I should start by explaining that this particular blog started life as a bit of a twitter rant that I decided to extend and elaborated on. So if you’re one of the few people that follow my tweets then some of this may be familiar to you...
You may have noticed, as I have, that there are a large number of people on twitter and blogsites, and to a lesser extent facebook who, in their profiles, claim to be various professionals that they're not.
I am of course referring to the "writers", "singers", and “artists” etc that seem to inhabit the social media. There are many such "professionals" popping up in profiles and bios all over the webosphere, covering a whole range of interests, but writer absolutely tops the list as the most popular, no doubt due to the very nature of the media they are proclaiming their speciality on: “I’m writing this so I must be a writer”.
I even know of one such tweeter/blogger, who claims to be a writer, singer, photographer AND artist. Yet I actually know this girl and she works as a receptionist. I’m not saying she couldn’t also be any, or all of the other things she claims to be, but in this particular instance I know that she has never been paid for her “work”, or even published free of charge (apart from on her own blog).
The point I’m trying to make is; cooking a meal does not make you a chef. Taking an aspirin or putting on a plaster doesn't make you a doctor. Digging a hole won’t turn you into an archaeologist, and brushing your teeth isn’t going to get you a Licence in Dental Surgery.
Similarly, writing a tweet or blog does not make you a writer. Warbling away in the shower or on Singstar et al doesn't mean you are a singer. Taking snapshots of a tree at a jaunty angle will not qualify you as a photographer, and even if you do buy your supplies from an art shop, drawing a vaguely recognisable face on a sheet of paper is not an automatic entry into the Louvre or Guggenheim.
Basically, the social network profile page is the online equivalent of the waiter serving you coffee in a cafe who insists he is an actor, even though the closest he’s ever been to the stage is shouting “He’s behind you!” at the local amateur dramatics society’s Christmas pantomime.
So, to summarise:
Unless it is your job and someone is willing to pay you to do it. Or, particularly in the case of “writers”, you have been officially published in some way or another, then you have no right whatsoever to give yourself the professional title that you so obviously and desperately crave.
Unless it is your job and someone is willing to pay you to do it. Or, particularly in the case of “writers”, you have been officially published in some way or another, then you have no right whatsoever to give yourself the professional title that you so obviously and desperately crave.
You are NOT a writer; you are someone among billions of other someones who happens to write stuff down.
TheGlennsta
Writer, Dancer, Chef, Model, Horse whisperer and Ranter extraordinaire.
