What do you do for a living? It’s a common question when meeting someone new in a social setting or at a family function. Over the summer I have heard it asked a number of times and I always answer exactly the same way. “I am a writer”. When I speak the words I know that most members of my audience are visualizing the novelist attempting to hammer out his next literary masterpiece on an old Royal typewriter. Very few, despite the modern age that we live in, assume that I might be a content writer.
An accurate description of what I do falls somewhere in the middle of both. I am not a novelist by profession, though I am continually working on writing my next book. I am also not a pure content writer, though my main source of income comes from writing web pages and SEO articles. As I stated in the first paragraph, “I am a writer.” Whether I’m getting paid or not, that is who and what I am. It’s an identity more than a profession.
My ninth grade English teacher taught me that “a writer writes”. It’s not a job. It’s a passion. Anyone can write a coherent piece of text and get paid for it. The quality of education in the United States has deteriorated so much that those who can put complete sentences together are few and far between. Hacks abound. Writers are rare.
Real writers are those who have thoughts about their writing in the middle of the day and stop everything to get them on paper. They are individuals who scramble naked out of the shower, coat-less into a frigid night wind, or sweating from a workout to find a pen, paper, keyboard, or recording device that they can use to record that fleeting thought before it vanishes. If you can identify with any of that, chances are you’re a writer.
Writers are artists, poets, scribes and historians. We see the world in full color, hear it in surround-sound, and speak about it in colorful phrases that bring it to life for others. That is passion. There’s no other profession on earth that can offer that, and for a writer there’s nothing else that takes precedence over it. Our words are our craft, and we need to hone that craft constantly if we are to improve.
A writer writes. The dog days of summer are upon us and work has slowed down. Clients are on vacation, budgets are low, and writers everywhere are staring at blank screens and empty sheets of paper. Don’t begrudge this time. Take advantage of it. You’re blessed with the opportunity to tell the world how you see things, as only you can. Release your passion and let the words flow.
