On both being and not being an author
Writing vs authoring & Guest Letter # 1
I’m on my honeymoon in Atlantic Canada right now, and while staying in PEI, I had the opportunity to visit the three separate houses that author Lucy Maud Montgomery lived in and visited while writing Anne of Green Gables. At the actual Green Gables site in Cavendish, there is a Lucy Maud museum that displays photos, pages from her scrapbooks, and some of her journal entries. One of these journal entries really struck me, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since:
"I cannot remember the time when I was not writing, or when I did not mean to be an author. To write has always been my central purpose around which every effort and hope and ambition of my life has grouped itself.”
Here, Maud is sort of using the titles “writer” and “author” interchangeably. I realized then, for the very first time, that I have never seen being a writer and being an author as the same thing.
I opened Instagram and looked at the profession titles listed on the profiles of a few of my other friends who have published books. Mine says “Author”, but a few friends who have published much more than me have “Writer” as their profession, and others don’t have a profession listed at all.
And it got me thinking: What is the difference between a writer and an author? And why is it something I’ve always cared about?
Before I could make an attempt at forming an answer, another part of me wrote a little about their perspective on the question. I used to find journal entries of mine in different handwriting before I was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, but it’s rare for me to find something like that these days because, with the help of therapy, I lose less time.
Yesterday, Stephen wrote out some of his thoughts on writing and authorship. I wasn’t planning on including any of that writing here, but when I read it, I thought it offered an interesting perspective. The thing about having a dissociative disorder is that all of me has the capacity to be fully introspective together, but separately, each of us has a limited capacity to understand our whole life.
I’ve decided that any time I offer up a perspective here that has come about from a different part of me, I’ll call it a Guest Letter. There won’t be guest letters in every newsletter, but I’m leaving the forum open for my future selves.
The writing is below. I’ve edited out anything that I’m not comfortable sharing, but I tried not to edit for clarity or flow.
There seems to me to be a difference between identifying yourself as a writer versus identifying yourself as an author, and I'm not certain that the difference is having published a book. There are also terms like 'poet' and 'memoirist' to consider, but I'm focusing on the writer/author division for now.
After we graduated university, our bio read 'emerging writer'. After publishing a few stories, our bio read 'writer'. After publishing our first book, our bio read 'author'. I remember that third jump being important, emotionally. In terms of self worth. 'Author' sat different on the tongue. It filled the lungs with more air. Stood taller. There was a boundary between writer and author, or there felt like there was. Once we crossed it, we were allowed to write, and tell people that we wrote, because writing was no longer "a hobby".
In January 2021, our book The Pump lost its publisher and gained a new one within 24 hours. In those 24 hours, we changed the 'author' in our Instagram bio back to 'writer'. At the time, I didn't understand why this mattered. I still don't really understand, and I think that's because of my relationship to authorship.
All of us together are Sydney Hegele. But there is one part who uses Sydney as their name personally. They have (mostly) always known themself as Sydney. Thought of themself as Sydney. Sydney is the author–the one who wrote The Pump. When Sydney looks at the book, physically, their name is on it. We'll always use that name to publish under. To be called the name that you call yourself feels good; to see that name crediting your work feels like the work, and you, are real.
I enjoy writing. I used to write a lot more often than I do now. When I write, it doesn't have to be good. It likely won't be read. Because if it were good, and if it were read, it would still never be published in my name.
Reading the letter was a strange experience, as is reading everything that is both written by me and not written by me. I’ve never really thought about what it would mean for me to be a writer who is an author by practice but not by name.
I’ve been exclusively using they/them pronouns for over five years now–through the entirety of my publishing journey so far–but I’ve always been comfortable with some variation of Syd or Sydney as my first name. Dissociative parts are usually formed with either a name or a descriptive quality that they associate with, and it is rarely the same name the body is given at birth.
I didn’t name Stephen–he got his name because of the Grateful Dead song “St. Stephen”, which I talk a little about in my essay “The First Martyr”. A part’s name and “original job” usually corresponds to why they needed to exist in the first place. In the Marvel show Moon Knight, Mark Spector’s alter Steven Grant is named after a children’s movie heroine.
Stephen seems himself as a writer, but not an author, because I publish my work under my legal name. From his perspective, I saw myself as a writer right up until I signed a deal for my first published book, at which point I became an author.
The thing is, I feel like my attitude towards these terms has changed in the last two years. I no longer see a professional distinction, but an experiential one. I feel like an author when I'm promoting my work; talking on panels; meeting readers at signings; being interviewed; fixing up my website; pitching new book ideas. I feel like a writer when I'm a student in workshops; when I'm teaching my own workshops; when I'm brainstorming; researching; drafting; editing; sharing my work privately with other writers. I understand that to see these things as experiential is a privilege. I have the space to talk about the differences I feel between writing and authorship because I have a published book.
Looking back at the last few years, I wish I had someone to tell me that the author part of writing is important, but it isn't more important than the writing itself. I started writing when I was young as a way to express myself and understand the world around me. I write because I love it, because if I didn't write, I don't know who I would be or what I would believe in. Being an author is a beautiful thing to do with that writing, but if I woke up tomorrow and could never publish anything ever again, I would still write, and I would still be a writer. When I focus so much on getting something published that I lose sight of why I wrote it, I've lost my way.
I am an author, yes, but I'm a writer first and foremost. I am someone who cares deeply about words and their ability to enact positive change on our world. To make people laugh, and cry, and escape, and see themselves. I want those connections to be the foundation of everything I do and every story I tell.
With love,
News from the Marsh
Writing Trauma: Craft as a Healing Practice 8-Week Zoom Workshop, Starts Monday, July 31st, 2023
Class will meet weekly on Monday nights via Zoom, 6PM - 8PM EST
How do we write about our traumas without becoming re-traumatized? In this course, we will use a variety of texts to establish a therapeutic framework for writing about our traumas and participate in holding space during writer-led workshops for personal essays and selections from memoir projects.
The authors we will draw upon for our framework include Alice Walker, Nicole Chung, Melissa Febos, and others. All text selections will be provided to students in accessible PDFs from the instructor.
Prepare for a variety of grounding exercises and group boundary-setting in our first session based on the needs of our particular group, and to complete the 8-week workshop with a polished essay or memoir selection.
I had an essay published in Earth & Altar Magazine . It’s called “The First Martyr”, and it’s about martyrdom, my father, and the impact of the Grateful Dead and their rarely-played-live song "St. Stephen" on my dissociative identity disorder.
I update my events and publishing things frequently on my website, so take a browse there if you’re ever wondering what I’m up to. And, of course, subscribe to Marsh Mail if you want more of these kinds of musings in your inbox.
Sydney Hegele is the author of The Pump (Invisible Publishing 2021), winner of the 2022 ReLit Literary Award for Short Fiction and a finalist for the 2022 Trillium Book Award. Their essays on life with Dissociative Identity Disorder have appeared in Catapult and Electric Literature, and featured by Lithub, the Poetry Foundation, and Psychology Today. Their novel Bird Suit is forthcoming with Invisible Publishing in Spring 2024, and their essay collection Bad Kids is forthcoming with Invisible in Fall 2025. They live with their husband and French Bulldog on Treaty 13 Land (Toronto, Canada).