Are bloggers masquerading as writers?

In the recent past, I was having quite an interesting conversation with my quirky cousin who can make talking about filth sound like a Van Gogh creation! In the course of the conversation, he asked me, “So, how does it feel to be a writer?” Well, I had to process the information of me being a writer. I asked him again, “What was that?” He again mouthed the same question. Well, I told him that I wasn’t a writer. I am a blogger. “But bloggers write and hence they are writers, right?” Well, his argument sounded quite convincing and logical but I could not lead myself to believe that I am a writer. I am NOT a writer but a blogger.

This position of mine might make you squirm in your seat if you are a passionate blogger who also happens to write terrifically. Well, here are my two bits on the argument.

• Being a writer is something that is a passion as well as a profession. A writer only writes and for a hobby does other mundane things like gardening, cooking, clicking photographs and other things.
• A blogger has a main profession say, being a teacher, doctor, lawyer, etc. and also has a hobby like blogging among many other zillions of interests.
• Blogging is something like a hobby for non-writers. One may excel at it and in the process gain many followers but that does not make a blogger a writer.
• Some writers may use the medium of blogging to test waters and also draft their forthcoming works. They can be bloggers as well. Writers have that adaptability – they can be both.
• A tiny post with a few hundred comments cannot make a blogger think that he/she is a writer. Some even think that they are best than the best writers found in the best-selling list.
• Bloggers can become writers. I don’t rule out that possibility. They can quit their full-time job and take to writing, if they happen to realize that, its is their calling.
• Writing a post is quite a minuscule activity when compared to writing a full-length work of fiction/poetry/play or a non-fiction essay/book.
• While blog posts can be cooked up in a jiffy, entire works need time, patience, many adjustments and oodles of inspiration that requires the muse in residence.
• When one says that writing has always been his/her passion, hence they started blogging, I interpret that as, ‘I didn’t have the courage to take up writing as a profession OR I cannot do that full-time and hence I blog.’
• A few hundred or even thousand posts in a span of two to three years is done in one stretch by a writer for one single work of art.
Please don’t think that I am a crusader for writers in the process badgering bloggers. No. I am just of the opinion that bloggers are not writers . . . they are Bloggers. So, I’m a proud blogger and not a writer. There are negligible chances that I might become a writer tomorrow but for now I’m a blogger by choice.

But then, you may want to ask, “Aren’t some people doing full-time blogging and getting paid for it as well. Well, even they are bloggers in my opinion, for they are only blogging and not writing as a profession. In this globalized world words, tags and labels have become all-encompassing and all-pervading. Synonyms are in vogue and the real words have been forgotten. Delusion has become a way of life and the word ‘writer’ has lost its worth and standing. I salute the patience and courage of writers and also think that I’m better off as a blogger – The best spawning of words and ideas.

Let the brickbats and bouquets, if any, may appear.

- Guest post by S. Susan Deborah.

Susan is an academician by profession and blogger by passion. She is awaiting the defense of her Ph. D thesis on transgenders in Tamil Nadu. She moderates the vibrant blogger community The Chennai Bloggers Club in Facebook while also grappling with writing ‘serious’ academic essays. She blogs at  susan-deborah.org