on definitions

Years ago, during my daily wanderings round the internet, I came across a quote on someone's profile on some site I don't remember.

Author's write to live, writers live to write.

It's one of those anonymous quotes, one of many that flit about the profile pages of fledgling writers like flies, and are just as inconsequential. But for some reason, I started thinking about this one again. It's made me wonder about the difference between a writer and an author, and if there is really a difference at all.

The Oxford English Dictionary (online edition), says an author is "a writer of a book, article, or document; someone who writes books as a profession". A writer, on the other hand, is "a person who has written something or who writes in a particular way; a person who writes books, stories, or articles as a job or occupation". Very similar definitions are given for each word, however, there are minute differences. An author is a writer, implying that being an author is in a category above being a writer. It's something you can achieve--a title--like being called "doctor". An author is also someone who writes "book[s], article[s], or document[s]", all of which at first glance imply that an author is someone who writes prose. There can be books of poetry, yes, but articles and documents written in poetry? Difficult (although there is probably someone out there who has done it). People who write poetry also have their own title separate from author: poet. But similar can be said for them: when is one a poet, and when is one just someone who writes poetry?

An author is "someone who writes books as a profession". This enforces the idea purported in my anonymous quote: an author is a job description. What do you want to be when you grow up? A doctor, a lawyer, a pianist, an author. It's what you put on your CV, what you tell people at parties when they ask what you do. Furthermore, it's what you call yourself when you make money off of your writing, particularly in "book, article, or document" form. Only on the publication of one of those can one be called an author. This, of course, means that publishing short stories does not make you an author. A collection, possibly ("book" is, after all, a fairly broad term when you think about it), but a single story in a literary journal? According to this definition, no.

A writer, on the other hand, is "a person who has written something". That can apply to anyone. Every elementary school child is forced to produce a short story at some point in order to approve their apptitude with the written word. Does that, then, make everyone a writer? Is anyone capable of scrawling even the crudest short story able to claim that they are a writer? A writer is also someone "who writes in a particular way". Well, that is a bit better. A writer is someone who writes, yes, but also somoeone who writes in a way that distinguishes themselves from others. The use of the word "particular" implies a certain cultivation, that they way a writer writes is something they have crafted over time, something they do purposefully. This further separates the writer from the everyman (as the first part of the quotation implies), to someone specific--somoeone singular. Not everyone is a writer, just like not everyone is an actor or an artist or a musician. You may have acted in a play or painted a picture or were forced to learn the trombone, but that doesn't mean you are masters of those crafts.

And that's what a writer has: mastery.

A writer is "a person who writes books, stories, or articles as a job or occupation". Much like with "author", "writer" can also be given as a job description. In this instance, however, "document" has been replaced with "stories", which tells us that while you can write stories, you cannot author them, and while you can author documents, you cannot write them. Perhaps I'm delving in a bit too deep. These are, after all, just dictionary definitions. But how we define things is often how they are percieved. If you don't know what something is--what a word means--you look it up in a dictionary, and what you are told influences how you view that thing. Here, the dictionary is telling us that the difference between being an author and being a writer depends upon what you choose to write. However, both are professions. Both are occupations you can be paid for. In that, there is no difference.

I have always written. At first, it was scribblings on sheets of scrap paper that hardly resembled words at all, but which I called a story. Writing was a state of being. I wrote. It came as naturally to me as eating or sleeping or breathing, and was never something I gave conscious thought to. It wasn't until I was eleven that it occured to me that people make a living out of their writing. That it was a job. That when asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, you didn't have to say you wanted to be a vet, because you didn't know and that's what your best friend had said. You could be an author, and an author is something you are only when you achieve publication.

In university, as I finished my master's degree, one of my professors told us that upon completion, we were writers. Few of us were published in any medium, but we'd spent an entire year doing nothing but writing, so it was a fitting title. But it still made me wonder: when am I an author? Do I have to have a contract with Random House to do so? And saying we were writers sounded so...silly. So little. I wasn't sure I liked it completely.

Author's write to live, writer's live to write.

An author is someone who is published. By that token, many people can call themselves authors. Madonna. Jimmy Buffet. Will Smith. Pamela Anderson. So many people published today are those who are doing it out of boredom, or as a cash-in on their celebrity, or because they feel the need to do everything regardless of their talent for it. So many people who can call themselves authors are hardly deserving of the title.

A writer is someone who writes. A writer is someone who writes down sentences on cocktail napkins and hotel notepads. A writer is someone who wakes up in the middle of the night and gets out of bed to grab a pen, to try and weave a story from the frayed threads of their dreams. A writer is someone with words tumbling through their head every day of their lives, who put them down not for the sake of making money, but for the sake of getting their story out into the world. A writer wants to share, wants to tell, wants to shape their world for the better through the language they use.

The more I think about it, the more proud I am to call myself a writer. It's a difficult life, often solitary and it sure isn't a cash cow. But if I didn't write...well, I don't think I would be able to do that in the first place. Not willingly. I may never be published, I may never get to hold the title of "author", but for all that it is so similar--and yet so different--I am proud of the title I have.

I am a writer. And I'm living my life writing.

(Image borrowed from here.)