I don’t spend much time thinking about myself. I mean, I’ve lived with me my whole life; there’s not much unknown territory there for me to explore. But I had this exchange on BlueSky (one of the more promising ‘next Twitter’ social media). There was a call to create an ‘authors feed’. My response:

This is probably silly, but I tend to be uncomfortable with the term ‘author’. I’ve published some stuff–short fiction, nonfiction books, a novel–so ‘author’ technically fits. But maybe it sounds too pretentious for me? I think of myself as a writer. I write stuff.

The reply:

Yeah, that’s the old imposter syndrome kicking in. The only requirement to being an author is to have authored something.

And I thought, “Yeah, that’s probably it.” I suspect anybody who has had some success in anything has, at one point, thought, “Lawdy, who do I think I’m fooling?” Normally, that would be it. Question asked, question answered, end of story.

But this morning, after I sat down at the keyboard, drinking my morning cold brew, looking out the window, reading the news, going through my usual morning routine before starting to write, I thought, “Naw…I’m not an imposter. I mean, I won a damn Edgar this year. That’s a pretty big deal.” And I looked at the mantle…

…and then I thought, “Hey…where’s my Edgar?” Because it wasn’t on the mantle.

Okay, some history. I learned I’d been nominated for an Edgar from Lori Rader-Day (who, by the way, is the real deal; you should go out RIGHT NOW and buy all her books). I thought that was pretty cool, but aside from doing some of the scut work associated with the nomination, I didn’t give it much thought. I didn’t expect to win. I even forgot about the big Edgar event when they announced the winners. Again, it was Lori who alerted me that I’d won. Again, I thought it was pretty cool and I understood I’d be getting a statuette at some point. And again, I pretty much forgot about it until it arrived.

Now THAT was cool. I took it out of the box, put it on the kitchen table (where I usually keep my Chromebook and do most of my writing in the mornings), looked at it a few times, then pretty much ignored it. Until I was reminded I hadn’t taken a photo of it. So I did that.

Some time later, I happened to notice it sitting on the mantle over the fireplace. And I said something clever, like, “Hey, look…my Edgar.” To which Ginger replied, “I put it there a couple of weeks ago, you idiot.” So this morning, when I looked at the mantle to remind myself that getting an Edgar is a big deal and I’m not an imposter, I realized she must have moved it somewhere else. I’ll have to ask her later.

My point–if you can call it that–is I don’t feel like an imposter. I have actual, physical, tactile proof that I’m not an imposter. So what is my problem with the term ‘author’? And I’ve decided it’s this: ‘Author’ is a fixed, static state. You become an author when the work is done. ‘Writer’ is dynamic; it’s a thing you DO. I don’t think of myself as an author because I’m not particularly interested in what I’ve already done because…well, I’ve already done it. I am interested in what I’m doing, which is writing.

Like I said, I don’t spend much time thinking about myself, mainly because I’m not that interesting to me. But I realize some of this crap–like why I prefer to be a writer instead of an author–might be interesting to other folks. So, there you have it.