The Difference Between A Writer And Someone Who Writes

This is brilliant.

This is garbage.

This is somewhere between garbage and brilliant. 

Sounds like just a different way of romanticizing the writer’s life.

Apparently a writer is also a female.

I think substituting the word ‘writer’ for ‘poet’ would make this post more true.

I believe good writing, particularly non fiction, shouldn’t be complex in form. I think quite the opposite actually, that good writing is complex in meaning but simple in form. If one conveys great meaning without unnecessarily over complicating things, then one has succeeded.

Apologies
for the gender-specific pronouns.  A writer knows that
“they” is plural, and “he or she” would be too cumbersome to repeat so
many times.

this made me cry. 

A writer does not self-aggrandize using the purplest prose this side of Edward Bulwer-Lytton…

Oh, hang on.

A writer does not self-aggrandize using the purplest prose this side of Edward Bulwer-Lytton…

Oh, hang on.

reasons why i don’t consider myself a writer

(Vomits all over self.)

Can we please include he in there? Other than that I enjoyed this blog.

Um, pretentious much? A writer writes. Simple.

do not want; this was the opposite of inspiring.

Don’t listen to the haters, this was pretty great. 

The difference between a writer and people who write is that writers have their names on the spines of books and people who write spend their days behind a Starbucks counter, pumping out caramel lattes while they contemplate the extended meaning of the word tall.

i am throwing up, this is something that is happening

rite

IF PAUL WEST EMBRACES PURPLE PROSE, THEN I DO TOO.

I don’t know about that. 

Paul West embraced Nabokov, Joyce, and Faulkner.

Despite what Ms. Rose seems to believe, she is none of the above.

Now… the difference between a writer and an author works like this:

A writer writes. An author writes and gets published. 

That’s my essay.

Wow. This particular writer is using the pronoun “she” because we have a limited language that only has two pronouns, and perhaps using “she” resonated more with the writer. Would you even say anything if the writer used “he”? Why get hung up on that? Some of the most lyrical writing reads like poetry, and some of the most narrative poetry reads like fiction. 

OMG I was about to write exactly THAT.

A writer is pretentious, arrogant, and impossible to be around.

I love how you’ve constructed this medley of images. Why apologize for gender-specificity, when many of your musings are “universal”–and “She” acts as a placeholder when we know there’s not much else besides “he”.

I say we rename this article to “The Difference Between A Pompous Ass And Someone Who Writes”

For once in the world the word HE isn’t mention and all the male readers freak out. Go on with your Hemingway and Pynchon!

PLEASE do not listen to a word of that bullshit these haters be talking—you are clearly one of the very best writers on Thought Catalogue, and this is your best piece so far. I really admire you for having the courage to risk being labelled “pretentious” in order to say what you actually feel.

I should say as well that I completely agree with this article and feel the same way. I might put it this way: for someone who writes, the problem is figuring out what to say; for a writer, the problem is figuring out *how* to say what she knows she wants to say. The best writers often stammer inarticulately when you ask them to tell you about what you’re working on.

I was actually planning on putting that quote from T.S. Eliot in a comment until you beat me to it.

In conclusion: you’re great, please keep writing and publish often.

So much hateful talk! This was encouraging for those of us who laboriously craft our words, and for those of us who aim to write as a means to create art (not just write for the sake of writing).

Thank you Ms. Rose, I applaud this piece.

So much hateful talk! This was encouraging for those of us who laboriously craft our words, and for those of us who aim to write as a means to create art (not just write for the sake of writing).

Thank you Ms. Rose, I applaud this piece.

So much hateful talk! This was encouraging for those of us who laboriously craft our words, and for those of us who aim to write as a means to create art (not just write for the sake of writing).

Thank you Ms. Rose, I applaud this piece.

Preeetenshussss

Preeetenshussss

A writer, in my opinion, writes for the sake of writing, not for the sake of saying they write. :/

i have a 3.305 post:like ratio.

does that make me a good writer?

I’m male and I’m not freaking out about that. I’m not freaking out at all. 

I’m sitting on my couch looking at my feet and wondering: Should I write about my feet? They’re so writerly. They plumb the depths of the human soul, the every-soul, the all-soul, the soles of my feet are like the souls of aesthetes. I am sitting on my couch and thinking: Are my feet enough to understand everything about everything? Has language made me incapable of seeing my feet as they truly are? Is there something essential about the foot that I’m not capturing? Maybe if I write about my feet in elliptical, allusive prose, quoting TS Eliot without really explaining how he is relevant, and granting irrational importance to the idea that there is a difference between a writer and someone who writes (I am clearly a writer, for I am writing about my feet instead of guns and sex)… ellipsis… Pynchon uses those… Short. Staccato. Sentences. Hemingway uses those. Stereotypes about male readers… You use those. Well. I must go on. I must go on. I must write about these feet if I am to die having uttered something worth silencing the television for. But I don’t have a television! And all at once my feet tingle, they tingle so pleasantly, less pleasantly, help, my feet are on fire. But they do not burn. If only my feet would burn. If only I could feel.

I made an art once. At first I wasn’t sure — I was just crafting words. But then I looked closely at the wrinkles and the curves and I thought: I have made an art! And the art rose and jumped around and I could not catch it. My art had taken off! I could no longer control my art. It had become its own little thing. That is the story of my art.

Just another case of US and THEM. It’s the same logic behind ” White people are better than black people.”   Writers write. Painters paint. Singers sing.

Class and snobbery do not apply.

kaaay

That’s offensive.  And SO off-base.

That’s offensive.  And SO off-base.

That’s offensive.  And SO off-base.

Okay, so I spent about 15 minutes changing all of the “writers” to white person (and the she’s to plurals -them and they – because I just couldn’t stand the improper use of she.) My point is, you can substitute anyting for writer, dog lover, gun loving readneck,  whatever, becasuse the core argument is about who x is better than y, not what makes a writer a writer. 

A white person is not just
someone who is white. In their head, it’s white all day. A white
person sees the world not as a
place made up of colors but of one color, white. White person knows more meaning is contained in a
phrase like “poison friends” than a
paragraph-long attempt at comparing emotional pain to a stab wound. A white person will divine a metaphor
from a pattern on a dress, or a gesture, because sunsets have been done
before. A white person understands the capacity for words to embolden, to
eviscerate, to cut a man in half. A white person’s words have texture and an
aesthetic – they mean one thing on paper and another in your mouth. A white
person knows the word “perfume” has a scent, and “savory,” a flavor. A white
person also knows that the
technical term for making you taste a
white person’s words is synesthesia, but a white person would rather show you than tell you.

A white person’s mind is sticky, cavernous. It is a locus of constant invention
and generation, but also of deconstruction and warfare. It’s very synapses fire
bullets between semicolons and periods. In the infancy of the day, or as it’s
expelling its final breath, an errant phrase will show up there unannounced and
become lodged in some furrow. It will keep the white person up at night,
until the white persons has
built a temple, or at the very least, a sand castle, around it.

A white person believes in truth but understands the utility of a lie.
Someone who writes will think about a lie in terms of its anatomy: a white persons will see it as
something with dead legs, flayed on a cold steel table, reeking of that stuff
we use now instead of formaldehyde, because formaldehyde will kill you, too.
But a white person believes in a lie’s biology and knows it is still alive,
animated by some preternatural aspiration, an amorphous mass of amorphous
cells, dividing and multiplying and taking on some new architecture every time
you look at it. A white person knows a lie doesn’t want to die.

Someone who is white, is white from
a place of common experience in a common language, beleaguered by tired phrases
and obvious similes, for those we call in my day job “the mass market
consumer.” This is the audience who rapid-fire tweets without adding
commentary. A black person
writes for the Facebook share; a white person writes for mind share. But still,
in a way, a white person writes for themselves.
 A white person knows
their best work will get the
least traction because the mass market consumer didn’t study English literature
and doesn’t have the means to do the heavy lifting of literary analysis. And
that’s OK. A white person writes for them, too, but only
because it’s a way in. It’s sort of like when Ryan Gosling does one Notebook
for every four Blue Valentines. A white person knows you’ll get that
analogy but kicks them-selves
for drawing it.

Someone who is white, is white as
themselves. A white person’s
voice, on the other hand, is chameleon-like. White person can write from the perspective of a nine-year-old child or a pair of hands and make you believe. A white
person knows exactly what T.S. Eliot meant when he wrote, “Immature poets
imitate; mature poets steal.” A white person not only fashions the image of a
pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas, but could
tease speech out of those waves and teach sign language to those claws. A white
person drowns in deeper oceans.

Someone who  is white understands being white in terms of something a white person does, not in terms of something white person is. A white person is aware of the singular stuff of which their soul is composed, but will never
shake that gnawing feeling of inadequacy.  A white person will be at once inspired and made to
feel inferior by other white persons’ words. But they’ll never let that stop them. They’ll
continue to see the poetry in a broken watch, or a dog with one blue eye and
one brown. A white person will give you their heart on a Saturday night for
the story a white person gets to tell on a Sunday afternoon.
 A white person will give you their soul always. And white person will give it to you in writing.

This makes no sense.

You know what else is offensive and off-base? Surrealism. Knock-knock.

This has made the article infinitely better, in my opinion.

A writer apparently just declares themself to be a writer, then produces a sub-class little article about what a great writer they are.

The only suitable adjective for this is “loathsome”.

The only suitable adjective for this is “loathsome”.

why the fuck are all your comments so gay are you perfect circles’ salad sizzler tossing cousin

why the fuck are all your comments so gay are you perfect circles’ salad sizzler tossing cousin

ugh why don’t you and the other go lick each others’ bumholes and call it performance art you pricks

ugh why don’t you and the other go lick each others’ bumholes and call it performance art you pricks

People hatin’ like this girl just orchestrated the 2008 financial collapse. Maybe some of ya’ll need to be reading Therapy Catalog. So she took a smack at writing about writing, are you guys seriously all that rankled by it? 

She orchestrated the 2008 financial collapse? Jesus! This keeps getting worse! We have to do something. I’m going to write to Obama and let him know. But I’ll only send it if the writing is good enough.

fun writing

and ace of base

I loved this; haters need not apply. 

HERE, HERE. Well said. #respect #props

the ‘pair of hands’ link goes to some movie trailer vid post that doesn’t mention a pair of hands. It’s by ryan though so at least it counts as brown nosing the editor

this reminds me of when i took a translation class in college and it was all a bunch of people talking about how translators are like vampires because they murder a text and bring it back to life as a monster.

You could save yourself some time on being rude and use Microsoft Word’s “find and replace” option.

i’m having trouble figuring out whether i like this or not but i surely have no trouble figuring out how small my vocabulary compendium is. i need to read thesaurus more.

Lots of good in here, and great. Thanks.

It’s the wrong link.  Thanks for flagging.

you have to be fucking joking. 
like seriously, thats a fucking joke, right?

am seriously unsure as to why people are angry.
this was a brilliantly worded article.
apparently every commenter on thought catalog thinks they’re better writers than the TC article writers.

Maybe they are.

Oh man! So true. I could also put ‘dragon’ or ‘meth head’ or ‘asteroid’ or any other arbitrary word in. Are you really making a comparison between this article and the ‘in bed’ game? Seriously? 

And bravo wasting 15 minutes attempting to demonstrate something that is patently obvious within the article itself.

I could take the Magna Carta (probably a bad example, because they really were talking about white people, and really just white men) or the work of David Hume or Cicero and put ‘white person’ in for pronouns and achieve exactly what you just did.

Oh man! So true. I could also put ‘dragon’ or ‘meth head’ or ‘asteroid’ or any other arbitrary word in. Are you really making a comparison between this article and the ‘in bed’ game? Seriously? 

And bravo wasting 15 minutes attempting to demonstrate something that is patently obvious within the article itself.

I could take the Magna Carta (probably a bad example, because they really were talking about white people, and really just white men) or the work of David Hume or Cicero and put ‘white person’ in for pronouns and achieve exactly what you just did.

shit, it sure seems that way.

I have a confession to make. I was sitting in my reclining chair one night many years ago, smoking my pipe and stroking my strong, protruding chin, when I heard (or thought I heard) a scream from beneath the floorboards of my old 19th century manor. After carefully placing the pipe on the table without knocking over its slowly burning contents, I stood and listened for a second scream. But there was none.
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p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px}

I sat back down and wondered if I had imagined it. If so — there was nothing to worry about. But what if someone truly had screamed from down below? What was my ethical responsibility? Was I meant to call out, “Hello? Does anyone live under my floorboards?” Was I better off simply dismissing the whole incident and resuming my pipe smoking?

As fate would have it, I got a chance to do neither. For at the stroke of midnight something took hold of me. At first it was just a mild tingling sensation in my body, as though my blood had turned into a fizzy soda. But soon the tingling became unbearable. It was the most painful experience of my life… A LIFE ABOUT TO END! For at the climax of my suffering, Facebook reminded me that Thought Catalog had released yet another precious article about a choice of lifestyle (which is precisely what this article is about: not writing, but talking like a writer, mastering the artifice of being writerly without drawing too much attention to oneself) and the throbbing in my head was so great that I burst into a thousand bits of flesh and disappointment.

And then my hounds managed to break through the windows. They ate what was left of me, and because I didn’t taste very good, they decided to use the leftover flesh as backup articles for Thought Catalog.

“stroking my strong, protruding chin”

killed me

this was dumb. ew

It wasn’t dumb! I was expressing myself!

no, i’m pretty sure it was dumb.

If it’s so dumb, then how come I’m such a poet?

you’re not. that was dumb.

Using ‘he’ would of course be equally as gender specific. I don’t mind that ‘she’ was used but it was an observation I made nonetheless. I tried to put myself in the author’s shoes but that became increasingly difficult. I suppose the avoidance of personal pronouns all together would have been one way around that and yes, some creativity would have been required to work around the limitation. In any case, I don’t really care.

I agree that “some of the most lyrical writing reads like poetry, and some of the most narrative poetry reads like fiction” but neither of those are non fiction, which is what I was referring to.

 ’one of the very best writers on Thought Catalogue’

I think that these ‘very best writers’ should start a website called ‘Thought Catalogue’ and publish all their purple prose, self-congratulatory ‘writing’ there…

Ok. So I can accept that you’re a writer because that’s how you view yourself, and have decided to call yourself one, even if I feel this article/essay is very pretentious and is seemingly being called up from a void of experience. 

However, where else are you published? Where can I read your great oeuvres that have manifested from the cavernous, sticky recesses or your mind?

Also, “A blogger writes for the Facebookshare; a writer writes for mind share.” – this is a blog.

if the writer used “he” instead of “she” in her piece, she would’ve eliminated 18 characters from the said piece.

You two are so ‘fucking cute.’

Get the hell out of my face.

apparently, a writer also keeps her head deeply embedded in her own ass.

Like, waaaaaaaaay up there. 

Writing is overrated. So are all literary techniques. It’s obvious one can say the same thing 1,000 different ways, but in the end, bullshit is bullshit. Same goes with public speaking. This is a huge problem with the masses in general – so quick to believe/follow something that sounds or looks pleasing without even considering the ugly hidden truth. Imho, good writers/communicators can turn hell into paradise.

As was the writer that wrote the article you commented on! Thankful we can all express ourselves

I actually agree that this post was a tad pretentious but the negative feedback has just got out of control.

Wait, so a young writer, honing her craft while reflecting on its very nature does not have the same prosaic magnitude as three of the greatest writers of all time?  But that’s what I come to TC for! I want Faulkner, TC, and I will not stand for anything else!

so you’ve met some of them then?

OH wait guys she was just being ironic. Don’t you get it?
Don’t you?
HUH???

sounds like a good idea to me?  why would you want to remain in hell when there are magic writers/communicators out there who could turn it into paradise?

i am pretty fucking cute but i am confused as to why it’s contained in quotation marks.
explain plz~

Phil, you are the greatest commenter on the internet. 

Phil, you are the greatest commenter on the internet. 

SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU STUPID FUCKING BITCH, THIS ARTICLE WAS STUPID AND YOU’RE FUCKING STUPID LET PUT MY ‘WRITING’ THAT I ‘WROTE’ UP YOUR FUCKING CUNT

you sound fucking stupid. orchestrated the 2008? good job skimming a few pages of google news and feeling ‘very up to date on current events’ and feel that you need to reference them here. ass face cunt

I think even people who agree with you are starting to get pissed off. Can you just leave, thanks. 

fuck yesss such a good idea yesss

can you just shut the fuck up please?

cool guy alert.

phil, you are a poet

HEY GUYS  CHECK OUT MY SHITTY TUMBLR AT GOLDEN GAY . TUMBLER . COM SWEET SWEET SWEET

no you’re fucking stupid i’m gonna put my writing in your sticky canvernous cunt

no you’re fucking stupid i’m gonna put my writing in your sticky canvernous cunt

What is the point of changing it to “white person?” It’s incredible, the writer is speaking about a process or a writer’s way or whatever you will call it. Your substitution is meaningless and obscures any of the poetry in the piece. Pathetic!

tl;dr

Writers have three ingredients: sugar, water, and of course purple.

words don’t inherently mean anything

longest thread on TC

You’re the best.

IT’S SO DARK

GOD HELP ME

oh dear god you are so witty and clever, how could i ever keep up?

Apparently Eliot Rose is today’s pissing post for angry writers on the internet. James Franco must have the day off.

Wooooooooooooooooah

I suppose ‘turn’ was the wrong way of saying it. maybe – “make hell sound like paradise.”

Thanks for all the likes guys. First off, I’d like to thank Jesus. Without Him I never could’ve been inspired to write what I did. I’d like to thank my moms for bringing into this earth. And most of all I’d like to thank all my fans who believed in me from the start. One love. God bless. 

I really like how this post is poetic without necessarily trying to be. It’s realistic, because every writer will explicate her craft in a similar fashion to try to share that enjoyment and love for it. Lovely post :)

I’m not reading all of the comments because long threads are just hideouts for hateful assholes. From what I’ve skimmed, I’m certain that is the case here. I posted the below on InspecterLit: http://www.inspecterlit.com/lets-discuss-the-difference-between-a-writer-someone-who-writes/Figured I’d post it here too.This piece is pretentious and a bit incomplete for sure, but I’m not certain that is completely a bad thing. Has anyone ever thought of it this way?: Writers are devalued because everyone who does not do it thinks it is easy. In this society, most people have this skill on some level. And these days, more people are “writing” than ever: tweets, text messages, facebook and google+ updates, comments on blog posts, blog posts, high school and college essays–and in the age of the dominance of the MFA and undergrad creative writing classes, short stories, essays, memoirs and novels. This is why it is nearly impossible for someone who is serious about the written word to make a living off of it. I love this shit, but it’s not going to feed my baby. I will keep trying to make it feed my baby, but the odds are against me. It’s a supply and demand problem. There is an overabundance of “writers” and possibly even an overabundance of serious writers, I’m not sure. But there are far fewer people who live and die for this. Maybe a romantic notion, but I live for this and take more pleasure in this than most other things even if it has brought me very little in terms of material comfort. Nothing else really comes close. I don’t know if there are hordes of people calling themselves “writers” even though they don’t take it seriously. I don’t know if the Thought Catalog piece was “necessary.” I don’t see a real writers versus fake writers clash. I don’t even feel resentment toward anyone or any group over the “overabundnace” of writers problem that is keeping me from getting a million dollar check for this great short story I have written. After all, everybody needs to know how to use the written word to communicate. I make a living teaching this subject to mostly, non-writers. I just wish people had an understanding the real worth of someone who knows how to utilize language.Like
Reply

fuck, i don’t know why the paragraphs breaks didn’t show up. oh well.

This made me cry because it was so disgusting.

I RLY LYKE HOW DIS IZ POETIC EVEN WIFOUT TRYING 2 B!!!!1111

Damn those mass market consumers. Why cant everybody just be the way I want them to be?

all the hatred this post is getting makes no sense at all.
how thick can you guys be to not realize that she’s OBVIOUSLY portraying herself as someone who writes instead of as a writer? i mean, seriously. did any of you even get past english lit in grade school? 
READ THE DAMN PIECE AGAIN.

GAY DAD needs to kill himself

I think people are just bitter to be referred to as “someone who writes” – but I think it’s true. Being a writer is a profession, just as serious and difficult as being a scientist or pianist or architect. Only thing is that writers have, in a sense, the same tools in their belt as most people do since most people these days can read and write (to a certain degree, anyway). I think the article was just doing what some writers would do — be poetic about it. It’s kind of like when you enter a museum and you see something you think you probably could have done in kindergarten hanging on a wall. The thing is, even if you think you could have done it, you didn’t. And you generally have to actually study the field to understand why that person is famous and your random crayon sketches of youth have not made you famous. It’s the same with writing. We all “write” — but only writers write literature, poetry, plays, screenplays, etc.

Loving your art does not mean you must bare
yourself to the world and “Why I Write” pieces are as copious as those who
think they can write. Every writer has done this at some time or another and
I’m no different. But it is word masturbation; self-consumed and ultimately,
the only person who is satisfied is the masturbator.

Do it if you must, but do it in privacy and
if you must share it, push it out in a veiled way, but don’t splay yourself
naked to be abused, misunderstood or worse… ignored. Being a writer does not mean you must
expose every inch of literary skin, lovely though it may be.

Just tell a good story. The rest will be
acknowledged.

whichever you are. i like this.