What Is the Definition for a Writer?

Video Transcript

"What is writer is almost more of a philosophical question, a practical one. The simplest answer is, a writer is someone who writes ideally everyday but beyond that, what can we say is someone of writer who has twenty-seven unpublished novels sitting in a trunk. Well, he has written or she has written but nobody is seeing that stuff. We have to keep coming back to the idea of writer is someone who writes not everybody wants to be published. Perhaps that woman with the twenty-seven unpublished novels is perfectly satisfied to have done that and has gotten whatever she gets out of writing from doing that. Most of us do want to be published so I would say a writer is someone who writes and tried to show it to other people. That may mean putting stuff on your blog. That may mean trying to get published in little magazines. It may mean trying to write a bestselling novel that everyone will read. But if you want to be a writer, if that's what the real question is. Learn your craft and although you don't always have to use absolutely correct grammar, learn correct grammar, learn how language works on your reader so you can use it when you need to. Write, keep writing. Send stuff out so that other people can with any luck give you comments on it and learn to read like a writer. See how other people are making the text to work for them, how they're making you feel certain ways. Greatest university for learning how to write is other books and pay attention to how other people are writing and then eventually perhaps you'll get to the point where you say to yourself, well, I'm a writer now."