A writer or not?

If you talk, you are a talker. If you golf, you are a golfer. If you write, you are a writer.

Roy Peter Clark, Murder Your Darlings

Roy Peter Clark

I love what Roy Peter Clark says. "If you write, you are a writer." Yet I am not sure that I believe it.

Even when I wrote for a newspaper every day, I did not think of myself as a writer. I was a journalist. I was a newspaperman. I did not call myself a writer.

In retirement I continue to write almost every day. I post something on this blog three days a week. Often I blog about the act of writing. Otherwise I write lots of emails and a few letters. For the past couple of years I have been writing and preaching sermons on occasion. I write, but does that really make me a writer?

The problem, I think, is that the word suggests a certain level of professionalism. A novelist is a writer. Someone whose articles are printed in magazines is a writer. A blogger, on the other hand, is a blogger.

Can a portly middle-aged man who plays softball on weekends justifiably call himself an athlete? Should someone who plays Chopsticks on a piano be able to call himself a pianist? Can a woman who sometimes works on a friend's hair refer to herself as a hairdresser?

How we think of ourselves is one thing. I can easily be a writer in my own mind. The question is, how does one introduce oneself at parties? I would never tell a stranger that I am a writer, for that would give the wrong first impression. I am simply a retired journalist who still likes to write.

Like a wolf in the forest

It's rare to see a person with a book or magazine these days; it's like glimpsing a wolf in the forest.

Dwight Garner, The Upstairs Delicatessen

Dwight Garner

People apparently still read. Bookstores still have customers perusing their shelves. Book clubs remain popular. Magazines survive. And yet Dwight Garner is right: You rarely see anyone holding a book or a magazine. Instead they have their phones in their hands.

Medical offices and barbershops may still have a few magazines on hand, yet I rarely see anyone looking at them. Instead they are all looking at their phones.

In restaurants, virtually everyone, whether sitting alone or with someone else, is holding a phone in front of them.

I live about a mile from the Gulf of America, but it has been a long time since I have been to the beach, even to see a sunset. Yet I suspect that those reclining in the sun are mostly looking at their phones, not at one of those thick, spicy novels that used to be called "beach books."

I am proud that my granddaughter, like me, packs her books before packing her clothing when taking a trip. She, too, is a rarity in today's world. How many people have books with them on planes, even for long flights? How many take a book with them for a week at a cabin or a resort?

Some people do read e-books, to be sure. I applaud them. Yet somehow it is not quite the same.