Discussion → msnbc interview about twiction/hint fiction
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BOOOOO-YAH!
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Thanks, guys!
Now to channel Coffee Talk's Linda Richman: the distinction between amateur and professional writer--is it a matter of time, money, # of clips, or just an unnecessary use of adjectives? Talk amongst yourselves. (I'm a little verklempt.)
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I don't know what the distinction is... the implication from the MSNBC piece was that the distinction was about fame versus relative obscurity or perhaps it was about people who write full time versus people who write in addition to another occupation. To my mind the distinction in the MSNBC piece reflected real ignorance about writing. Now, I don't fault the journalist for that at all. I think people really misunderstand writers and writing and think of it as a little hobby if you're not a Joyce Carol Oates or a Dan Brown or some other widely known writer. Now, I don't need to be called a Writer or anything like that. I just think the term amateur is often more pejorative than descriptive. The reality is that 90% of writers, if not more, have one or more day jobs because we live in a culture where it is very challenging to sustain a reasonable lifestyle as an artist. It would be nice to see a wider understanding of that. Then again, if there were a wider understanding of the realities of writing, good writers would probably be able to make their living as such.
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Well said, Roxane, and thanks for starting this dialogue, Linda.
I agree about the implications of "amateur author." Yeah, Ali Weinberg the reporter struck me as someone fairly genuine (as far as journalists go). I think she just doesn't have a better term to use.
I was talking with a "professional" writer about this interview yesterday and he said being called "a professional writer" ain't exactly great either. He said there is very little that sounds "good" when your title has writer/author in it.
And isn't Joyce Carol earning a good part of her income from teaching? Does that make her an amateur author? How many superb writers also teach/lecture/etc to supplement their incomes?
My brother loved, loved, loved the amateur author tag (in the way only a loving brother can). He knows what she meant too...and he said he wasn't sure what she could have callled me.
Does there even need to be a tag? If she had just said "lawyer David Erlewine writes at night..." wouldn't that have done the job?
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I'm with you Roxane. Amateur has a connotation of less-than-quality.
I'm also with you David--there probably shouldn't have been a tag in the first place. When I see patients, I'm supposed to either call myself a medical student or a "student doctor," and that makes a lot of sense: I don't have an MD yet. But a qualifier for writing just seems needless.
I personally wouldn't want to be called a writer, because that's not how I self-identify, but I would MUCH rather be called someone who writes (and I am) than an amateur writer. I think she wasn't bad intentioned (she was really nice on the phone), I just think it's a symptom--as Roxane said--of a widespread fundamental misunderstanding of writing and the writing process itself.
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About a month back I raised this question at my website, about what makes a professional writer, and I got a LOT of interesting responses. It seems like one of those things where there is no definite answer. The problem is, we are all coming to this question as writers, and so what we may think makes a writer "professional" is not what an outsider thinks.
Like Ali -- I agree with David that she did come across as genuine. In fact, if she knew what kind of hackles were being raised by her use of "amateur" I'm sure she would be horrified. The fact is though, someone like Ali -- again, an outsider -- views "professional" simply as whether or not you do that as your profession. Joyce Carol Oates, T.C. Boyle, other writers who also teach full-time -- they are well known to "outsiders" more as writers than teachers, and it's because of that "fame" that they're viewed as professional writers.
Again, different strokes for different folks.
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It was a poor word choice, bottom line. Is it forgivable? I suppose. I'm just happy that the piece made it out of the editing room.
My understanding is that a "professional" writer is a writer that has been paid for their work, which would probably include the bulk of the writers here at Fictionaut. Are the rest amateurs? I wouldn't say that. They're just "writers" that haven't snagged the "professional" tag yet.
Bah. Semantics.
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I think for your average person, professional probably means someone who writes as their day job or has published books or has short stories in the New Yorker. Wrong, of course, but such is life.
Me too. I was wondering how long it was going to take. I still think the whole thing was kinda neat.
The odd thing about what Mel is saying is that people who write tons of stuff and get published in various non-paying journals are amateurs. But someone who is lucky enough to sell their first book (like my former classmate and plagiarizer Kaavya Viswanathan) are pro writers, no matter how bad their stuff is. Ha ha, semantics.
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Fantastic input, everyone. I agree that the MSNBC story was prepared with the best of intentions. And I hear what everyone is saying. Which leads me to my next question:
How do you refer to yourself in terms of writing a) when talking to others and b) when talking to yourself?
I called myself a writer to myself the first time I sold a piece to a children's magazine in 2000. I had to in order to keep my butt in the chair. But I still didn't call myself a writer when speaking to others until this year, even though I'd published multiple magazine pieces and landed speaking gigs through the non-fiction articles. For me, it took a long time to get over the "but I don't have a book out" thing.
I think that "writer" is such a loaded term, with or without the extra adjectives. I'm very tempted to switch to calling myself a "wordsmith" or "scribophile" (although that last one might make people think I have a thing for medieval monks). I like Mel's "scribbler." But I pride myself in having neat penmanship, so I won't use it myself.
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a) I say I'm a "writer."
b) I say I'm an "idiot," which is synonymous with "writer."
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I'm a writer. I don't have a problem referring to myself as such on those rare occasions when it comes up
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I'm not sure which neurosis prevents me from saying that. I think perhaps it's a quantity thing. Or an amount of time doing it kind of thing. I probably wouldn't really call myself an editor without cringing for the same reason.
But my writing is 100% separate from everything else in my life, so it's never, ever come up. Except my dad keeps showing my twitter feed to people. And it is driving. me. crazy.
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I almost never talk about my writing to people (friends and coworkers) unless they bring it up, and even then I don't like talking about it. Before very recently, hardly anybody at work even knew that I wrote. Years back, when I had just started dating my wife, I went with her to some function her college was hosting. She had mentioned before to the professor that I was a writer (or that I wrote), so the professor (trying to be nice) would introduce me to people like that. I remember the one look this guy gave me, made me want to punch him in the face, a look that said, Yeah, okay, whatever you say. He was probably a "writer" too. In truth, EVERYONE is a writer. There are just different degrees of it.
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