I Am a Writer

I attended an on-line writing seminar a few weeks ago and got a valuable piece of advice I’d like to share with you.

The topic of the seminar was (not surprisingly) "How to Get Published". Is there any other topic that an unpublished writer is really interested in? I’m sure, like me, you’ve attended similar ones and listened to them with open heart and open mind, completely agog.

Still, I always come away from them reminded of the old adage, “Nothing succeeds like success.”

And by that, I mean the success stories I’ve heard from published authors are what we in the engineering/scientific industry call “non-repeatable”. I could do everything exactly the same way that Author-A did, and still not get published. That’s because there are simply too many variables to account for. Yes, the experiment steps are repeatable, but the results are not. That is just reality, and we, the Great Unpublished, shouldn’t get too discouraged by that.

However, there was one piece of advice that the instructor gave that really struck me as being supremely useful. In fact, it inspired me to stop thinking about creating this website, and to actually create it.

The seminar instructor asked all of us agog Zoom attendees, “How many of you think of yourself as a writer?”

Nearly every hand went up.

He then made us all squirm when he asked, “How many of you actually call yourself a writer? How many of you tell your friends and family and coworkers that you are a writer?"

Approximately zero hands went up.

Then came the advice that made the tuition worthwhile: To be a writer, you must call yourself a writer.

So, here I am, telling the world that I am a writer. You're among the first to hear it.

Now, go call yourself a writer, too!