I am a writer

I hate the days that are this busy. I want to sit down and write, or get back into the fun of reading snippets, or doing just about anything but whatever it is that I'm working on rather than the writing I would like to be doing. Today is a real sign of a day like that. The newsletter work went odd, and then, after having worked for days on the thing, some links didn't work when it went out. That's so frustrating! But we're working out a system where I can try the redirects before the newsletter goes live. Otherwise, I have no real way of telling until it's too late.

I've been in an 'interesting' conversation with a rather rude person over on librarything.com, in the Writer-readers group. He's decided that only people he deems worthy enough are writers, and the rest of us are all hobbyists and wannabes. Oh, and those of us who take part in NaNoWriMo are mocking real writers. Really -- that's exactly what he said. I admit that I laughed so hard at that point that the cats went running. What a pretentious twerp! (Don't worry, he's called me far worse in his blog -- though, for the record, I don't knit and I don't write romantic fantasy.)

It did make me sit down and define what I see as a person worthy to be called a writer. (This guy has wrapped up way too much of his personal self-esteem tied up into the word, so if others use it whom he doesn't consider good enough, it takes away from him, you see.) As I wrote in a thread there, I think the important part of being a writer is to write. There are wannabe writers and they're the people who talk about writing, who write a chapter or two maybe, and who never really complete anything. They just talk about it. People who are actually working at their craft, who may be slow writers or fast writers, are writers. They may not be published or professional writers yet, but they are writers. There are good writers and bad writers, just as in every age, but I am not going to judge their work when I haven't seen it. (I mentioned to this guy that he could make a fortune working for publishers with that ability to make judgments on manuscripts without ever seeing them. Just think how fast it would be to get through the slush pile! Hell, people wouldn't even have to send stuff! He could just sniff disdainfully and tell them they aren't worthy, and it's settled!)

I also think that in order to be a known-name in a given genre, the person has to understand what the people of that genre really want, and if the author provides it, then they are a good writer. They may not be a great literary giant, but they are good at what they do. Danielle Steele, who is not one of my favorites, was mentioned. Oh, and Stephen King, of course. The argument seems to be that if you're popular it's because the readers aren't smart enough to know you aren't a good writer, no matter if you give them exactly what they're looking for.

All-in-all, it has been an interesting look into how totally pretentious and self-absorbed some writers can become.

I'll base a character on him someday, because he's so far over the top that a character of that sort would make a good comic relief, I bet. I think maybe I could work one into the sequel to Muse if I get a chance to write it. (grin) This may actually get me moving on writing that sequel, now that I think about it.

And now... and now it's cold here! We have a frost warning tonight again. It's not early for this kind of weather, though it always seems like it is when it first hits. But the colors around here are incredible this year! (The painting today is based on a digital picture, of course. Click on it to see it larger. It really is quite nice.

Oh, have I mentioned that I think I'm going to buy a Canon camera this time around? It's the Canon S5IS, which turns out to be less expensive than the Sony I've had my eyes on for so long, and has some of the same features -- and some others that the Sony doesn't have. I don't know when I'll get it -- depends on finances over the next couple months, of course (and if websites don't need to move and be paid for yet again) -- but it looks like an interesting camera to work with. My hope is that by the time I'm ready to move on from it, the Sony Alpha group with have a live view option for their Digital SLR. Once they have that, I can go back to using my lenses from my old cameras.

Though, to be honest, I do alright with the SLR-Like cameras. I might not like carrying those big, heavy lenses around any more.

We'll see. Right now, though, it's time to go to work on Silky 2.