Poetica Magazine

I did it again today.  I was at the pediatrician's office with my daughter and they were having me fill out some updated parental forms.  I got to the area for "occupation" and stopped.  Was I supposed to fill in the word "Writer?" Because I don't normally.  Normally I have a list of kind of boring other occupations I fill in there, all true, but all which don't really get to the heart of this issue.  Why do I hesitate at declaring myself a writer?

What is it about standing up and declaring ourselves as writers or artists to the world?  Are we afraid that we're going to be cross-examined by every person we say that to; that they'll want to know what books we've had published and how well they sold?  Or if we're artists, have we had a showing at the Guggenheim?  Have our works sold for millions?  And if they find out that this person, this "writer"  hasn't actually published a book yet, well, then, what exactly separates us from them, the wannabe writer, the person who has an idea that will make a really great book one day and when they find the time they'll put pen to paper and this magnificent best-selling book will come pouring out?

I was reading an literary agent blog recently and the agent wrote a post that said that until you get paid for something, it's just a hobby.  I guess to him writing without pay must be the same as assembling  model cars or building doll houses.  Let's put it this way:  if this agent was my agent, a remark like this would make me wonder how he could ever represent the written word.  

My first writing professor was a poet who did not have a published book of poetry at that time, though she now has two.  She cleared up this obsession with defining ourselves by our pay scale on our first day of class.  She said that poets don't write for money because normally there is no money in poetry.  They write to express ideas or because they have a thought that can't be expressed any other way.  They write because they love words.  And they write because words are sometimes the only immortality there is.  

I don't get to decide who's a writer and who's not, but I'm pretty sure that the difference between a someone who writes at home for fun or writes a journal and the kind of writer I aspire to be is that a writer's work will be read by someone else.  A writer is ready to press that button, to share his or her work, to take that microphone, to send out those queries and not hide any longer. 

Not yet paid, but nonetheless rich.

Thanks for reading JWorld Cafe, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Linda Pressman, Blog Editor