BLOGGER BILL OF WRITES, PT 2

Why you need a blogger bill of writes when you call yourself a writer.

If you’ve ever written anything that matters to you, you’re a writer.

Say it loud, “I’m a writer.”

Feels good, doesn’t it. Do it again.

“I’m a writer.”

Say it loud and proud, writer.

“I’M A WRITER.”

Now the hard part. Someone always ruins the mood by asking, “So, who do you write for?” Or, “Where do you write?” Or, best of all, “What do you write.”

Some answers are better than others, but call yourself a writer and you open up to them all.

Blogger Bill of Writes answers Who Do You Write For

You write for your audience whether ten or ten thousand or ten million blog subscribers.

You write for yourself. Even if you have a multiple personality thing, you write for all of yourselves.

Some people call writers mental because they work through changing points of view, time frames, and lines.

It’s part of the job, just like sticking Thomas Jefferson in this post.

Write to connect the dots between historical eras, between people, between places.

Rick Steves the travel guy says travel is a political act. I’ve got his book that says as much when I finally joined PBS. Got a bunch of his shows on DVD, too.

If travel is a political act, so is writing about travel. Maybe all writing is a political act. Tommy J would probably agree. No one writes the Declaration of Independence for kicks, though it brought plenty of kicks later.

Blogger Bill of Writes answers Where Do You Write

Another trick question? It’s not about your desk, chair, of library table.

Where do you write wants to know who pays you to write, because if you’re not getting paid what’s the point?

Oddly enough, no one has ever picked up a pen for the first time and signed a book contract, got their first short story in the New Yorker, or made the team at the Iowa Writers Workshop.

Where you write is a place called hope, as in, “I hope I’m not wasting my life staring at a screen.”

You may write for nothing as long as you’re productive, as long as you roll out the words arranged in a coherent manner on a regular basis.

You may write for a financial blog with world wide reach whose owner travels to conferences where attendees pay big money to hear actionable advice. Then you quit that blog when the owner balks at your pay request.

It happens and it’s part of the business. Not the good part, but you learn.

You may write historical screenplays and hire reader services to tighten it up. It’s called coverage. Then you discover you’re paying for companies to farm out script reading out to local LA English majors.

It’s part of the Hollywood industry where getting mad or getting even isn’t as important as your next script.

Writers write, they produce, they get stuff down and out.

Blogger Bill of Writes answers What Do You Write

The earliest means of communication with early man appears to be cave drawings that show stick figure characters with sticks attacking stick figure animals.

Language shows up with the play by play in poem either in Sumerian or Chinese, depending on the next linguistic discovery.

Probably went something like, “Mastodon dead, tiger meat, make fire, let’s eat.”

Then we got the Epic of Gilgamesh and the first lines:

“He who saw all, who was the foundation of the land,

“Who knew (everything), was wise in all matters.

“Gilgamesh, who saw all, who was the foundation of the land

“Who knew (everything), was wise in all matters.”

A favorite conversation of writers goes like this:

If you’re good enough to write poetry, write poems. Otherwise figure out what you’re trying to say in short stories. If that’s too hard, write a novel.

It’s a hierarchy of writer class with poets at the top and everyone else looking up. If you get a sore neck from looking up to poets, drop your head back to your own work and produce something worthwhile.

That’s what writers do, that’s what they write. Something worthwhile. And sometimes it happens.

Until then, keep chopping wood, writer. You’re got many miles before you sleep.