The difference between an author and a writer
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It may seem like a semantic thing, but I don’t think it is. When we’re introducing someone, we say, “John Smith, author of 22 books” not “writer of 22 books.” Author has some connotation of “this person isn’t just writing books, but doing something beyond that.” ie, selling them. Doing something as a profession. (I didn’t say full time profession, but a profession nonetheless.)
When I went from being a writer to being an author, one by one I started to realize the different skill sets required for either. In a perfect world, you would have all from both categories, but the reality, sometimes certain things are just not your bag. But I’m also a believer that virtually anything can be learned if you work hard enough. Rather than being like, “I’m never going to be good at X,” perhaps ask yourself the question if that’s really true, and if you’re just really uncomfortable at the idea of repeatedly doing something that is hard or makes you feel foolish or scared in order to get better at it. (see my first post about me attempting to brute force learning guitar despite my lack of a single grain of musical talent.)
This is my opinion of the different skills required for either.
Writerly skills
Prose. Writing sentences. This includes describing action, describing setting, exposition. You can be pretty basic bare bones—I would describe myself as such—in which case your writing is described as crisp, simple, or to-the-point—or at the far end of the scale is purple prose or lyrical writing. Great if you can do it well, but if you do it badly it reads as overwritten. (If you tend to be told that you overwrite, my advice would be to take yourself less seriously and do some exercises to deliberately write more bare bones. Overwriting often comes off as trying to impress the reader, which irritates them. Text that conveys ideas simply is actually more impressive than badly written purple prose.) You don’t have to be exceptionally good at prose—you just need to be good enough so that the reader can follow you.
Dialogue. Putting this separately from prose because it does strike me as a different skill set. Some people have an ear for dialogue. I consider myself one of these people. I wish I could say how you develop this—I’ve heard people say you should sit in cafes in listen to people who talk. I spend a lot of time imaging conversations between characters or even real people. Writers who are good at dialogue can switch effortlessly between the different roles that dialogue has: in demonstrating character, in demonstrating relationships between characters, skillful info dumps, etc etc. But you don’t have to be good at dialogue. My recollection is that Garth Greenwell’s first novel What Belongs to You either has no dialogue or like one line. And dialogue doesn’t have to sound realistic—in terms of how people speak in real life—if you’ve built up the world to be such that people speak in a particular way. In fantasy, for example, people tend to speak in this high manner of speak which would sound very peculiar in our world.
Plotting. I regret to inform you that your story has to have a story. Well, no, that’s not true— if you are really, really good at prose and some other skills you might not need a plot, but odds are, you need a plot. If you’re plot is dumb, you can get away with it if you’re good at everything else or if your readers are a particular type of reader. A lot of books, and even books that do really well, don’t have particularly sophisticated plots—that’s fine. Personally, I think plotting is most important for mysteries, action, and anything that has a grand scale (epic fantasies, family sagas). To me, plotting is about logic and puzzle solving. I will always be a proponent of planning plots out before writing (I could do a hundred posts on this..) but at a bare minimum: respect that your plot is the skeleton of your book. The skeleton provides the basic structure that all the organs sit on. Your liver’s not going to thrive very well if you have a nonexistent spine. If you’re bad at plot, I insist you can get better. It is a skill just as any other.
Character development. Can you write characters that are interesting and compelling that people want to follow? This doesn’t mean they have to be likable—just compelling in some way. The best characters are the ones that are original and three dimensional, but the reality is that some readers don’t really care and they are fine with basic archtypes or cardboard cutouts (ie, loving mother, badass warrior, etc.) I would say this though: someone can enjoy a book with cardboard characters, and such a book can even be a bestseller, but I don’t think people will remember books like that 10 years from now, no one will every cry when reading them, or feel a strong affection for those characters. These are books that people read at the airport, say, That was great! and proceed to leave the book at the airport for someone else.
Editing. This is where things get interesting. Where the pups may be separated from the wolves. I like to think of editing as like a microscope. You can zoom in at 100% magnification—this is line-level editing. Sometimes it’s as simple as “this sounds stupid.” When I’m first drafting I power through stuff just to get through and will leave a note to myself for later: “Fix this.” Fix this = make this sound nice. Or it can mean, “readers found this confusing/ not funny/ that it didn’t work” and you need to make it work. Someone who is bad at writing is probably bad at editing, but some people who are pretty good at writing are not good at editing. Usually this does not take the form of line-level editing, but developmental editing. To me, developmental editing is when you take the microscope and zoom way way out—to see the forest instead of the trees. I’ve been editing for something like 30 years, and only pretty recently have I realized that some people just can’t zoom out that far. (I was discussing this with one of my editors once who was surprised that not everyone can do this.) It reminds me of when you’re playing a video game (I’m thinking of Baldur’s Gate, which I happen to be playing right now) and you zoom out from just looking at where one particular character is to the overhead view where you can see all the characters, the enemies, the terrain. Like when you’re looking at the overhead view of a football game rather than the at-player-level cameras. People who can zoom out can see overall structure, the shape of things. They can see when pacing is off because they can zoom far enough back to actually feel the difference in speed of different sections. They can see if something feels built up enough or not enough. They have a sense of how much of something they need. I kind of have a sense of how many pages (ballpark) a story I’m writing will be because of this ability. Someone who is really good at this would be able to zoom at far enough to zoom out even further and see the structure across books. (pretty useful if you write a series). This ability is game changing for responding to developmental edits. (and also writing developmental edits for someone else.)
Authory skills
Dealing with rejection. I put this one first because it’s huge. It’s a deal breaker for many. Anyone can write something and never show it to anyone. Or write it and post it online. But where the rubber meets the road for many would-be authors is dealing with constant rejection. You have to be willing to apply for tons of workshops and get rejected (AND also see other people post happily about their acceptances.) You have to be willing to send out a short story dozens and dozens of times and see it get rejected without giving up entirely and convincing yourself that you suck. You might get angry, but you can’t lash out at the rejectors or people who aren’t being rejected and say “they must know someone.” You can’t give up on yourself. I remember seeing a post on Instagram of someone who was so devastated by a rejection for a fellowship (that probably takes less than 1% of applicants) that they said they were completely depressed and “not sure they could go on” as a writer. This sounds cruel, but I remember thinking, “if that is your response to rejection, you will never become an author.” I made this video on Instagram about exactly how much rejection I had to go through before I got a book deal because it is way too easy to see people with book deals and think “they’re so lucky.” No, they worked their fucking asses off. If you want to be traditionally published, you will have to deal with constant rejections: from conferences/workshops, agents, editors, awards, etc. It’s part of the job.
Public speaking. I’ve talked about being introverted a little in a different post, but to more fully explicate here. There are small occasions to sell books (you’re at a cocktail party and someone finds out you’re an author) and big occasions (a conference, your book launch, etc.) At a bare minimum, you need to be able to pitch your book cogently in these instances even if it makes you exceedingly uncomfortable. Many writers are introverted, and many writers are shy to the point of being terrified of such instances. Just remember that no one is expecting you to be a professional comedian or something—anyone in such an audience is a book nerd. Beyond that, if people discover that you are well-spoken, clever, or funny, not only will it sell more books, but more opportunities will be presented to you, including paid speaking engagements. If you’re not good at public speaking, you can practice your pitch with friends and family with notecards, then move away from the notecards. Some people before a job interview will do a mock job interview where someone/s ask them the type of questions they are likely to receive—if you are really anxious you can pre-prepare the type of questions you will be asked and practiced. Besides that, there are groups like Toastmasters and the like where people work on their public speaking skills as part of the organization.
Writing copy. Beyond writing and editing your book, if you’re going to have to write a variety of other things to promote that book. You might pitch articles to come out at the same time as your book. You might have to write essays for popular book venues like Lithub or Crimereads. Both of my publishers had a few of these assignments with pretty tight timelines, so I had to do these quickly. You will have to write copy for pitches for various promotional things. I wrote 80-90 percent of my own jacket summaries for both my books. Yes, writing query letters and artist statements for residencies really, really sucks. It’s very hard. But it astounds me that there are people who think they should be professionally paid for writing who use AI or hire someone else to write query letters because this is the thing you’re supposed to be good at. You SHOULD be able to write a good query. This is, to continue with my never ending professional sports analogy, like getting someone else to try out for you and then expecting you will be able to play on the team.
Marketing / PR / Business-savvy. You could theoretically go through the entire process of getting a book deal and launching your book without learning very much about how the industry works. I would strongly advise against this. Try to learn as much about the business as you can. How do books end up on the shelves at Barnes and Noble? (It’s not authors walking in and pitching the person at the register!) How do agents pitch books to editors? How do editors have to justify acquisitions and to whom? Who works at what publishing house and what are they looking for? What’s selling really well right now and why? You can learn this info by having contacts in the business, but also I probably learned most of this from reading stuff online and listening to book industry podcasts. Read stuff from people actually in the industry. I say this because if you Google random phrases about publishing you will get tons of hits from the self-publishing world and people selling marketing or self-publishing courses on YouTube. If you want to learn about self-publishing, some of these people are probably good, but if you are interested in traditionally publishing many of these people say things that are radically wrong, misinformed, and/or self interested. (Just the other day, in my Substack recommended posts email, I read a post from there—I won’t name names—that was saying extremely wrong things, like you cannot get a book deal unless you have a big social media platform, and no one will pay attention to you if you don’t. I had no such platform and got a book deal, film deals, multiple foreign rights deals, lots of attention, etc. Particularly on Substack there are a lot of people saying that you will make no money from publishing traditionally, the only way is via Substack, and you can find out if you buy their class.)
Networking. You could be a total hermit if you were an author, but this almost certainly will have some negative impact on your career. Authors appear on panels together, and invite each other to those panels. If they need a local author to host another author’s book event, people will run through who they know or know of in their minds—you’re more likely to get the call if someone knows you and can vouch for you. Acquaintances ask each other for blurbs. If someone is pulling together an anthology, they may think first of people they know who might be a good fit. But beyond this, having other writers in your life eases the psychological pressure of being a writer. You will go through various trials and tribulations together. They will be the only people in your life who will fully understand the grind of querying, and be mutually offended by the success of your nemeses.
Finances. Book money is different than job money, because job money for most people comes in the form of a neat paycheck appearing at regular intervals with the taxes already worked out. If could switch from “I got some ‘free’ extra money for a book I wrote once” to “I’m trying to turn this into a business.” If the latter, you have two choices: hire or consult with an accountant and have them do what you need or hire or consult with an accountant and have them do some things while you do some of those things yourself after learning how to do them. I have an accountant do my tax returns because they are complicated, involve itemizing, things that depreciate, and what not. But don’t fuck this up because the last thing you want is to find out you owe the IRS ten thousand dollars when you don’t have it. Please don’t just wave your hands artistically and say “I’m not good with money!” You have to pay taxes even if you’re artistic. (I wrote a longer post just on managing money as a writer here.)
Common fucking sense. I’m sure there’s a really corporate word for this that came from a book they give you the first day of work. Maybe it’s a subcomponent of business savvy. CFS is the thing that tells you not to be rude to your publicist because you think THEY work for YOU. (They don’t. They work for the publisher, they work with you, and they will likely leave because publicists do this constantly and it’s not personal.) It’s the thing that tells you to politely ask questions when you’re in a meeting with your editor and the sales team rather than coming off as rude or disinterested because you thought you were going to be getting TV commercials. It’s the part of you that knows to strategize with your agent when your editor has edits you strongly disagree with or has suggested a title or cover you hate. It’s the thorough understanding that you don’t get to be an asshole because you’re the “talent.” Writers are a dime a dozen. When in doubt, don’t come in hot.
Editorial note: I’ve grown a lot since the beginning of the year, and have yet to use the “thread” or “chat” function on Substack—mainly because most of my readers are quiet. If this is something you’d be interested in, shoot me a DM or leave a comment.
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