Are You a Real Writer?
By Bill Ferris | January 16, 2016 |
Warning: Hacks for Hacks tips may have harmful side effects on your writing career, and should not be used by minors, adults, writers, poets, scribes, scriveners, journalists, or anybody.
Okay, real talk here.
Do you call yourself a writer? A capital-R-W Real Writer?
Sure, you spend your lunch breaks pecking away at your novel. You’ve got a blog and a Twitter you suspect people read. But is it really safe to label yourself a writer? Should you sell a short story first? Publish a book? Is the mere act of putting pen to paper enough, like how you only have to kill one person to be called a murderer? Or do you need to go to school for it, like a doctor or ninja? If so, fancy-schmancy writing workshops and MFA programs only accept a handful of students every year, leaving most writers out in the cold.
This week, the illustrious Neil Gaiman tweeted an endorsement of the Clarion Writer’s Workshop, a pricey, six-week writing retreat in California:
https://t.co/KxqDo9CY9y is where you apply to go to Clarion. If you want to be a writer, you want to go to Clarion, NEED to go to Clarion.
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 15, 2016
Whoa, wait a minute! Did he mean “need” in the same sense that we need oxygen to breathe?
The answer is yes, that’s exactly what he meant, and if you don’t have six weeks and a few thousand bucks to spare, there’s no daily word count that will save you, poseur.
This revelation ignited a firestorm among the common rabble. Many writers argued that Famous Author Neil Gaiman had forgotten that not everybody goes to bed with a rock star on top of a pile of money, and that many writers have various personal and financial obstacles preventing them from attending such programs—obstacles that Gaiman works tirelessly from the shadows to keep in place. Tough job market? Rising child-care costs? Debilitating disease? If you knew how much power and influence he and his fellow Real Writers have over your day-to-day lives, you’d never pick up another book again.
The most shocking thing about this whole kerfuffle is that Gaiman revealed even that much. Real Writers guard their secrets closer than [TOP SECRET ANALOGY ONLY VISIBLE TO REAL WRITERS]. Don’t believe me? How many people bought Stephen King’s On Writing? A million-billion. Yet only a fraction of those folks got published. Now do you see what I mean? King served up a salad of low-hanging fruit, such as setting a daily word count—and how brazen is it to sell a book that basically tells you that the secret to being a good writer is writing a lot of words?—but he kept all the arcane incantations and blood rites to himself.
Being a Famous Author myself, I’ve known this stuff for a long time. I’d wanted to write a tell-all book about it, but this is obviously the sort of thing that the publishing world doesn’t want to get out. At the risk of my personal safety and under penalty of banishment from the Real Writer Annual Picnic, I’ll share what tidbits I can.
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Scene from 2015 Real Writers Annual Picnic. Photo source: Wikimedia Commons
The bad news is that the fancy workshops and schmancy degrees are just the first step, the equivalent of the first day of school where they make the seating chart and tell you when you go to lunch. There are so many other requirements to being a Real Writer. There’s the Reading of the Tome of Fate, a volume bound in unicorn hide, thicker than the entire set of 1991 World Book Encyclopedias you saw at the thrift store, which foretells how many books you will write and how many figures your book deal will be (to keep pace with the times, it’s available on e-book now, which weighs only seventy-eight pounds). There’s the Eyes Wide Shut-style masquerade where writers are tempted to permanently delete their latest draft in exchange for wicked, unspeakable delights—I’m looking at you, George R. R. Martin. There’s the Cleansing Fire, a pyre of silver flame that will burn away the dead wood of bad ideas to make way for a forest of epiphanies. Like The Velveteen Rabbit, a faerie is involved, but she is tricksy; do not believe her lies. And throughout it all, so much blood. So, so much.
The good news? I never promised good news.
Yet after all that, it still may not be enough to make you a Real Writer. There is no ceremony. There is no certificate. But then one day, you’ll make an innocuous comment that causes thousands of writers to stop working on their manuscripts, instead using their precious few hours of writing time to yell at you on the internet. A day will come when you are so successful that people willfully misunderstand your words as proof that you’re an elitist snob.
Then, only then, will you know you’re a Real Writer.
Think you’re a Real Writer? Crow about it in the comments section!
[coffee]
After college, Bill Ferris (he/him) left Nebraska for Florida to become a rich and famous rock star. Failing that, he picked up the pen to become a rich and famous novelist. He now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and looks forward to a life of poverty and ridicule.
I know I’m a REAL WRITER because the part-time sales clerk in the second-hand book store said, “You look like a writer.” Not sure if she was ridiculing my poverty or what.
Haha! Bought that shirt too, Rita!
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
I am in awe of anyone who would risk the penalty of banishment from the Annual Real Writer Picnic to divulge trade secrets. You, sir, are worthy of the name RW.
LOVED this, Bill. You always make me spit my tea in laughter. The photo was especially hilarious.
I am a writer because I can actually laugh at this, at what we do, and not only know how crazy it must look to the outside world, but relish in the insanity.
Go, Bill!
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
Thank you, Denise, but if you’re always spitting tea out of your mouth, the problem may be with the tea rather than me.
Yours,
Famous Author Bill Ferris
Love this, Bill. Hey, maybe your definitions and other ideas will help divide those who are writers from those who are not. Getting down and angry, my biggest complaint occurs if someone forces it out of me that I write, and then they say, like all you need is a free weekend, “Oh, I always wanted to write a book.”
THANKS!
Dear Mr. Ferris:
Yes, indeed, we have taken note of this post. Please be advised your choice of entree for the annual luncheon — Golden Hen roasted with Venusian herbs and actual gold, served with Ambrosian frissée sauteed in essence of miniature whale and dark-side-of-the-moon pommes frittes — is hereby canceled.
We also assume you will be returning your key to the Men’s Locker and Magic Helipad, your Vial of Remainder Antidote, and your recently delivered “Neil’s the Real Deal” pin. We trust this will happen post haste.
You may hear in the background over the next few weeks, seemingly coming from nowhere, the sound of David Bowie and John Lennon singing “Fame.” It will gradually grow fainter and fainter and then fade away altogether. Forever. This is how we drum folks out of the corps around here, Mr. Ferris — a ritual made all the more poignant this week when Mr. Bowie joined Mr. Lennon among the gods.
We sincerely, deeply regret these measures — and the others yet inflicted, but itemized in your membership packet (please re-read) — but a deal is a deal, as they say somewhere, probably in a book. To use the vernacular, you screwed the pooch. And, oh my my, the pooch did not like it one bit.
Membership Committee
The Eternal and Universal Brotherhood of Bona Fide Scribes, Worthy Chroniclers, and Real Honest-to-God Writers
Dear Mr. Corbett,
Though I am disappointed, I respect your professional courtesy. However, regarding my key, Antidote, and pin: Try and take them from me.
Sincerely,
Famous Author Bill Ferris
There was a knock at my door as soon as I posted the comment. Suffice it to say, Mr. Corbett, the items have been placed in your associates’ custody.
Ah, I see you’ve made Bernie’s acquaintance. Right bit of rough, our Bernie. A man who knows what’s needed to “get the job done.”
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
I would so go to Clarion and become a Real Writer . . . except, there are no provisions for housing spouses and no way I’m separated from my wife for six weeks.
I’ll be content with wannabe status. It’s a comfortable mantle I wear.
Thanks for the advice here, Bill. Just wondering, if the Real Writer career doesn’t work out, can you recommend a couple ninja schools? You can email these privately to avoid a Neil G – type backlash from underprivileged aspiring ninjas.
I used to say you’re not a real writer until you can do it full time. But then I realized I needed to append that status if I wanted to call myself one.
So to me, a “real” writer is one who may not necessarily be published, but writes with the goal of being published and views writing more as a business than a hobby.
A “real” writer writes everyday without exception.
A “real” writer sets–and reaches–regular writing goals.
A “real” writer is able to say “no”. No to friends, no to TV, no to just about everything else and be willing to put writing first.
Now I may sleep again at night, knowing the pressure is off. Dang. Ahhhhh, apathy! It’s what’s for dinner! *skips off all lah tee dah!*
I was hoping you wouldn’t post that photo as I am still a little embarrassed by what I wore to the 2015 Real Writers Picnic. Next year? I am totally wearing jeans.
What a perfect way to start my Sunday, Bill. While I chuckle between sips of coffee (I don’t want to wear the damned stuff), I nod my head. Yes, I’m a RW. I know this because it is my full time – dare I say it – occupation. Though the financial returns are laughingly negligible, I still sit in front of my computer in an effort to pull forth words that just might make a decent, readable story. Truthfully though, the first time I admitted, out loud, that I’m a writer was only after my first book was published. From that point on I gave up all pretence of pretending to be anything other that that insane creature, a writer. It came to me that every other profession I’d ever done (there were a few), were just hiding the truth of who and what I am. J.K. Rowling once said something about the fact that, having failed at every other vocation, she was left with the bare truth: she is a writer.
No amount of degrees, MFA’s, or writer’s workshops make you a writer or prepare you for the battles ahead. I’m thinking they have tremendous value as excellent networking playgrounds for those with the funds to indulge, but they do not create writers.
I’m a “Real Writer” because I get to sleep in until noon every day. In 2015, by working only an hour or less a day, I made an income better than 99 percent of working stiffs who put in 8 or 10 or 12 hours a day. I’m also a “Real Writer” because my books have sold over 900,000 copies worldwide and three books of mine have each sold at least 100,000 copies in print.
Having said that, I must share this point of view:
“In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, and in Australia you have to explain what a writer is.”
— Geoffrey Cottrell
I just finished another short story and have never heard of this illustrious society of real writers. Surely this is why everything I write ends up being about two gray slabs of stone who do nothing for 5,000 words. I *have* to get into that workshop!!
What’s a Real Writer? God knows, there is no such thing. Thanks for the pun. ;)