If nobody reads you, are you a writer?

kdnxdr said:

So, if a tree falls, I would think there would be some sort of reaction, even if it was very, very quiet. Something would have to absorb the impact of the tree fall to reduce the impact and any resulting sound.

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But the validation would come for the result of the impact, that could be observed at a later time.

ColoradoGuy said:

So you are saying that if someone writes something, he or she is a writer by virtue of that act, whether or not someone reads what is written?

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And does the writing include everything that is written. When I write on the shopping list hanging on the refrigerator:

shampoo-Lori
tea
socks-Lori


Am I adding to my skills a writer? I don't believe I am.

The discussion raises another question for me. Do you need external validation to be considered a writer?

Is there a difference between perceiving oneself as a writer and being perceived by others as one?

A policeman, whether he is self-professed or employed by the police force, can only be an effective policeman if others accept his authority in that role. Is it the same for writers?

Culturally Significant Terms

poetinahat said:

I thought that was pretty much the way it worked. The question for me is the implication of habituality, or regularity, that the -er noun implies. So, if one writes - over time, regularly or sporadically, or at one instance, while one is writing - then one is a writer.

Where it gets contentious is for, say, lying. There's a vast distinction, for me, between telling a lie and being a liar.

It seems, though, that the question here is more about delineation: is being a writer (one who writes now and then, dabbling) the same as being a Writer (one who invests extensive time, talent, and/or effort in writing as an enterprise or art form)?

*shrug* Okay by me.

Lowercasefully yours,

PiaH.

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No, the "real question" (which is not really a real question) is how do we define the culturally significant terms that define us?

I personally have no emotional investment in being called a writer and the realm of those who do have a special set of significant things to go with the term belong (for me) to that most tedious of nightmare realms where men wear turtlenecks and smoke tobacco in pipes and talk about "practising their craft" and
what the art of children and lunatics has to say about Art. But is it Art? Or is it a Craft?
Maybe they should knit themselves turtlenecks and take them to an "Arts and Crafts" thing?

It's kind of like Fish with his constructed poem problems in that a single aspect of one's culture is shoved into one's face by some one as if they had just discovered it for the good of all mankind: "Look! Our Culture has some aspects of being a Culture! How can that be?"

So the non-question of what makes a writer a writer is equivalent to how you can join your own culture voluntairily. Well, you can't. Any more than you can decide that the correct word for "house" is "snax"...

I tend to fall more into Spooky's camp in that I will say that I write, but do not describe myself as a writer.

To me the transition takes place when you've been published enough times to have either some sort of name recognition (even if it isn't your own name) or to make a living from the proceeds. This may not be metaphysical enough for some, but I see it as an economic transition. Everyone writes to some degree or another, and many here practice the craft more than others. But to make the transition from someone who writes to a writer (be it technical, editorial, or novelist) you need external recognition and validation. At that point it becomes a job title (full-time or part-time). So to go back to act, intent, or result, I think you must have Result to be considered a writer by anyone other than yourself.

Note that this isn't taking away anyone's right to call themselves a writer...it just establishes my criteria for the term.

It's simple. If you wrote, then you are a writer. To say that someone has to have read what you've written before you are considered to be a writer is changing the definition of a writer into more than what it is.

Cultural objects

ColoradoGuy said:

I don’t think that’s being fair to Fish’s point, which was that much, perhaps most, of the meaning of a text is put there by the reader during the act of reading. Of course that’s highly influenced by the surrounding culture. He applied it to poetry to argue that “what is poetry” is not something intrinsic to the text – it’s reader-determined.

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This is true of all cultural objects. The meaning of every single word is "put there" by the people who see or hear the word. If you single out a particular cultural object, such as say, a basketball hoop, it doesn't actually objectively sit there waiting for a "team" to "score points"...when applied to complex cultural objects the idea of "meaning" being "put there" is even more pointless. Of course it is "put there" just like everything else you see that is culturally determined. Examining the set of cultural functions where meaning is assigned is the field of hermenuetics and it can be used to elucidate the whole activity of meaning determination.
We could run "writer" or "poem" through the hermenuetic machinery, but we would not find out anything that we don't already know and that strongly suggests that the questions "what is a writer?" and "what is a poem?" are not real questions at all...I would suggest (using a little advanced hermenueticry) that they mask other questions....especially on a board like this one where anomie is the one true rule.

ColoradoGuy said:

You've found me out -- I agree.

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The result being publication, I assume? So does that mean if I commit the act with intent, but don't find representation, I am not a writer?

Is it the publication which completes the checklist and if so, was I not a writer just before I achieved publication and if not, what was I?

It's not publication that makes you a writer - it might make you a novelist, but you've already written the book.

Masks

ColoradoGuy said:

Such as?

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The question essentially asks for some rules and some context and some mechanism of authority.

These don't exist. At least not in a non-trivial way (eg. if you win a prize "for writing", then you must be a writer).

The question returns (as do a great many questions in which people express a great deal of interest) to the realm of pure desire.

And way down deep, the Lacanian term, the little letter a, which masks an object of sorts (which is not strictly speaking, an object) and which under these circustances wears a mask and asks a question in Italian.

I take writer and novelist (or playwright, or screenwriter) to be different things too.

At the moment, I am a writer. I commit words to paper (the act) and I have the intention of being published.

When my words (when!!! Not 'if'!) appear in novel form, then I'll be happy.

Happier still when it's made into a film - now, if I can only find a reason to add a chapter where James Purefoy takes his shirt off...

Not resolvable

ColoradoGuy said:

It's not a non-question at all. It's part of an ancient ongoing discussion about what makes something what it is.

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It's ancient and on-going because it is not resolvable. Questions that cannot be resolved are not really questions.

Are they still questions if they don't have an answer?

I say yes, because the question and the answer are separate entities, just as the written word on my notebook is different from the published novel in book form.

And the debate rages on...

What do you want?

ColoradoGuy said:

A little less gnomic, if you please?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objet_Petit_a

I'm not sure I can find the Lacanian calculus where one function of the little a returns masked with a question in Italian. But I will try.

The answer

scarletpeaches said:

Are they still questions if they don't have an answer?

I say yes, because the question and the answer are separate entities, just as the written word on my notebook is different from the published novel in book form.

And the debate rages on...

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The answer to a question without an answer is the reason you ask it.

ColoradoGuy said:

It’s the same slippery debate that gets applied to pornography – what is this thing, pornography? Is it intrinsic to the text, or is it something the reader brings to the text?

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Re pornography:

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it..."--Justice Potter Stewart

So, is being a writer similar?

"I do not know how to describe what a writer is, but I know one when I see one (read one)."

Dawno is a writer.

Now beyond on that, let me suggest that this discussion is mostly a consequence of poor definitions.

From The Free Dictionary

writ·er (r

t

r)
n. One who writes, especially as an occupation.

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What an utterly imprecise definition. But it seems to be the one being used, here. If a writer is defined as one who writes professionally, there really is no discussion. Under that rubric, anyone who is paid to arrange words in an original fashion is a writer. Anyone who writes without being paid might be called a "hopeful" writer or a "wannabe" writer, but that's about it.

ColoradoGuy said:

I'm cool with that. By the authority invested in me by MacAllister Stone, I hereby anoint you -- arise, Madame Writer!

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Hurrah!

robeiae said:

Re pornography:

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it..."--Justice Potter Stewart

So, is being a writer similar?

"I do not know how to describe what a writer is, but I know one when I see one (read one)."

Dawno is a writer.

Now beyond on that, let me suggest that this discussion is mostly a consequence of poor definitions.

From The Free Dictionary

What an utterly imprecise definition. But it seems to be the one being used, here. If a writer is defined as one who writes professionally, there really is no discussion. Under that rubric, anyone who is paid to arrange words in an original fashion is a writer. Anyone who writes without being paid might be called a "hopeful" writer or a "wannabe" writer, but that's about it.

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But it makes sense. If you write then you are a writer. If you get paid for it then all the better. Still the written text makes you a writer. So every human who has every written something is a writer.

Kind of makes the whole act of writing to become a writer deluted somewhat. So it's true, anyone can become a writer by the simple act of writing something down on paper or another medium.

Cool

Those all have easy answers

ColoradoGuy said:

Why are we here?
What is reality?
Who or what is God?

These are not questions?

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Those all have easy answers. The fact that people don't like the answers doesn't make them non-answers, just unsatisfactory answers and so they go on asking in hopes that next time the answer will be more satisfying.

So those are questions, they just have answers that people don't like.