Your writing is the deepest expression of you, in the same way that the seasons are the deepest expression of nature. Sarah (sarah@writershq.co.uk).
It seems that more and more we are identified by labels of every type, whether it’s sexuality, color, hairstyle, fat, thin… it never stops and each is laden with baggage, some good, some bad. However it is the labels that we apply to ourselves that matter, because we live in our heads, and as writers, we are prone to that more than other professions.
Picture yourself at a party, drink in hand and the rather attractive person you’ve been watching out of the corner of your eye all night approaches and asks the usual question; “So, what do you do?”
Which word springs first to your lips? Author? Novelist? Writer?
If you answer author – bad news there. Anyone who has ever written a shopping list is an author. That word also comes with the baggage of having to be an authority, which is great if you write text books. Who would read a book written by a tree surgeon about the creatures of the abyssal depths? Unless said tree surgeon is also a qualified Marine Biologist I would imagine only their nearest and dearest. If we continue with the author as authority (and who really likes authority? Normally they’re the pompous know-it-alls that get avoided like Covid) you have now limited yourself – perhaps only subconsciously – to writing what you know. Contrary to popular belief Ernest Hemingway did NOT say to write what you know, he said to write the truest sentence you know. The one that reverberates in your heart, the deepest truth, in other words.
Moving along.
Novelist, sounds good doesn’t it? “I’m a novelist, darling” (picture Joanna Lumley with cigarette holder and champagne here). Exactly. Especially when you realise that the word novel (from the French nouvelle) – which only came into wide spread usage in the late eighteenth century – means new, unusual. If, as is widely posited, there are only thirty seven plots, and Shakespeare used them all, where does that leave you? What’s new and interesting in your work – and why should anyone read it? The baggage with this one is that it sounds slightly pretentious; turtlenecks and elbow patches, with possibly the faint smell of pipe smoke. Or worse, said person pontificating (in excruciating detail) whilst shoving the pipe into your shoulder for added emphasis – while it’s burning. See what I mean about labels?
And now we come to writer. What’s the baggage with this one? Well, a writer writes. Doesn’t matter what, doesn’t matter where, when, or how. A writer writes because words are their life. They simply can’t be other than they are. They don’t have to be an authority (but they do so much research that they know their stuff), they don’t have to come up with anything novel (because they are too busy exploring how they feel during the writing to care), all they have to do is clear the channel and get the words down on the paper. Good words, bad words – naughty words if needed. They simply write it down because, as they say in the movies, “we’ll fix it in post”.
A writer’s aim is to take something familiar and allow the reader to explore something different from their own experience. Stephen King, for example, uses small town settings familiar to everyone in the Western world, uses simple speech, and has characters that everyone can identify as/with on some level. And then the twist, where things begin to go more than slightly pear-shaped. And that, gentle reader, is where his ‘novel’ begins. We read on because we want to know what happens - even though we can guesstimate the events to follow, his characters suck us in with their everyday characterizations – and we want to know how they handle the events that are about to explode. That is writing.
Which label would you rather be your main identifier? Author, Novelist, or Writer? Now it’s up to you.
If you are interested in the psychological effects of labelling, here are the links to the three main articles that I referenced during the writing of this post:
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