I've struggled with the notion of "writerhood" for years. I remember as a child, it was the only thing I wanted to be when I grew up. I was totally absorbed by books, spent entire summers in the local public library, and was regularly under the covers with a flash-light trying to finish the next chapter in whatever novel/mystery/fantasy I was currently consuming. Reading was like breathing, so I assumed I was destined to be a writer.
No - I was destined to be a reader.
I watch in awe as a friend's daughter - all of 13, finishes writing her second novel. Her laptop is her most beloved posession, and her drive for writing is amazing. Every night after dinner she'll spend at least an hour or two honing down her plotline, reworking paragraphs. She writes the way I used to read. SHE is a writer. Has she published anything? No. Will she publish? Probably, but not necessarily, and yet she is still clearly labeled in my mind as "writer."
I associate the label "writer" with some degree of social status. A writer is someone who is able to pull back from reality, observe it, reshape it, and then put it down on paper with such clarity as to inspire images and ideas in readers from completely different backgrounds. Their level of detail in recreating the world implies a level of awareness that I rarely experience in my day-to-day life. They seem more present, to me.
I am a radio reporter. I write daily. I tell stories about artists, plays, dances, and all sorts of cultural endeavours. And yet I don't think I am "a writer." I think of myself more as a quilter, taking a patch of audio here, a fact there, and stitching them together so as to make a semblance of a whole. I barely have time to cobble my pieces together before I must throw one down and get to work on the next. It's a brutal form of writing, filled with compromise and misgivings. No, I'm not a writer. And yet often I'm miscredited with the label. Please, no! Don't sully the label.
So my question to you is this? What, to you, is a writer? And why?
Marianne Combs - MPR Reporter and MN Readers Forum Host
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Comments: 13
I don't know about what makes a "writer" but, you I consider a storyteller. You tell your stories to be heard. Writing involves the same brutal cutting and editing, adding a stitch, ripping out and sewing back in as your storytelling. Is a storyteller less prestigous than a novelist? But isn't a novelist a storyteller? Isn't a journalist also? Or are you distinguishing journalist from "writer"?
But I also don't want to belittle the great writing of other journalists. There are some reporters who are also great writers, and their craft comes through in their stories, even on tight deadlines, which just astounds me.
I remember being young like that. I'm like the old mothers now. We chat among ourselves, woman to woman. We don't snuggle with men on the schoolyard any more. We talk about PTA meetings and laundry stains. I mentioned my Avon business and passed out white business cards printed with a photo of lipsticks in a boquet. I felt out of sync with these women, even though they were kind and took my cards and told me they would call to order something.
I wished I was there with a young man in tattooed skin, his arms around my waist as I laughed, whispering in his ear. "Never forget this!" I wanted to yell this to the young parents, to tell them to breath the grass and sky and ice cream and remember.
Writers are the tattooed, the grass-laid lonely, the paper bowls of ice cream wilting in the sun, young men who whisper in your ear. You breath those moments, spit them onto your hands, let your fingers translate your emotion into digital flotsam.
My husband believed I was a writer and eight years ago moved us to the North Shore of Lake Superior so that I could write.
When my new neighbors would ask me what I did, I said I was a writer because I could no longer say I was Development Associate at Milkweed Editions (where I had been surrounded by so many wonderful writers I dared not even dream of becoming one).
The newspaper editor who bought my idea for a weekly column called Newcomer Notes in the Cook County News Herald called me a writer.
When my husband finally convinced me to release from my computer the memoir I'd been writing (The Scent of God ) the agent who fell in love with the book called me a writer and so did the publisher who bought the book.
Am I a writer? I ardently hope so.
However, I also like Sandy's take, that focuses on the passion of the application more than the end result. Can the two exist happily side by side? Can I, like Jacquie, go for a spell without writing, but still consider the craft passionately enough to be a writer in the eyes of Sandy?
And of course, in the long run, does it matter?