May 2014
I’m taking the plunge. Many articles I’ve read say if you write, even if you are not published, you should have a web presence. Twitter, Facebook a blog. Well I suppose I can say that I’ve been published, couple of poems and a couple of articles since I started putting my stuff out in December 2013.
I’ve been writing for a few years now but, until last December I’d never attempted to get anything published nor entered any competitions. I wrote poems and stories in Doric, the local language of the North East of Scotland, but only ever let my family see them, that was until my wife got me to join my local writers group, Bervie Writers.
So here I am but, when I was setting up my face book page it asked me what category I wanted to be classified under. I chose author, mainly because it’s the only one that can be used for the type of page I wanted. But then I thought ‘can I really call myself an author’. The whole thing seems very pretentious.
I had a look on tinternet to see if there was a definition that would explain what an author is. The one that seems to stick is a definition given by Dean Wesley Smith.
“A writer is a person who writes. An author is a person who has written.”
Another definition was given on the ‘Difference Between’ website which says:
“To be an author, the idea of your writing must be your own and you must get your work published. You become an author when your books are published, but if your writings never publish, you remain a writer.”
Either way I still don’t feel ‘author’ is the correct heading for me (at the moment). I suppose I can class myself as a writer and, if the ‘Difference Between’ definition is correct, I would like to think that one day I might be able to call myself an author. In the mean time I’ll carry on writing and see if I can’t win a competition or two and get a couple more things published.
And then, there’s the book. It’s been on the go for more time that I care to think of but I’ve made a resolve to get it licked into good enough shape to make my wife happy (she does most of the proofreading).
Sandy Inglis
The beginning
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