What is a "professional" writer?
This came up at Metataxu Cafe. A question in the profile:
What is your profession?
They give you a menu... but only one choice... from a list.
Teacher/writer?
Nope. One or the other.
So I ask, how can I claim to be a "professional writer"... if I don't earn my living by writing?
...what about Kafka? What was he?
Certainly there's more to this than earned income.
And what's wrong with being an amateur--one who writes out of love and need?
A professional, at least, can say... I'm no dilettante.
And is there an advantage to being an amateur?
That one's easy. No one can call you a who...ahem... "hack".
Then...what is a dilettante, but a professional amateur?
And what is a hack, but an dilettante... who does it for money?
Like Camus said, let us be neither
... victims
... nor executioners.
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