I always feel like a liar when I tell people I'm a writer - because I don't have a book I can hand them. And I just got turned down by 6 MFA programs. (Wait-listed at Sarah Lawrence) I only have a few small publications. And I go for periods of up to a month without doing any serious writing.
Don't believe it. If you write, you're a writer. And only snobs chop it up into "serious" and "not-serious." Go read some Julia Cameron, and you'll feel better. ;-)
And we all have slack/fallow periods. Those are needed, too, and part of the process. I think of the writing life as being like Hemingway's "iceberg": most of the process is submerged below the surface of the ocean, and the part that is visible -- the tip of the iceberg -- is just a small portion of the whole.
My own mother snorted at me in a phone conversation when I referred to myself as a writer. "Since when?" she said. "Since, what the hell do you think I've been doing with my life for the past fifteen or twenty years?" I said.
See, I got caught in the trap of defining myself by what I do to pull a paycheck, when the truth is that it is the act of reading and reflecting and writing and discussing ideas that is my true Occupation (yes, capital O) in life.
I'm currently cashiering to pull in the income, and looking for additional part-time employment to fill the gaps. In the past I've been a web site editor, computer operator, and all around office worker and word processor. But none of that is who I am. And when I recently caught myself telling an interviewer that my occupation is "cashier," I said to myself, whoa, whoa, whooooaaaa.
And I have vowed, from this time forward, to always give "writer" as my occupation, regardless of whether I am currently getting published and regardless of whether I am making so much as a penny from that writing.
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Date: 2003-04-17 04:26 pm (UTC)Don't believe it. If you write, you're a writer. And only snobs chop it up into "serious" and "not-serious." Go read some Julia Cameron, and you'll feel better. ;-)
And we all have slack/fallow periods. Those are needed, too, and part of the process. I think of the writing life as being like Hemingway's "iceberg": most of the process is submerged below the surface of the ocean, and the part that is visible -- the tip of the iceberg -- is just a small portion of the whole.
My own mother snorted at me in a phone conversation when I referred to myself as a writer. "Since when?" she said. "Since, what the hell do you think I've been doing with my life for the past fifteen or twenty years?" I said.
See, I got caught in the trap of defining myself by what I do to pull a paycheck, when the truth is that it is the act of reading and reflecting and writing and discussing ideas that is my true Occupation (yes, capital O) in life.
I'm currently cashiering to pull in the income, and looking for additional part-time employment to fill the gaps. In the past I've been a web site editor, computer operator, and all around office worker and word processor. But none of that is who I am. And when I recently caught myself telling an interviewer that my occupation is "cashier," I said to myself, whoa, whoa, whooooaaaa.
And I have vowed, from this time forward, to always give "writer" as my occupation, regardless of whether I am currently getting published and regardless of whether I am making so much as a penny from that writing.