Lazette Gifford, author of Return to Redlin and other ebooks and novels, wrote a couple days ago about the most important writing rule:

"You must be willing to learn."

She’s not talking about learning how to write. She’s talking about learning about life, about the world. Or what I call the spiritual side of writing. Writing is a growing experience. If you want your writing experience to fulfill, you must be willing to expand your horizons through it. Regardless of which horizons you expand or which passions you pursue, writing fulfills because it allows you to express yourself in the world around you.

“Why do you write?” Classic question. That’s the reason, the last clause in the paragraph above. “Because it allows you to express yourself in the world around you.” This is what writers mean, I think, when they say “I write because I have to,” or “I write because I have a story to tell.” As reasons to write, these are cop-outs.

“So what do you want me to do?” I can hear you quip. “Get published? Just like that? Sorry, buddy, I’m trying, but it just don’t work that way. Some things are out of my control.”

Now, getting published may be a fine route to authorship. But this post is not about getting published.

Trish Perry, author of Unforgettable, her newly released 1950’s romantic comedy, she guest blogged on Novel Journey today: you might be a novelist if…

If you’re like most fiction writers, whether published or not, you’ve struggled with that decision about when to actually call yourself a novelist. Yes, once you land your first contract, it’s a given. But most of us toil for years before that happens. Are we presumptuous to call ourselves novelists, or even writers, right from the start?

Trish goes on to list some of the quirks that make a novelist, even if you haven’t yet snagged the ear of a publisher. An entertaining post.

Trish is on to something here. See, this isn’t about getting published. This is about mindset, whether you write novels or something else. Do you still consider yourself an “aspiring author”? When do you get to graduate to the status of full “author”?