Being a Writer

I'm struggling here, trying to take on board the idea that I am not a real writer.

See, almost since I could ever hold a pencil, or certainly since my fingers were strong enough to depress the keys on my Marxwriter Deluxe, I have written. Like, every day. It's a bit like ingesting food - at a push I am sure I could go several days without eating, but I really would rather not.

Published writers sometimes appear to me - and I stress at this point that this is entirely MY perception, and not necessarily through their projection - to think that their writing carries more kudos than mine, because it has passed through the rite of passage of having been scrutinised and considered by a third party, and deemed worthy of being paid for.

Here's a typical conversation with a (published) writer.

Writer: "What do you do?"

Me: "Oh, amongst other things, I'm a writer like you!"

Writer: "Oh wow, great! Fabulous. What have you had published?"

Me: "I haven't been published. See, I - "

Writer: "I must get to the buffet table, sorry. They're about to run out of smoked salmon mousse."

Or perhaps, if I am lucky, they will spend a little while telling me why it is so imperative that I do everything in my power to get published and get paid - even a paltry few quid - for what I do. But why? As if my new-found 'success' will somehow reflect upon them, perhaps? I dunno.

Because I don't get paid for what I write, my writing carries less weight, it would seem. My writing doesn't have the battle trophies pinned to the legion's standard, or the ragged scars that ache when the weather changes, that prove it's worthiness.



Oh, don't get me wrong: I can see how my suggestion that I might be a writer could be confusing and irritating to someone who makes their living from the same activity, just as I can see that a "Fully Qualified, Board-Certified Music Therapist!" would perhaps feel discomfited by the fact that I do a job almost exactly the same way as they do, but without having jumped through all the professional, educational and certification hoops of flame that they have had to. That's why they have succeeded in making it illegal for me to call myself a music therapist, in spite of the fact that it is the description that most closely fits what I do.

(For years and years and years I did not even THINK to call myself a musician. I cannot read a note of music and therefore, I do not have what it takes to call myself a "musician". The best I could hope to call myself was an 'enthusiastic amateur'. Those days are behind me now.)

And then I read things like that pretentious, self-serving twaddle that journalist Joe Jackson had published (and was paid for!) in the Irish Independent magazine last week, and I think .. er, no. I don't think so. If that is what paid writing is about, then forget it.

I'm not saying that I sometimes feel my writing is worthless. I'm just saying that I'm occasionally talking to people and I feel like my writing is worth less.