The question stunned me. I was caught completely off guard and didn’t know how to respond. This was about a year or two ago. I was on the phone with a friend of mine. This was someone I had known for almost forty years. There was a pause. I scratched my head and gave it some thought. “Well, . . . I don’t know.” A little more silence. “I mean, I’ve been doing it for thirty years. . .” I kind of trailed off at this point. I had to shrug it off, resist the urge to be offended. Your friends never truly take you seriously, I had to remind myself (maybe I need new friends, LOL). I would have to have been a writer before meeting them, I guess, for them to think I was legitimate. Not that they aren’t supportive. I’ve had one or two actually purchase a book here and there. The first words out of most of my friend’s mouths when they found out that I had written and published a book had been “Oh, I’m not really a reader.” What really kills me is when they say, “I don’t read digital books. I could never read, digitally . . .” In some cases, I can’t resist reminding them that they consume all sorts of digital information all day long. It is next to impossible these days to find someone not staring at their phone’s screen, reading the words printed there. But, in any case, I have to admit, my friends do take me seriously when it comes to other things in my life. And most of them know I’m not going to beg them to read my stuff. And I certainly would never force anyone to buy. I give books away all the time.
But anyway, back to the question at hand, the conversation. I gave a little chuckle, admitting that I didn’t actually know. We then moved on with talk of other things. But the question bothered me. I hadn’t considered it at all. I had been so busy writing and publishing books that I hadn’t had a chance to stop and think about it. I mean, with all the editing, formatting, cover-designing, setting up the website, etc. And I’ve sold a few books even. Seldom does a month go by that I don’t have a few sales. So, there it was, this large, looming question that I didn’t have an answer for:
When does one actually become a writer?
Or, to put it another way, when does the writing become more than a just a hobby?
I know when I first started writing, working hard on that first story or two, I had high hopes of one day “making it.” But this future possibility was a very long way off, I knew. Oh, I figured I could maybe get lucky and send a story or two off and it would get accepted by some publisher of some small press somewhere. But that, too, was in the future. And back then, that was the only option. There wasn’t any option for self-publication. Or, there was, but it was called “vanity publishing.” You paid several thousand dollars to get books printed up and then they just sat in boxes in your garage. I had heard the horror stories. I had no intention of going that route.
I guess one could argue that a person who writes a story or novel is technically a writer at that point, as he or she has produced a completed piece of work. He or she has “written” something.
So, then you need to expand the definition, or qualify it. I mean, usually the connotation is that a writer has been published. Ok, fair enough. And back in the day that was a difficult thing to achieve. You had to be picked up by a publishing house, printed, marketed, and sold to the public. And you needed to have an agent for this to happen. Before all of this could take place, you had to actually sit down at a typewriter and write! And then you had to rewrite! You worked on your idea, edited, inserted better ideas into the story, changed things and rewrote again. All of this was a never-ending process, and this was all just the first steps, the beginning. Everything starts with sitting down and knocking out the material, working the imaginative juices into something palatable to your fellow beings. Then you had to send this creation off to contests or small presses, etc. If you happened to get lucky and get published, then you hoped to get noticed by a legitimate agent, etc.
The story goes (however apocryphal) that Clive Cussler sent a manuscript off to a publisher along with a letter where he purported to be a publisher who was getting out of the business and that the author of the enclosed manuscript was someone who should be looked at as promising. . .
It worked. And one could probably get by with something like that back in the day.
I never did send out many stories. As a matter of fact, I was mainly writing for the sheer joy of it. I put any thoughts of getting published out of my mind for the most part. I would occasionally send a story or two off to some contest or small press. I managed to get a few rejections. But mostly, I wrote, holding some vision of the future where I would kick back with a huge backlog of material that I would keep sending out in a wonderful stream of bombardment. Eventually, something good was bound to happen. I would, at some point, have publishing success, and the dollars would follow. Until that time, I would keep working, keep, ostensibly at least, getting better and better. The day would come. I was sure of it.
And then self-publishing opened up. Self-publishing began to grow with Amazon and the other sites. I didn’t jump in right away. After all, self-publication still had a stigma attached. And so, I hesitated. But I kept writing. And today the stigma is not quite what it was, and the large publishing houses are suddenly noticing authors on Amazon and offering these authors contracts. In fact, some authors are even turning down these offers due to making more money on their own.
So, is that what it’s all about, money?
Is being published not enough to call yourself a writer?
Money is nice, of course. Some might even call it essential. I happen to agree. One needs money to put food on the table. But when it comes to writing, does one have to make a living at it to be considered a legitimate writer?
When I was in college, working in a small store on campus, the author, Philip Lee Williams used to come in the store. He had published several books. I considered him to be legitimate. Most people did. He still worked for a living.
The truth is that most writers work for a living, and even some of the well-known ones teach or work in some fashion. Even the big boys (and girls) who write full time have to keep pushing, writing, publishing, marketing. But okay, I’ll concede, I’ll admit that a true author is one who can quit his or her job and work full time on writing. So that’s all they do–they Write!
Not everyone is a Stephen King, or Dan Brown, or Lee Child, or Margaret Atwood, or any number of other big-name authors. But does that mean that the lesser-known authors are not actually writers? Are we all just hopeful hobbyists? Or are we legitimate writers, perhaps, even though we haven’t all achieved fame and fortune?
I know that, personally, I have the New York Times Bestselling Author list in my sights. Don’t know that I’ll ever make it, but it gives me something to strive for. Shoot for the moon, right?
It’s funny. There’s a Ray Bradbury story called “The Pedestrian,” in which a man is suspect for simply being out walking in the evening. The setting is the year 2053 and a robotic police vehicle pulls up and shines its headlights upon the man, whose name is Leonard Mead. The car proceeds to question him, asking why he isn’t at home. Leonard tries to explain that he is just out walking, taking in the air and looking about. The car questions him as to whether he might not have air at home. The car asks if he does not have a viewing screen at home, etc. Turns out that Leonard doesn’t have a viewing screen, which makes him even more of a suspect. Nor does he have a wife who could provide an alibi. But the funniest part to me is that when the car, after asking Leonard his name, asks the following:
“Business or profession?”
“I guess you’d call me a writer.”
“No profession,” said the police car, as if talking to itself.
Anyway, I’m going to call myself a writer at this point. I hope you don’t mind. I do love doing this magical thing called writing, whether some consider it a profession or only a hobby. It’s a process, in any case, and not all authors achieve fame and fortune. To my mind, it boils down to whether you can write something that someone wants to read.
Readers are very important to a writer. A reader leads, hopefully, to a review or a rating, or perhaps to a recommendation to other readers by word of mouth. And this then leads to even more readers. . .
So, I guess the more important question then becomes, at least to my mind, and I can’t help but wonder and ask
Are you a reader?