I Lied And Said I was a Writer.
Can I admit something to you? The other day when I was in the Doctor’s office, on the form where they ask -Occupation?- I might have lied. I answered “Writer” instead of Accountant.
We’ll start with feeling like I’m under the gun, to produce, to get it written.
To post, and generate content.
I might have lied. I answered “Writer” instead of “Accountant”.
I successfully completed the post a day for May thing, and that was good, it got me back in the chair, but at what cost? I’ll admit to having actually written about 25% of the things I posted sometime in the past, the poems were off the cuff, as were the opinion pieces, but some of the stories were pulled from my desk where they’ve sat for a while now.
How much is the right amount of productivity for a writer? How much should we be able to put up and own? I know some of you are amazingly prolific. You have the time to dedicate to this craft, and the drive to make it work for you. Other’s, less so, lives filled with other pursuits (mine usually involves chasing kids, literally), have a few moments to a precious hour or two to work through a plot point or a blog post that you are considering, so two or three posts a week is possible, but daily quality content is not a thing you can do (I can generate fiction daily, five hundred words in 20–30 min, but to have it be quality?).
Shaunta Grimes suggested a simple 10 minutes a day, just to get some words down, and that’s cool, the threads are there, but I can’t find it in myself to update and follow that FB thread, as it’s just not in my nature.
Ultimately, it comes back to who you are as a writer, as an artist, and what you’re choices are. I choose to work on this, often in preference to the real paying work that I have lined up, which is not a smart financial choice, but there you have it. There is no one answer to what can work for everyone who want’s to be writer. You just do what you can do.
Do you call yourself a writer if you only do private journal entries and share poetry online?
Do you call yourself a writer if you plot massive tomes and then start narrating character backstory, knowing full well that your beginning is still months off?
Do you call yourself a writer when you have nothing more than 2000 word short stories to your name and none of them have been published.
Why should you call yourself anything but a writer? You write, you’re a writer.
In today’s world, published by the big 5 (it is still 5 isn’t it?) means less than it used to, Content is King, and Quality is Queen. So, to write, means you are a writer. If you want to be read, then Medium is here to help, or Wordpress, or even just publish it to e-book format and upload to Amazon, Smashwords, whatever. Making money from writing is a completely different beastie, but I’ll leave that for another post, just remember,
You write,
you’re a writer.
So keep writing, it’s what you do.
DFTBA and all that Jazz
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We (I?) can also be found in the following places, but be warned, things are still under construction, so ‘here be dragons’.
— Wordpress — Three Sheets Publishing. Blog
— Facebook Author Page (you can find my user page from there)
