FifthView
Vala
Also, presently, I'm a procrastinator.
Oh, me too. That definitely relates, heh.
Also, presently, I'm a procrastinator.
I can relate to this SO MUCH. Even though I'm going to school for art, I still find it really hard to call myself an artist. When people ask me if I'm an artist I'll think to myself, "No, I'm still just a student." Or "Well, I haven't been in a *real* gallery show yet." Or even "I don't think my work is good enough for me to be considered an artist."This reminds me of an incident a few years back. This was when I brought a bunch of copies of my book of Valentine's Day cards to Burning Man. I'd had them printed out and thought to put them out as gifts or to leave them in places where people could write in them. It was a little art project of my own that I'd planned out (not very well) and created.
As I explained about this to someone they suddenly said:
So, you're an artist?
My first thought was something along the lines of:
No, of course not, I'm no artist, I'm just me. I'm nothing special.
I write fantasy, so I have to say I'm not a real writer, I'm an unreal writer.
Tom, there's an easy way to tell if you are an artist: try to stop. If you can't, then you aren't. Simple as that.
I have played music more or less all my life. When the mp3 boom hit in the late 90s I went even further--I wrote my own music, played it and recorded it (lots of loops and step recording, but still....). I made seven CDs worth of that over the course of about a decade. It was great fun and I spent hundreds of hours at it.
When I made the decision to be serious about writing, I had to make a choice. I didn't have two hundreds of hours available. So I stopped playing music, even to the point of giving away my guitars, the synth, all the recording stuff. I was able to stop because I'm not a musician. I play music--still do, very occasionally, and worse every time--and I still enjoy playing music. But I'm not a musician because a musician can't stop.
It has nothing to do with being published or exhibited or performing. For me, playing music is a pleasure. So is drawing. Writing, though, is a fire that never goes out and won't leave me alone. I can't stop. So: I'm a writer. It ain't no claim to fame, it's a condition.