Rant: I Am Not A Frustrated Author

So an author, Joanne Harris, tweeted her unhappiness with a blog review (she deleted many of her tweets so some of what you see may not make sense) of a YA book she wrote. Naturally, that attracted a lot of attention. Some people defended Harris's reaction and some argued against it. One person, Anne Hodgson, defended Harris with a tweet that had me seeing red. Now, there are much worse tweets floating around out there on any number of subjects but this one pissed me off. It's a very sweeping generalization, reflects an ignorance of book bloggers (in my opinion anyway), and is very arrogant. Ms. Hodgson states in her twitter bio "Writing itch unrelieved by dodgy blog" so perhaps she was really referring to herself and generalized to all bloggers. I don't know her so I can't say for sure. Her own blog appears to be a non-book blog but one that talks about her life.


The tweet in question:

These tweets are also relevant:

https://twitter.com/Kara_Malinczak/status/348129878157176833

https://twitter.com/Joannechocolat/status/348165336119508992


I started blogging because I wanted to talk about books: books I read, books I hear about, news in the book world, etc. Just a few years before I began this blog I had discovered several sites that allowed me to do just that and it was wonderful, especially as I had few people in my daily life who shared similar interests. Several of the people I met on those sites inspired me to start this blog. Over the past few years, I've worked to find my voice and fine tune what the blog is about. I'm not much of a debater, never have been, so I rarely post rants or discussions.

But the arrogance, the rudeness of that tweet got under my skin. Am I an author? No. Do I want to be an author? No. Am I writer? Well, that depends. I don't make a living at it nor am I compelled to write. I do write blog posts regularly and writing is a major component of my day job so in that sense, yes, I'm a writer. Do I have a burning need to write or a passion for it? Definitely not. I'm a reasonably good writer but it's not actually something I enjoy. It takes me ages to write the simplest piece; I struggle with organizing my thoughts, getting the tone just right and making sure my meaning is coming across accurately. I'll procrastinate writing until the last possible minute. But in order to keep the blog going, in order to discuss books, I need to write and so I do.  

There are bloggers that want to be authors, there are bloggers who are authors, there are bloggers (such as myself) who couldn't care less about being authors. There's room for all of us, without denigrating anyone. There will always be disagreement, whether it's about reviews, books, proper behavior, etc. I would just like to see people be civil, and if we could avoid sweeping generalizations, that would be good too.

And of course, all of this won't matter a year from now or even a few weeks from now. It's just not that important. But, this was something that I felt a burning need to write about, so I did.