guff

Putting On the Writer’s Costume

Of all the paying jobs I’ve held through the years, only those of recent vintage demanded an appreciable amount of my time spent in the area of writing, even though it was not a primary responsibility. For example, when I managed the MIS group for a medium-sized operation (which I’ll forever refer to as my MIS-manager job), it fell upon me, due in part to a dearth of authorial talent in the company, to formulate some of the marketing material, much of the in-house technical documents, and a large portion of our Web site content — that this gets little more than a line in the “tech” version of my resume irritates me to no end. So I’ve rarely received an income specifically for my compositional skills.

Still, I’m lucky to have seen word assemblages of my own creation — you know, my writing — see printed publication of some sort. That I lack the benefit of a long, publicly accessible publication trail (excepting the informal and freely given leavings on Blurried Musings) could make me appear a little duplicitous when I claim, in my own thoughts and here in this post, that I am a writer. Not really in terms of a professional completely at the act, since they benefit from living off what they produce. And certainly I avoid the more pretentious honorific of Author (capital A and all). Yet a writer is exactly how I see myself, nonetheless.

There’s a small selection of reasons I could give, but few of them are well grounded or disposed to concerns of reality. In other words, it doesn’t sound all that rational when I try to say it out loud. However, avoiding a long protracted defense, I can sum up my feelings this way: it’s based on a way of thinking. No, I’ve not conned into a “to think it is to be it” philosophical platitude here. Time and effort, and yes writing, is part of what makes someone a writer, but there’s a mind set that goes along with it, and this defines not only what kind of writer you are or will become, but how much drive and determination is pushing you. Talent, skill, and education obviously helps, but in any line of business what you think of yourself goes far in characterizing your abilities.

It also has to do with the base feature that makes up a writer: as noted, one must spend time actually writing. Sounds like this should be a natural trait, but you might be surprised by the number of writers who spend more time conversing about the art of writing than hunkering down and working at the process with the same name. Dialog can be useful in strengthening one’s breadth of knowledge in their profession, and can break through the occasional block, but I’ve never found it a useful tool for accomplishing the work. Ditch diggers might offer brief comments on digging deeper or faster, but chewing the fat only tends to slow them down.

I guess the problem, for me and hopefully everyone making similar assertions, is it takes little more than a proclamation to make oneself a writer. Unfortunately there’s no certification program I know of for it.