I've been telling people that I'm a writer for the last 15 years and still haven't published anything. I have all these scenes and stories jumbled in my head, and can't seem to organize the chaos. Happy to finally find this site, and hope to find tons of useful information here.
Welcome, RaphaelFee. Try writing individual scenes and stories on large index cards, then arranging them on a table top in various orders until you find something that clicks. At least then they'd be jumbled on the table instead of in your head.
If the scenes and stories are still in my head, I wouldn't call myself a writer. If you get them down on paper or into digital text, or if you organize them into stories that you tell other people, then you're a writer, whether or not you've published anything at all. Beyond that, it gets fuzzy. Some take "writer" to mean "professional (published) writer" but I don't hold with that. When you are singing, you could be said to be a singer. When you stop, you're no longer a singer. But when you're generally accepted by people as somebody who can sing, like Lady Gaga or Frank Sinatra, then you could call yourself a singer whether you're singing at the moment or not. Money doesn't have to be involved. I'm a musician not only when I'm singing or playing an instrument or composing, but when I'm going about the rest of my life. I don't get paid for it, but it's still a component of my personality, and people know me as a person who can sing and play. Same with writing. I've been paid for that, but even if I weren't, I would still call myself a writer. And I'm not sure what you'd have to do to call yourself an "author." Some say you'd have to have a book or article or story published (which I have). Others call it simply a synonym for "writer," which begs the question "What is a writer?" BTW, the best summary of what any artist faces is John Hartford's "I Reckon." In his song, the artist craves recognition and commercial success, but concludes that the drive to create and compose and share the results is what makes that person an artist.
I tried something like this before, but I think the best clue you've given me was to use "LARGE" index cards. I always add too many notes to them.
Yeah, the 3" x 5" just don't do it for me. Another trick is diligently keeping to one idea or scene per card and not drifting off into the next scenario without picking up a clean card.
You’re a writer as long as you write. It doesn’t have to be published, it doesn’t even have to be good. Bob Ross’ philosophy on art translates to all mediums, even the written word.
You're a writer if you want to be. There's no examination to take. No license from the state to obtain. If you write, that's an added bonus.
Make sure your cards are written like headlines—just super-brief notes. Then maybe try a looseleaf binder where each sheet is linked to a card and you can go into more detail. I do something like that, but digitally in Evernote. The following is pasted in from an old post: On using 3x5 cards, it's an old trick and a good one. I discovered a technique called a Step Outline: Step Outlines He emphasizes though that it isn't a technique to use right from the beginning, it's for organizing your ideas once you've generated them, which is best done in a more freeform writing approach. Then you make a step outline, which was traditionally done using 3x5 index cards and then written out with each paragraph being one step or beat. After messing with the technique for a while I've come to agree—it works best for me to write loose ideas first in a very rough outline form and then distill out the story beats to check the plot. But rather than using the index cards I found a way to use Evernote and a simple table. You could doubtless use any writing software, it doesn't need to be Evernote, but I don't know if you could link the more detailed notes to the step outline the way I do it in Evernote. Here are a couple of links explaining things: Seven Crowns' post @ I'm Afraid to Keep Writing My post @ Looking for Free Story Organizing Software on Mac Evernote no longer allows you to create a table directly in the software, so I make one with just a single column in some word processing software like Word or whatever and copy/paste it in, then Evernote allows me to work with it quite nicely. EDIT—it still works. I just whipped up a single-column table in Libre Office and copy/pasted it into Evernote. You can do it with the cells empty and do all the writing in Evernote.
Those are good ideas. Index cards work best for me if I can sit on the floor and arrange them in various patterns until something clicks. Of course, once I get the click, I am faced with the snap, crackle, and pop of joints as I climb to my feet and head for the computer.
I initially shied away from calling myself a writer because it wasn’t my main ‘occupation’ (for want of a better term, i’m a student). But like has been said above, if you’ve written anything at all, then you’re a writer. I’ve had a few things published on an internet writing website and after receiving positive comments and ‘followers’, the ‘writer’ title started to feel more comfortable for me.
Communication is an essential part of art... imparting what's in your head to something other people can access. But there are examples of artists and writers creating only for their own pleasure, never intending that most of their works would be seen (Emily Dickinson was a good example of that). But the fact that those hidden products of their art eventually saw the light of day and resonated with the people who came into contact with them makes them truly art, because the intent to put the work into communicable form was there... even if Emily was communicating only with herself.
Don't sweat the details! I've been a writer for at least thirty years now and I have been in print. Primarily with small-fry stuff, including supplemental writing for roleplaying game products and short fiction. A writer should write a little bit everyday. An author is published. It's an important distinction but one only to recognise so you may spare yourself the stereotypical flagellation for non-performance. Just write a bit everyday, and if you want to be an author, that's also great. It gives you aspirations towards a result but do not feel as if being published makes you a writer. Just write a little bit, everyday. That's enough. Now I was literally born a storyteller! So I guess I've been telling stories for just short of five decades now. It all began in the early spring of nineteen-seventy, a time where t-shirts did not have logos and the world was a lot emptier and more violent than it is now...
Regarding the first sentence, I agree, and note that the famous songwriter Tom Paxton resolved to write one song per day at the beginning of his career. He said that 99% of them were crap, but the 1% that wasn't would be the building blocks of his eventual reputation. Regarding the second sentence, it's interesting to note that, according to copyright law, a work is "published" when it becomes available to the public, in whatever form. If you pin it up in a public place, it becomes "published" even if it wasn't printed or you didn't get paid for it, according to Cecil Adams: https://www.straightdope.com/21341309/can-you-legally-publish-a-letter-someone-wrote-to-you
