Wannabe

This morning, I received an E mail marketing piece from a company that supposedly helps authors succeed. This wasn't especially annoying as spam since I AM an author, but when I started reading some of their points, I was giving the keyboard a "What the ...?" look. As stated in this message, "To be a writer, you never have to sit at a keyboard, never have to put pen to paper, never really need to get your ideas down by yourself." Beg pardon?

I don't claim to know everything about the craft of writing, but I darned sure know that, unless you are massaging the words to say what you want to convey, then you are NOT writing! When someone dictates to a ghost writer, that does not make he/she doing the dictating a writer – it just means they can talk.

To write takes a little more effort. In this oddball world of speaking I'm in, there are literally thousands of folks who have books. But that's just it – they "have a book." It does not mean they "wrote a book." What's the diff? Basically, I'm just not a fan of people taking ownership of a title they didn't work for. If you want to call yourself a writer, then write! This ain't rocket surgery! Yet, the "attraction" that everyone feels to writing cannot be circumvented by someone writing a book for you. That's just cheesy. Do the work, reap the benefits and we'll all be happy.

www.marcusengel.com
www.myspace.com/marcusengel