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Author v. Writer

Being published because you’ve managed to string some words together and bought a publisher’s interest with your money doesn’t make you an author.  I once read that Donald Trump has written more books than any other president.  Really?  A functional illiterate is an author?

We struggling writers know better.  Writing is a lifestyle, an outlook on life.  We carry around notebooks, slips of paper, or electronic devices that are crammed with thoughts and observations.  We spend quite time either scribbling or typing.  We create meaning.

Books are a commodity.  There was shock in the publishing community when an Amazon spokesperson referred to books as simply another form of merchandise some years back.  Publishers blanched.  Books are so much more than paper and ink.  They are miniature universes, cheap.  Anyone can afford to be a god of a secondhand cosmos.

Trump has been famous for many years and famous people have no trouble being published.  I crawl out of my warm bed at 3:00 a.m. into a chilly writing nook to ply my avocation.  I make very little money for my writing.  I do it nevertheless.  Friends can’t make out the logic in it.  There is none.

Being a writer is a way of life.  The lucky few find agents and publishers who pay them handsomely for their thoughts.  Often they aren’t the best thoughts, either.  That’s not an arrogant statement, it’s simply an observation.



Generally I don’t write with money in mind.  Marketability is synonymous the death of creativity.  Still, struggling writers are only human.  If someone came to me and said, “Can you write something like this?  I’ll pay you…”  wouldn’t my answer be yes?  This is the rack on which writers are strapped.


Who wouldn’t resent being compared to Trump?  Writers are a liberal literati.  Our thoughts go beyond accepted borders.  Here be dragons and drag queens and diamonds made of dung.  We recognize no limits.  We bow to no potentates.  Unless, of course, someone offers us cash…
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