Writing has dominated my work time this past month (awesome), which is to say writing, editing, and submitting.  For years I wrote and sometimes edited yet to make a vocation of authorship, as much emphasis must be put on editing and submitting as the writing I have always done.  What does that mean, format and proposals of course and all of the heavy lifting involved with getting ones work ready to go out the door.

Now I used to write for myself and let me share, there is nothing that will tighten your craft as a writer, as does the preparation for publishing.  In his book on the craft novelist George V. Higgins wrote, “If you do not seek to publish what you have written, then you are not a writer and you never will be.”  Now that is not to say that the exercise of creating words in order, chronicling your day in a journal or blog, or sending a letter or email is not writing.  I agree with Higgins though that if one is to title himself as a writer, as in to publicly introduce one as such, as an understanding of vocation, than one must put forth an effort to command language.  To manipulate words and grammar into an elixir that some other being can consume.  The elixir does not necessitate the complexity of fine wine or a chemical alchemy so ingenious that scholars will spend generations deciphering the ingredients, as milk is fine. Turns out a lot of people like milk.  Still, even if you are writing straight wholesome milk there is a process to abide to, and so I have submitted and my novels line the digital shelves of the flat iron building awaiting a turn in the queue.