Writers and Authors.

During the course of a Google search today, I came across a young woman who was described as ‘a best selling author.’ Not merely ‘an author’ you understand, a best selling author. The best selling bit is important because it means she’s famous, and being famous means she’s a celebrity, and being a celebrity means that people want to know her and come up to her in public places, drooling and simpering and offering the opinion that ‘I do think you’re an amazing writer, Ms Whatever-her-name-was.’

Did I say writer? That’s a different word. There’s a general, if rather loose, axiom in the world of the scribblers that writers and authors are fundamentally different creatures. The author belongs in the world of entertainment, and the best selling author is a leading light in that world (as well as probably being very well off into the bargain.) The writer, on the other hand, belongs somewhere in that ill-defined area to which the word ‘art’ is generally applied. The truism would have it that whereas an author might make the reader’s eyes cry, the writer should be capable of making their soul lament.

It is, as I said, a rather loose axiom. The likes of Kafka and Flann O’Brien were clearly writers, and Agatha Christie was clearly an author. Others – like Dickens, maybe – managed to straddle the demarcation line and cause it to blur. Things are rarely clear cut, but I suppose it helps to have some way of dividing those who write to entertain, and those who write for a whole load of complex reasons that are both inward and outward looking. And isn’t it interesting that both entertainers and artists often fall foul of drink, drugs, and even suicide – the entertainers because they can’t stand the pressures of fame, and the artists because they can’t stand the pressure of heightened awareness?

My reason for musing on this isn’t to be snobbish; the entertainer and the artist both have their place in the complex and unfathomable business of life. It’s just that so many people don’t see the difference between the two, and while the world heaps its material benefits onto the head of the best selling author, the poor writer is often left to cry in the wilderness.