What is a writer?
The first THOUGHTS post.
As my university professor once put it,
A writer is someone who writes
Stripped from its context, from his barotone voice, this feels quite plain. But there was emphasis on the ‘writes’ in this sentence. That is to say that a writer is someone who writes with intentionality. They do not do it simply because it pays the bills, they do it because they must do it, because something beyond their control drives them to tell their stories.
I write because I enjoy the process of encoding meaning into arrangements of 26 or more ancient symbols, of playing that timeless game of constructing immortality from an infinite pile of scrabble pieces.
The immortality is not for myself, but for ideas that I think might otherwise fade when I fade. What if I am the only person who can write Earthloop, or The Stephanie Glitch? Surely then I have a duty to the future to write these things down. If I don’t, they are as fleeting as my average 88 years on this planet, 30 of which have already elapsed.
A writer does not write because some social media influencer showed them a badly cropped meme about how miserable writing novels makes them feel, and has now decided they too want to fetishise the lonely life of a man with back problems hunched over a typewriter in a dimly lit room. No, a writer writes because there is something inside her head, some deep-seated mania, that drives her to write. Perhaps she wakes up with an idea in her head that won’t let her sleep, perhaps she finds the way an old wooden fence has collapsed into the weeds unsettling, and needs to capture it in a way no camera ever could.
Perhaps, like me, she tells stories and jokes in her head and realises that other people might one day benefit from hearing them. From there the writer’s journey is simple, its momentum fuelled what I can see as only one concrete goal:
Get better at it.
Sure, there are other goals to have, but becoming a more effective writer means I become more efficient at writing, meaning I spend less time writing these posts, so I can spend more time writing those books you like. And if I can spend more time doing that, I get better at that too. People gasped at the ending of WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? (which is now 50% off on Smashwords, until August) and that’s powerful. Imagine if writers got into politics (and not just by sharing memes on twitter about how angry they are about the current thing).
But today it feels writers must define themselves in ways which are painful to the soul. Algorithms increasingly drive our purchasing choices, and sadly books cost money to make. I am essentially selling dreams to you, but you’re here because you think the dreams are worth having. So, you do what you do (arguably fulfilling some more tangible niche in society’s needs, such as being a doctor, physicist, or Minecraft content creator) and I tell you jokes and stories, so you go to sleep with a brain full of weirdness.
On my more confident days I tell myself that the weirdness you absorb from my stories helps you see the world in a new way. I have utility.
We live in symbiosis, writer and reader. I am alone without you, and your brain is a little less weird without me.
That is the purest form of cooperation I can think of.
So who am I?
I’m a walking, talking existential crisis. As poet / comedy poet / science fiction author / comedian / comedy author / publisher / writing coach / Lego artist / actor / radio host / events host, I am perhaps better positioned than most people to peer over the ledge of conscious human experience into that whirling nebula of colour and sound that is the true reality we are bobbing on the surface of. Its purples, greens and oranges sing to me as I teeter on the edge, as countless others stand back, proclaiming the edge is dangerous, proclaiming they already know precisely who they are, who they were, and who they want to be.
Truly, most people have no idea. I just admit it.
On branding.
If you’re a writer, I want you to remember this.
Authors feel an increasing pressure to perform now. Jumping through algorithmic hoops, posting memes (something I would do anyway as I enjoy creating them), and dancing on tiktok have all worked for new authors. Others have their own approaches, some are hyper-political, others are stoic to the point of apparent ignorance. We all have our tricks to show the world we are writers.
And I think I am happy with mine.
I am more than comfortable having opinions and joking publicly. I’m a person, so I want to look like one.
I've seen a few authors who only ever post when they have a new thing out, and then lament that nobody ever clicks the thing. I don't think that problem is algorithmic, I think it is simply social. The author makes themselves look like they don't give two shits about anything other than selling a product.
We want artists to be weird and unexpected, to challenge us even outside their published work. We want them to be complete and interesting people.
I'm lucky because despite being able to act, I could not morally pretend to care about my readers if I did not, but I actually do like hearing from them, as you know. I enjoy my polls here and I enjoy reading your emails after I put a story out.
Authors need to be real.
So be you. Don’t be anyone else.
Until next time.