From Author to Writer
H ow often have we heard someone say, "I'm a writer and I hope to one day be an author?" The implication is that we are all writers, but we don’t become authors until we are good enough or we get that publishing contract or whatever. My claim is that anyone who has ever written something that comes from his own creative thought is an author. The author is the originator of the literary work. So maybe we have it backwards. Instead of being so focused on becoming an author, our goal ought to be to become a writer. I don’t mean to say that we must become a writer in the sense that we aren’t currently writers. If we write, we are writers, but we should focus on becoming better writers. We can’t become better authors. Either we are an author or we are not. Either we initiated the creative work or we did not. There is no in between. There is no better. But we have a lot of room to become better writers. I authored my first book in kindergarten by dictating it to a sixth g...