You don't.
Any pretensions initially basically mean you're a narcissistic asshole/fool. You simply start by the desire to express yourself like tens of millions have for millennia.
But if you consistently work at it from middle school to college and 10 years beyond, you're registered for the marathon.
Then.......
You write.
You write badly for years.
You take some classes, get some feedback, get that first thing nationally, internationally published.
(Writers Digest big book of magazine markets is great. I started off sending 20 submissions a month in college. One tome in a Barnes and noble I picked up an interesting magazine and one of my short stories was in it!)
Then you start thinking hmmmmmm?
But not yet.
Don’t label yourself. Get 10 years of writing under your belt, a few thousand pages. All the dreck out. (The Hemmingways a 500 page handwritten tome that was a soap opera of near biblical proportions. I wrote it from the 7th grade to the 9th, and other students passed it around school. The Dean pulled me into his office with my sudsy trope between us. He said I was a writer. I was slightly aghast and embarrassed.)
High school I wrote another eight 300 page manuscripts. Not The Hemmingways. Then in college a novella that I would submit to a publisher workshopped with me, several classes and my mentor, Raymond Federman. To a university in Boulder, Ronald Sukenick, a colleague of Federman’s, and he elected to publish more short stories, and suggested the 125 page novel was a novel. A few years later, boom 600 pages. The novel Hush was published in 2019.
I've published a lot of books, short stories, articles, blogs and the honest truth is I think, people name you a writer and then it sort of dawns on you, like a sweater you've been wearing for years, that it fits.
I was doing a book signing/event, maybe 50 people, a rainstorm got me there so late I just gave away the 60 books because people stayed. And I had it filmed for my TV show and people were asking me all these writerly questions. One of my students filmed it for my TV show and it sort of dawned on me then—-crowd, lights camera, questions, my books—-Hey, I’m a writer!
It was about 30 years since I was passing around The Hemmingways in Middle School and I do sometimes think or when asked: "Hmmmm, I think I'm a writer, author now."
Your Recipe Before You Can Confidently Say It Should Be
- 20 years.
- Minimum 10,000 pages.
- 2 published books.
- 25 articles.
- 250+ blogs.
- Money paid to you for writing that allows you to buy yourself a nice dinner.
When you've made that much commitment you've earned the title in a true way, not a goth kid with poetry that mentions trees, love, leaves, soul----the quad poetry signal of bad/amateur work—-constantly in their work. And then people will validate it back.
It will also happen when you move out of yoru masturbatory fascination with popular stuff—-Harry Potter, vampires, sci fi fantsies that are exacly liek the one you’re writing and th enew bane of good writers—-trilogies.
There will come a point as a writer where you’ve played around, gotten some feedback from an audience and you start writing things that are perhaps good or not but you’re captivated by them. And it’s difficult—-on purpose—-the story requires SKILLS—-not just imagination or rehashing of Hunger Games.
There comes a point, much like having children, where the newness wears off and you’re in, you’re committed to loving them, raising them, doing extra for them.
When you start feeling that for your writing and you can look at a shelf and see some go do works and you know that’s just the packaged beginnings—-then, then you’re a writer.
#KylePhoenix
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Smile, Kyle
KylePhoenixShow@Gmail.com
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Kyle Phoenix is a teacher, certified adult educator, sexologist, sex coach and sexuality educator with over two decades of intensive experience. He studied at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, New York University, and Columbia University. He has worked, consulted and taught individuals and focused professional developments for the CDC, Department of Education, Gay Men's Health Crisis, New York City Department of Health, non-profits, Fortune 500 companies and unions. He began his career facilitating on-campus workshops addressing a wide range of sexuality and sexual health issues and then moved on to teaching at universities, non-profits, private groups and clients, hosting The Kyle Phoenix Show on television and multiple online webinars, including YouTube and Sclipo and writing extensively through his blog, Special Reports, articles and other print and E books in the Kyle Phoenix Series on relationships, finance, education, spirituality and culture. He lives in New York with his family.
KylePhoenixShow@Gmail.com
#TheKylePhoenixShow
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