When is a Writer a Writer?

I’ve asked myself this question many times because when I think of a writer, I think of someone who’s written more than one book or writes for magazines. I just write, yet, I still don’t think of myself as a writer, in spite of the evidence to the contrary. Here is some of that.

I just transferred the four years of blog posts from our old site to the new at Exotics at Redmond Town Center. All of the blog, and the website, except for much of the car criteria was written by me. The blog archive alone, was about 150,000 words counting stuff I didn’t transfer because it was irrelevant.

Then you have this blog. There are 48 posts here, and even more on Middlerock.com, not all on that site have been written by me, but me alone is probably close to that same number, so there is another hundred thousand words, give or take, then the book I’ve written that’s yet to be published, that’s anther 87,000 words. Plus another book on random thoughts, so that’s another 50,000 words.

Then we get to Quora and that’s 1,200+ answers at an average of 500 words an answer over the years. My answers are not as long as they once were, when 2,000 words was more like it. That’s another half a million in total, so adding it all up, it’s about 900,000 words written, or roughly the equivalent of eleven novels in about five years. This on top of full time client work. When you add what I didn’t post, it’s way over a million words.

How is that possible? I write in the middle of the night, and I spend much of my weekend writing. It’s the benefit of living alone.

On top of all this, a lot of my work involves writing, so I’m easily over a million words in the last five years. In fact, I’m guessing it’s twice that, given that so much of my day is writing emails and documenting solutions for clients. No wonder I’ve worn the letters off my keyboard on a MacBook Pro that was new at the end of 2019. That works out to about 1,000 words a day, every day. That seems about right. I’m also a fast writer and if you noticed, I don’t spend my life editing.

Yet, in spite of all that writing. I don’t know if anyone knows I’m here. The stats on Quora or the E@RTC website seem impressive; 24 million emails to readers on the Quora Digest, four million “content views” whatever that means, and about 30,000 readers on the E@RTC site every season, but it’s just a number. Yes, people write me, but it’s not like I’m known by anyone for writing.

I don’t promote this site much and people often don’t know its here, but I’m average about 200 readers a month on this site. I’m not knocking the world dead with my writing, and that’s why I circle back to the original statement. When am I writer? When I write or when people read what I write? I’m happy that six people a day drop in here to see what I write. I’m thrilled when one person reads this.

Someone gave me advice when I first started writing on Quora. They said, when in doubt, just keep writing. So that’s what I do. It may seem boring to some, and I guess that’s okay. I’m not for everyone. I never sign my work on the E@RTC blog. Few know it’s me. It’s an entirely different voice, and I don’t write here with the same biting humor, even though it races through my head. I don’t know. It’s like the difference between farting in a bar versus church. Church gets the bigger laugh if we’re all being honest. There is something funny about an irreverent car site that draws big egos. Here, it would seem out of context.

Okay, back to writing, I have work to do.