Not Everybody Who Writes is a Writer

Semantics & Antics

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Never have I ever trusted pre-owned muffins stuffed with broken luck and masterful rust. Shucks. That didn’t go as planned. Bear with me. Need to stretch my fingers. Go ahead. Collapse those tray tables. Lean back. More words and birds and vital turds unnerved—how absurd. For real, the idea that “if you write, you’re a writer” is ludicrous. If I sing, am I a singer? What if I only sing nursery rhymes at birthday parties and can’t make it through a “little lamb” without a squeak and a screech? Am I a photographer because I use a Polaroid camera to photograph the moon whenever the vapors shake me into a lycanthropic lust? You should see me howl. I’ll eventually use the photos to make a flipbook: my autobiography. I’ll use Canva to create book covers for various collector’s editions and add Graphic Designer to my CV. 

This is fun. We should do this more often. Soften the bumble-bum in rum and—ooh, I’ve got another one: Would recording a video of my neighbors’ cats humping under a Hyundai make me a cinematographer? probably not, but posting the video on YouTube would make me a film producer, right? a pornographer? Hey-oh, now we’re cooking. I must be a chef. No? Exactly. And putting words on a page does not make me a writer. It means I have written. 

Big difference.

Not everybody who writes a newsletter or a blog is a writer. Indeed, you can be the writer of a text and not be a writer. Just because you transcribed the conversation you had with a janitor who seemed uninterested in knowing the make and model of the car you were in when you discovered you’re allergic to latex does not mean you’re a writer. It requires more than a laptop and a thought, more than a six-dollar pen and a Moleskine notebook.

Some people, though not nearly enough, edit their posts before hitting publish, yet they don’t refer to themselves as editors, do they? Of course not. People don’t romanticize editing. It’s not a profession glamorized in movies. Nobody fantasizes fucking an editor.

I can’t tell you what a writer is or isn’t. I have no idea. Its definition is too broad and ambiguous. But I believe that anybody desiring to be a writer should somehow earn the title and not use it as a component to bolster an online persona or as a badge to attach to an identity (read personality).

I write poems nobody will ever read and wouldn’t dare refer to myself as a poet. I write essays but don’t consider myself an essayist. I wrote three novels and don’t call myself a novelist. But am I a writer? Only on my CV. Otherwise, it’s insignificant. What matters is that I keep writing.

Do you wonder whether you’re a writer? Don’t. Why bother pondering whether you meet the obscure requirements needed for a label? Just write some fucking words. Strive to improve. Don’t let excessive positivity fuck up your head, either. That shit is dangerous—good in a pinch when confidence needs a boost, but otherwise a misrepresentation of life. Be wary of praise, too. Ignore advice-givers. Ignore me. Kill the noise. Lock the doors. Write more.

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“Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.” (Molière)

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