Are you a writer?

At the fancy dinner party last night (where I decided to quit smoking for good) a nice lady from Venezuela asked me “Are you a writer?”. I smiled and said “At the moment I am just a writer, but hopefully in 2013 I will become an author.” She was keen on understanding what I mean by that. Many of us have a talent for writing as children. It is like painting which children do naturally. However, over the years of growing up we lose part of our talents and hide them in the deep space nine of our brains behind the wounds of broken relationships and other everyday worries that keep us from living a happy and fulfilled life.

In my case it was probably a trauma that pulled my energy for writing away and I only slowly rediscovered it through tweeting, blogging, articles and poetry. Now my writing is constantly in me and wants to come out. I write whenever I want and I have managed to draft a novel of four parts.

At this point it is a “quadrology” (wow the word “quadrology” actually exists but I should call it “tetralogy” if I want to be taken seriously going forward.), four stories belonging together and building up on each other. It does not really makes sense to read one of them only.

Anyway, my writing so far seems more like a hobby and when I talk about it to close friends, it seems like I am talking about a hobby. From what I have learnt the difference between being a writer and an author is that an author is published and writes to make a living. It would be nice to make a living from writing but it is a long way to get there. So if you feel like writing is just a hobby but you want to become a published writer you might want to follow me on this path of discovery. I am not sure I can help you because I am still a beginner at this as well. Plus reading “Raw Material” by JJ Marsh made me understand how much I still have to learn about writing. As you might know and see, English is not my native language and that means that you will lose out on elaborateness and play on words. In my first language there are words and sounds that just appear nice on paper but do not translate to an audience. So one of the first questions I ask you is: Who are you writing for?

Let’s talk about this more in 2013.

Hugs

VMS