Writer or Author?

Yesterday while driving home from grocery shopping I got to thinking of the two words ‘writer’ and ‘author’. Because there are only one way to translate these two words into Danish fx. In Danish there is only one way to translate both of these words. Which made me think, which would I prefer to be considered as, writer or author? And further, what exactly is the difference between the two?

To me, I see an author as being a ‘successful’ writer, meaning you have been published and had slight recognition for at least some part of your work. Being a writer can mean nearly anything. It could be a lonely person, sitting in his or her basement and scribbling away, or it can be a poet working out his or her personal issues through words, or it can be a naïve person working on his or her first novel. As for me, I claim to be a bit of it all. I am currently working on my first novel, and sometimes I do fear I will never finish it because it has taken as long as eight years so far. But at the same time I also write many other things, which is why I would claim to be a writer. I would do so because of the simple fact that I have not yet been published. I don’t know whether you would be able to claim to be an author if you were not published, but maybe you could. But then again where would we distinguish the difference between being a writer and an author? Could we say anyone can become a writer and only those who get some form of payment for their work can claim the title of author? As you might have gathered, I don’t have the answer; it was just something that struck me as rather odd. Because after my course in Creative Writing at SUISS I would claim to be a writer, however, when I attempted to explain this to my family they just smiled at me for calling myself a writer.

“I haven’t started my novel yet, but I consider myself a writer too,” was somewhat the exact words of my father. And in his ridiculous manner he is right. Anyone with the idea and purpose of writing could in theory call themselves a writer. Then we just need to find the next step to move the apparent ladder to become an author.

I hope you see my confusion at this conundrum, so I’m not the only one wondering about this separation. I don’t really expect an answer, I just utilised my writer abilities to try to reach a conclusion.

Licence To Write

How I started writing… That sentence takes me back to primary school, which is convenient, seeing as that was when I first started to write and what this stream of consciousness is about. It reminds me of the assignments we were given as reasonably small children. Those assignments all had titles such as “What I did last summer”, hopefully bearing no resemblance to the movie “I know what you did last summer”, though some parents did undoubtedly feel a bit outed by their children who innocently dished out about their strange family quirks.

Back then writing was as easy and stress free as breathing. It didn’t matter how crappy or nonsensical your writing was, you were bound to get a golden start next to your name nonetheless. My first story was about a girl who was about to get married to a boy she didn’t really want. It all ended with my heroine running away to seek fame and fortune elsewhere. I quite like this story. I like to think it shows that there was a strong backbone and a little feminist growing inside the skinny girl I was in those days. I even illustrated my story with pictures, proudly showing it off to anyone willing or unwilling. These writing sessions were my favorite. I suppose our teacher hoped there might be some budding geniuses among us, and if there was, it is yet unknown.

My writing career then continued with a homemade newspaper my best friend and I stitched together by the kitchen table. We sold it to our parents who I’m sure must have been thrilled to read about the mysterious adventures of our neighbor’s cat. But for some reason our thriving newspaper business tapered off and so did my writing and I would be into my teens before I picked it up again.

I’ve always had strangely vivid dreams and when I was fourteen I decided to channel my half-psychotic dreams and turn them into a story. Funnily enough that was the beginning of the novel I’m currently working on. Like many teenagers I wasn’t at my most confident and self-assured back then and I was most definitely not ready to share my fantasy world with anyone else.  So when a friend found my story lying carelessly in my room and started reading it, I was quick to intervene. Embarrassment and some distant cousin related to shame were what I felt, as if I had been caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to. Like you need a special license or permit to do something artistic and slightly out of the ordinary.  Looking back it seems strange to feel this way, but it was clear I was not ready to come out of the closet as a writer.

It’s both cramped and crowded in the closet (it’s disturbingly many people hiding in there), yet it wasn’t until last fall that I sneaked a peek out and decided to give writing another go. At first I felt a bit stiff and unsure of myself, I needed to flex my muscles and see if I still had it in me, and luckily, it turned out I did. Before long I was running along at full speed and it felt pretty damn good.

Though I love writing, it does have a dark side. It can be both nerve-racking and stressful. Sometimes the idea of sitting down in front of the computer and start writing seems nothing less than intimidating. The right words keep eluding me, jumping back and forth, gleefully yelling “Catch me if you can!”  In moments like this it’s good to know that I’m not the only writer who feels like this. Like Dorothy Parker once said: “I hate writing. I love having written.”

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I hate writing in itself, it would make all the hours chasing those right words seem pretty wasted, but I get Parker’s point. When I’ve finally managed to write something that doesn’t threaten to send me hurling into suicidal depression, to create something out of nothing, that feeling is incomparable.                                            I can no more stop writing than I can stop being a sucker for every movie and book ever made about vampires (and yes, that includes Twilight…), it’s not a choice; it’s the way I was made.  So when annoying elderly family members complain that I’m never going to make something of myself as writer, and why don’t I do something useful with my life, I’ll tell them to take it with the Man Upstairs.

If I haven’t written anything in a while, I’ll get cranky and moody and I need to be locked up in a room with a computer and not let out until the fangs have at least partially retreated. So I like to justify my writing by saying that it makes me a better person and lot less likely to commit homicide. Though why I should feel a need to justify myself I have no idea.

Writing is special, writing is personal and writing can, when it’s done right, open up people’s minds in ways they would never have thought possible. And so I’m done feeling guilty for wanting to spend my time reading and writing. I’ve spent enough time in the closet and I’m not going back in. I might be tempted if I ever come across Narnia in one, but until then I’ll stick to the Narnias in my head and concentrate on getting them down on paper.

Career Options: Money-Making-Machine or Writer?

I suppose I can trace the earliest of my writing career back to primary school when we had to do small assignments for school. I would always write a bit too much than what we had been assigned and I always took a great pleasure in writing them.

I was never much of a writer outside of school though. I remember loving to do the writing assignments for school but also when they were over, they were just that: over. And I had more time to play with my friends. But even then I liked to make up stories when we would play with dolls and what-not. I always seemed to come up with the longest of background stories, though mostly I simply kept them to myself because it would have taken too long to explain and left too little time to actually play.

Writing was never something I thought about pursuing as a career until I got older. Before High School writing had always just been something I would do for assignments for school and never really something I would do out of my own pleasure. I read a lot though and I suppose that is what really got me interested in literature in the first place. Reading is what kept and still keeps my interest in literature going. Books are the place I go to find inspiration and when I need a place to escape from the world. It is a way to escape the troubles and pains of your everyday life and the idea of escaping to another world always appealed very much to me. I suppose this has to do with the fact that it wasn’t until the late primary school years that I gained some of my closest friends so before that I found these in books. When my writing really took off was right after I had finished the fourth Harry Potter book, and I naively thought to myself that of course I could to the same thing as her. I don’t think I wanted to do it as much for the fame but more for the sake of putting my story out there for other people to read, to give them the pleasure of the ideas that came to me. It was at that time I started my novel, which is now eight years ago. It is only recently I have realized how long a process writing really is, thinking back to the first draft (which was utter crap honestly). Whenever I hear about people writing a novel in such and so a time span I freak out about the fact that mine has been in the closet (and my head) for a while longer than eight years by now.

I never really thought I would actually get published, it’s not until I came to this Creative Writing course I realized that being a Writer is an actual profession. Now it has shifted from being something I would like to do to become something I almost have to do, as a sort of ambition of mine.

So now I don’t just want to be a Writer I choose to be a Writer, with a side career because all the ‘sensible’ people inform me it is only a good idea to have a supposedly proper career being as a Writer is not a stable career. But to sort of keep my foot in the world of literature I chose to study English with the hopes of working in either publishing or editing with a grand publishing company.

But to quote Albus Dumbledore: “It is not our abilities that show what we truly are. It is our choices.”

Therefore from this day, I choose to be a Writer.