Writers Write - And Publish

Writers write. Right? We've heard it a bunch of times. What does it mean? Does it mean you just write and write and write and hope somebody reads it? Does it mean that, no matter what, you keep on writing? Really. What the heck does it mean? What if nobody seems to be reading what you write and you are like Emily Dickinson, writing poem after poem and at the end of life having fewer than a dozen published? This, the writer's equivalent to the legacy of our dear painter Van Gogh. Could this possibly be what it means to write? If so, the birds can inherit my writing. Any writing I might do would be for the birds.

Writers don't just write. Writers get published. Artists get exposed and musicians get heard. Sorry, but just because I write does not mean I'm a writer. Okay, technically, yes it does mean that. But if that's all it means... Who is going to give me any attention? Who is going to give a rat's - hmmm. The topic is infuriating and so I revert to the tendency of cussing.

But wait! Does a writer just get published? Does that mean I'm a writer? No, of course not. One could say, I WAS a writer, back then. Now I'm resting on my laurels, and they do feel good. What that boy needs is a kick in the - hmmm. Again I feel like cussing. The rump, the butt, that which we writers so often situate against the seat of a chair when hard at work. Internet Marketers also situate the butt in a chair. Tom Antion - and others, I suppose, but he might well have coined the term - calls them "butt warriors". Are you a butt warrior?

This is what I think a butt warrior is: Someone who, for whatever reason, wants to sit his butt down and do one thing well, with butt affixed to chair, and get paid well and have a fun time doing it. (Alright, maybe you don't get paid...well, anyway.) A software programmer is not a butt warrior. That work is too hard, and possibly BORING. No. A butt warrior has to be excited about what he's doing while his butt is affixed to the seat of his (hopefully) comfy chair.

I am a writer. And so far I have produced how many words for this article or whatever it is? 395 words. Wow! Not that many. Yet. But enough. Come on. I was just sitting on my butt enjoying myself, yacking away as I like to do. It doesn't get any better than this. (Who owns that phrase? I don't want to name the beer manufacturer that made that phrase famous. Let them pay me. Yeah. Right.)

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