Reprint: So I Was Thinking...

I was looking back through my other blog on LiveJournal (the one that concerns everything but writing) and I came across a few posts that I'd like to reprint.  So the next few blog entries will be reprints of them.

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(from 17 July, 2010)

Back before the first story was published in 2005, I always used to say that I would call myself a writer until I got published.  After that, I'd call myself an author.

Then the first story, "With Eyes Open...", was published in March 2005.  So there I was, calling myself an author.  Then the second story, "Signpost", was published in November 2005.  So I continued calling myself an author, rather than a writer.

Then I reread a favorite novella by Harlan Ellison, All The Lies That Are My LIfe.  As it always had before, this quote jumped out at me when I read it:

"He once told me the difference, as he saw it, between an author and a writer.  'An author (he said) is what they put on your passport, because in Europe they think a writer is a newspaperman.  An author is somebody who gets his name on the spine of leather-bound volumes that are never read; a writer is someone who gets hemorrhoids from sitting on his ass all his life...writing."

A writer isn't what I am, it's who I am.  I'd rather be known as a good writer than as an author.  At least I'm still writing.

Then there was this, from the July 1992 issue of Writer's Digest:

* If you write, you're a writer.  You need no one else's validation.
* Your work is the same whether it's rejected by 74 publishers or is perched atop The New York Times bestseller list.  If it pleases you, your writing has value.
* Writing is a fundamentally healthy, worthwhile and affirming way to spend time.  Do it, first and foremost, for the doing.  Fame and fortune are the pesto on the pasta.

- Marshall J. Cook, "How To Finish What You Start - Every Time"

By the time the next two stories were published, "All My Yesterdays, Remembered" in March 2009, and "Symmetry" in February 2010, I was over the thought of calling myself an author.  A writer is who I am, who I'll always be.

Just because the first two emags went under not long after they published my stories doesn't mean a thing.

I'd love to provide a link to the first story, "With Eyes Open..." but the emag it was published in has disappeared completely from the internet.

The second story, "Signpost", can be found here:  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cafrica/ultraverse/2005_11/v3i1_signpost.shtml

The third story, "All My Yesterdays, Remembered", can be found here:  http://absentwillowreview.com/archives/all-my-yesterdays-remembered

The fourth story, "Symmetry", can be found here:  http://absentwillowreview.com/archives/symmetry

Now I have to get back to writing a vampire novel while the abomination known as the Twilight Saga is still relatively fresh in the minds of the reading public.  (Damn it, vampires don't sparkle!)  Not that I would mind Brynna and company attaining even a small measure of Twilight's popularity.