Reading the thread about NaNoWriMo got me to thinking about people I’ve known who refer to themselves as “writers” but never seem to write anything.
I have a friend who calls herself a novelist but has never, as far as I can determine, written a single word. When I ask her how the novel is going she simply cites one excuse after another: she doesn’t have time, her cats keep bothering her, she needs to do some historical research first, she needs to get the characters figured out, etc. I suggested she work with a coauthor and she summarily rejected that. (Yes, she knows about NaNoWriMo and won’t do that either.)
This doesn’t seem to be an isolated case; I am 50 years old and at every phase of my life I’ve had at least one non-writing “writer” friend. I’m not talking about people who churn out unpublishable dreck; these are people who simply don’t write, period. They talk all the time about the various things they’re “working on” but can’t show you a single page.
Has anyone else ever noticed this peculiar phenomenon? Why on earth would somebody want to self-identify as a writer if he/she doesn’t want to write anything? Why is it only writing? I’ve never met a songwriter who doesn’t compose songs or a painter who doesn’t paint.
Fooling yourself into believing that you’re a writer has a lot of advantages over doing the same thing for painting, or sculpture, or songwriting:
There’s not a lot of visible equipment. You can convince yourself, and others, that you’re a writer, and they won’t ask you to point to anything more esoteric than a computer to prove you’ve got all of the tools. If you tried to claim you were a painter, but had no easel or paints - or a bunch of paints that had clearly never been opened - then the gig is up.
It’s easy to misunderstand the breakdown in effort between thinking up ideas for a story, and writing it down. People intuitively believe that the first part is the hard part, and the second part is mechanical, while in truth the second part is a whole hell of a lot of hard work. So it’s possible to believe that you’re a writer when really what you are is an idea-generator, thinking up stories and characters and plots. Not that there’s nothing wrong with that, unless you assume that it’s only a small gap from there to having a book written, when it’s a very large chasm indeed.
Contrast to something like painting. Nobody would say they were a painter if what they were really doing is thinking up ideas for pictures to paint.
If you say you’re working on a book, then it’s expected that it will take a long time, possibly a very long time, and that you might not want to show any part of it until it’s done. People have the idea that a writer could work for ten years on the Next Great Novel, so it’s no big deal that you’ve been saying you’ve been working on yours for two years but can’t share anything.
For right or wrong, people don’t have the same ultra-longterm view of songwriting, or photography, or sculpture. If you said you had been working on the same song for two years, people might conclude that you’re not working that hard. (If you say it’s a symphony, or an opera, then that’s kind of a different story.)
Because there are no special tools, and because everybody writes to some small extent, even if it’s as small as signing a greeting card or making a shopping list, there is a background assumption that anybody can be a writer. So it’s easy to think of yourself as one, because in this view there’s no big jump you have to make in training before you can do the art. You can’t suddenly declare yourself a concert pianist. You can suddenly declare yourself a novelist.
For the record, although I’m doing NaNoWriMo, and I’ve had a very few things published, I don’t say that I’m a writer. Sometimes I say that I would like to be one, and that I’m working on it.
That reminds me of that kid on The Real World London who called himself a “playwright” cause he wrote a one-man show in high school. All he ever talked about was how he was a “playwright”, “Hi, I’m Jay, I’m a playwright.”
When they asked him if he had written anything since or was working on anything new he always has a million and one excuses why he wasn’t.
Some people want to be writers, but don’t want to deal with the paperwork.
It’s a fairly common fantasy. If they’re not producing writing, it’s hard to call them writers. Even unpublished writers are further along if they’ve finished things.
And it really doesn’t take that long to write a novel, if you want to write a novel. Many people who think they’re writers don’t want to write enough.
There was a nice little essay by Barry B. Longyear about writing and how you sit down and set yourself up and have all these distractions – he listed them all – so what do you do. And Longyear said, “You write.” If the distractions are going to stop you, then you don’t really want to be a writer.
Personally I would only call someone (or myself) a writer if they have had something published in a professional, for profit, publication. Likewise, I wouldn’t consider someone to be a novelist unless they have actually published a novel. Maybe your friend should call herself an aspiring writer.
My “novelist” friend has repeatedly insisted that she cannot even start writing until all of the preparatory work is done (creating a complete plot outline, figuring out every detail of the setting, devising full biographies for all the characters, etc.). I do get the feeling that she thinks the actual writing is going to be a breeze.
Of course, she’s been talking about her novel for close to twenty years now, so not many of her friends take her seriously anymore.
Exactly what I was coming in to say. There have been a very few things I’ve written that I’ve allowed people to see. Writing is my hobby, and it soothes me, but I’ll never make a living off of it.
I don’t think people are claiming that if you aren’t getting published then you shouldn’t be writing. The problem arises when hobby writers self identify as writers; tell people that they are writers, and in joechip’s friend’s case, self identify as “novelist”.
I play football on the weekends. I built my own computer desk. I mow my lawn. I cook dinner from scratch as often as I can manage it. But it would be absurd for me to tell people that I am a football player, carpenter, landscaper, or chef when they ask me what I do. The OP’s point is that hobby writers, and even more bizarrely, people who would like to write but actually don’t, have a strange tendency to tell people they are writers.
I am however an aspiring writer, though my actual job description probably makes that clear. I think its assumed that most English teachers are working on their novel in the evenings.
Being a “writer” is kind of glamorous, isn’t it, in a sensitive, artsy way? It excuses a lot of things.
I would find it extremely irksome to have an acquaintance like this. I would be tempted to ask her at every meeting, where could I read something she’s written? If she replied that nothing had been published, I’d ask if I could read a draft. To airily proclaim it as one’s calling, and to self-identify as a writer, and then not actually, you know, WRITE anything…
It’s just annoying to those of us who actually do spend a lot of time typing away. I imagine that a runner would take one look at my pudgy, huffing, unexercised self and scoff if I called myself a “runner”, as I mentally planned out what route I’ll take when I finally get a pair of running shoes on. That’s a bad analogy, though, and I really should come up with a better one.
Oh, she’s in for a world of hurt… Ideas are easy. Execution’s difficult.
…and neither would I.
Writers write. They seem to write because they have to, not even because they want to. Look at the responses here from people who have no intention of trying to be published, but write simply for the joy of it, the pleasure of creating stories and people, or who write to exorcise some pain or experience, or who write just because they love the fluid beauty of language. Those people are far more “writers” than your acquaintance ever will be.
Writers write. They may teach high school for a living, be a secretary, be a housewife or a doctor. But they write. If writing doesn’t pay the bills (and for most of us, it doesn’t) then they write before bed, on the weekend, on holidays, or they do what Wally Lamb did: get up at four a.m. every day so he could write before going to work as a teacher. Writers do that: the urge to tell the story is so compelling, they will do that in order to serve the muse.
It’s so much easier to sleep in and tell your friends about your ideas.
I’ve been writing since elementary school. Terrible poems, terrible songs, terrible fiction. I’ve gotten a bit better over the years, which is almost inevitable when one does something with enough regularity. Ah, but that’s the key—to do it. Not talk about it, not think about it, but to sit one’s rear in the chair and start tapping away at the keyboard. Or pick up pen and take it to that virgin paper until she’s sullied and spoiled and entirely yours. What really made me better, though, was getting things I’d written out there, and getting and giving feedback. Critiques are the water that my words needed to grow.
I didn’t consider myself a writer, really, until I started collecting rejection slips. I was actually pleased with my first rejections—it meant that I was trying. That I wasn’t just saying “Oh, I’m a writer…”, but that I was actually willing to put my work out there for judgment, criticism, and rejection.
But I really felt like a writer when I saw my name and my words in print. The first time I ever got authors’ copies and a cheque—whoo!
Why say you’re a writer when you don’t seem to write? Because writing is hard. Saying you’re a writer is, of course, easy! If writing were effortless, would I be perusing the Boards or playing solitaire? No. I procrastinate, because writing is hard and it requires concentration. And work. Critiques. And revision. And the willingness to accept that something I’ve produced with great effort and pride is clichéd or simply crap.
I’ve read a lot of novels, some great and some pretty terrible. I’ve thought to myself, as I rolled my eyes at the page, how simple it would be to write a far, far better novel than the dreck I was reading. Reality: I’ve written 98% of four different novels, and they have all been, well, pretty terrible. I have hopes that number four, also standing at 98% finished, might be better.
But it might not be.
And it might not matter. Because writing is like standing before a deep and cool lake on a hot summer day. It’s so tempting to dive in.
Maybe I pity your acquaintance, still standing on the shore, scared to swim.
This is one of those times I run into the varying meanings of ‘writer’.
I would strongly doubt that anyone on this board has had more different pieces published in one form or another than I have over the last ten years. Having written for monthlies, three dailies (at once! The pubs averaged about 70 pages per day), a few weeklies (including two a week now), as well as numerous freelance pieces I figure I’m in the mid-thousands at this point.
But none of it would count as writing as defined here. Not a word of it was fiction or such.
I suppose it’s the difference between writing and journalism.
Absolutely one this we will all agree on, though: novelist or journalist: when it’s time to write you WRITE and nothing distracts you. The motivation might be different (deadlines have no mercy and if you can’t meet them in my field you should go pump gas), but excuses don’t make it. It’s a job and you buckle down and do it when it’s time to do so.
I’ve written a few things that have been published in various ways, and many things that have never been finished. But they are so few and far-between that I don’t really consider myself a writer despite that.
However, I do wish I could say that I am a writer. I certainly have that belief inside me that I am talented enough to create some good stuff, but unfortunately I just don’t have the self-motivation to push myself.
Of all things that writers do, that’s the part I admire most - their actually sitting down and doing it, under their own impulse.
Well, you know, it’s only the most terrifying thing to do ever. It’s no surprise people spend more time avoiding it than actually doing it.
Myself, I wrote constantly in high school, now I write in spurts. When I’m writing, I can not think about anything else. During these periods, I don’t care about spending time with others, surfing the web or doing anything else. Driving the car, doing the dishes, taking a shower, my brain is in full-scale writing mode. Sleep becomes unnecessary. It’s hard freaking work, physically, emotionally, technically… it drains every spare moment I have from the people I love… so yeah, I can see why there are a lot of ‘‘writers’’ out there who don’t write.
And additionally, I don’t write for an audience, I write for myself. Why would I show some random friend the thing that makes me most vulnerable? Nobody has seen my work except my husband… and he only read the 3/4 of a novel I wrote last year. It became our compromise, since I was otherwise ignoring his existence. Making him my editor really improved our relationship.
I’ve written for publication and profit many times. I write at least 6 hours a day, and up to 10 hours a day when I’m really rolling. It’s almost a full-time job for me, and I still have a hard time self-identifying as a writer. I keep moving my own goal posts.
I know lots and lots of people who think all it takes to be a writer is to have a good idea–for some value of good–and that’s about it. I also know lots of people who work really freaking hard on stories (fanfic mostly) who will never want to try for publication but are better than most pro-writers I come across. But since they write fanfic, people refuse to extend the label of write to them. I know lots of people in the MFA program who don’t consider me a “real” writer because of what I write–I’ve published more books than pretty much anybody in the department but they’re romance novels, and thus, don’t count. I suppose I’ll get their attention when I shift to writing short stories for journals nobody will ever read except other MFA people. And of course, with that sentence, I’ve revealed my own bias. But I’ve got issues with my fellow grad students that I shouldn’t probably go into here.
The point is, everybody has their own benchmark for writer. And people who do not slog away every single day, weathering rejections and criticisms and reviews (good and bad) and poor sales, think it’s an easy and glamorous profession. Thus, people who would never identify themselves as an “actor” just because they have the vague notion they’d do well in movies will happily don the hat of “writer” because they have the vague notion that they’d write a kick-ass novel.
Years ago, I saw a documentary showing Ray Bradbury at a book signing. Every so often, a fan would approach Bradbury and say, “I’m a big fan… you know, I’m a writer myself.” And Bradbury would scornfully reply, “You’re a writer, eh? You write something every day? Do you?” And if the answer was anything less than an enthusiastic “Yes,” Bradbury would sneer, “Can’t really call yourself a writer, then, can you?”
Bradbury was obnoxious, of course, but he had a point.
I used to do this. To my defense, I really had no idea what it took to write for a living. I had this very vague, romantic idea of sitting down at a keyboard, letting my masterpiece flow out, and then living the high life while the publishers beat down the door to throw money at me.
Practice? Constructive criticism? Feedback? Who needs this stuff when you’re a natural born writer?
I think a lot of wanna-be writers latch on to examples like Harper Lee, who only wrote one book in her life, which turned out to be the Great American Novel. They don’t realize that this is a rare exception, not the rule.
