brain is entirely your own - only you have it. All you need is the talent and experience to deliver it, and the knowledge to know whether it's something others will desire to buy.

Proudly pontificated by one whose contributions to the writer's art all have titles like An ancestral mitochondrial DNA resembling a eubacterial genome in miniature and Correlations among patterns of sporangial structure and development, life histories, and ultrastructural features in the Ulvophyceae. Really.

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on a smaller level..

Submitted by I was framed on January 31, 2006 - 7:19pm.

If you count a study done via a grant from Hanover College that is in their library and their's alone....I hear ya...Ive got something like:
A Cross-Cultural Evaluation Through Locus of Countrol and Creation Myths.

FUN FUN FUN....well it did get me two weeks in a village in Africa, but anyway

Later

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Writer to Writer

Submitted by Avalon on February 15, 2006 - 6:29pm.

You certainly are a writer once you put pen to paper. I found as soon as I felt brave enough to title myself writer I started to really feel like one..

Party scene:

What do you do?
And straight back
I am a writer

I made me feel powerful and fulfilled. The closet writer was out.

Nothing wrong with "mitochondrial DNA" writing by the way.

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Tottie's picture

A writer writes!

Submitted by Tottie on February 19, 2006 - 4:10pm.

Fascinating topic really. I think I've mentioned in one of my blogs about business cards how I "came out" so to speak and put "Writer" on my business card. I do, so I am.

Check out my blog

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cushk's picture

Great point

Submitted by cushk on February 19, 2006 - 4:16pm.

No one gets published until they write something and good writing comes, at least partially, from good writing practice!
By the way, is ritro a paying site? I took a quick look and couldn't find anything.
Maximize Your Earning Potential$$

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no

Submitted by I was framed on February 19, 2006 - 4:59pm.

It is not a paying site. I do that one for fun and practice. There are plenty of paying out there though

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pchan33's picture

writer's tend to write

Submitted by pchan33 on February 21, 2006 - 8:14pm.

This is true. I've mentioned in my blog as well. If you want to be a writer, you must act the part and call yourself one.

Dreams Matter.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/6562/pchan_stockton.html

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Funny

Submitted by Brenna Fender on August 26, 2006 - 7:38pm.

Despite being routinely published (and paid for it), I didn't feel good about calling myself a writer until I quit my other job. I felt silly to say that I was a writer and a teacher because I felt like people would read that as "yeah, she WANTS to be a writer but she can't cut it so she hasn't quit her day job." But now I have :) Of course, being ready to deliver my second child is really the main reason why I've quit my day part-time job but doing so has allowed me to write more and I've picked up the slack and the bank account is doing OK.

Funny how screwed up my view is. I think it's because I write non-fiction instead of fiction. If I had been writing books all this time I would have felt more "writerly" long ago.

read me!

Brenna
Blog at Writing UP!
Brenna Fender's Blog

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