Watching a Grey’s Anatomy repeat the other day(my cable provider just did some funky stuff and we now enjoy the miracle of On Demand)and one of the surgeons was talking about not being a surgeon but being something else…a pediatrician, maybe? Anyway, I don’t know if it’s just Hollywood but it seems like there’s a definite pecking order in the medical world with surgeon being at the top of the pack.
Is there a pecking order in the writing world? I started out with mewspaper work and writing a lot of magazine articles. Then I wrote a non-fiction book. Then another non-fiction book. But I still talk about “When my book gets published”. What I mean is when my novel gets published(don’t hold your breath waiting for that release date). In my head I’ll be a “real” writer when I publish fiction. Is fiction harder to write? Does it make more money? Do people equate “writers” with novel writers? I don’t know. Maybe I need therapy.
So, am I a writer snob or is there more cache to writing fiction?
I don’t think you’re a snob–I think most of us (even us writers) automatically think “novel” when we think “writer”. I think that’s a big part of why we have to justify what we to do so many people, or why we get the little smirk and the “Oh, so what do you write?” when we tell people we’re writers. To me, I think a “writer” is anyone who actively puts the work into it, every day, editor rejections, prickly sources, and all.
I think fiction is harder to write, because it hasn’t really happened for us to report on or describe. We have to channel our own creativity to come up with ideas no one else has, and then turn those ideas into words, and then tweak those words so that they are entertaining to someone who didn’t see the visions inside our imaginations.
I don’t know that I’d call it being a writing snob, but the fiction novel is really the big goal to shoot for. But I agree with the previous commenter, a “writer” is someone who put their all into creating something with words, be it fiction, non-fiction, poetry, prose, etc., whether they’ve been published or not, whether they’ve reached the plateau of “the novel” or not.