Parisian Phoenix Publishing

The dog started barking at 7:28 a.m., and I said to my daughter (who was packing her bag for her 8 a.m. college class), “What she barking at? It’s too early to be barking. There should be nothing going on.”

And then, I realized.

The bus stop for all the middle school kids in our neighborhood is on the corner. We are the second house from the corner. The school bus comes at 7:30 a.m.

This was the first day this week that the dog was awake before the school bus arrived.

Yesterday was my official first day of class, teaching “Pathways to Publication for the Aspiring Author” at our local community college. My class meets on Zoom, and I had this irrational fear that I had somehow initiated the meeting wrong and no one would be able to attend class.

Guess what? They all made it.

Storyteller, writer, author

One of the initial discussions I had with my students involved whether they considered themselves storytellers, writers, or authors. And we talked about the terms.

Storytelling is an oral tradition and art form. Oral storytelling predates writing and has different techniques and conventions than writing. We all tell stories, but some people among us, even without any formal experience in formal storytelling, naturally understand it. Think of that person in your family who can recall past events with the delivery of a stand-up comedian. Storytellers don’t have to write anything down. They can, but they rely on their memory when they tell.

And some people who wish to explore creative writing never expand past talking about their story, so they remain storytellers in that way.

I have already warned my students that I will not tolerate the phrase, “I think I am a writer.” Whether or not you publish your work, if you write, enjoy writing, and plan to continue writing, you are a writer. Writers write. As long as you write, even if you are bad at it, you are a writer. If you keep writing, even when you claim you’re never going to write again, you are a writer. If writing is something you keep doing, even after rejection, well, yup, it’s like a disease that keeps recurring. You are a writer.

And then there are authors. You can be an author and not be a writer. Authors are people who have published, typically a book. Some authors have one project in them that they needed to share, so they don’t consider themselves writers. They were just inspired to do this one book. Other authors are business people who wrote a brand book. Or some authors have an expertise, like a scientist sharing a discovery, and might not write well at all.