Becoming an Author

Ever since I was a teenager I wanted to be an author.  Since that time, I've had a couple blogs; nothing was officially published though.  Over the same span of time, I set my dreams aside to do mundane things like full time jobs and juat surviving every day life as a lower-class American.  I sold myself a story, I could never be an author, despite the fact that very close friends and colleagues published story after story.

Watching them, I began asking myself; how does one become an author.  Does the act of having your writing on paper or on a bookshelf somewhere define this?  Maybe the act of becoming an author is more ethereal, since we all have stories floating around within us.  If that is the case, I might be a naturally born author.  I loved creating my own fantasy scenarios, which has lead to my love of Dungeons and Dragons and other such games of fantasy.  After all, what is a Dungeon Master but an author of a story that involves his players (whom, by the way, are also authors in the sense that they co-create the story).

However, we don't call those with a story in their hearts authors.  The act of becoming an author requires then, in the collective conscious, something physical.  Yet this process is a guarded gate based around skill and, more importantly to sime publishing companies, profit.  In today's world, authorship needs some capitalistic value.  I mean, artists in any medium always needed patrons to support their lifestyle and career, but the modern age can make that difficult.  So in that case, there are many great storytellers, but authors are few and far between (yet, are still dime a dozen).

I can't live with that.  Therefore: I believe, personally, that there is a middle ground to be had.  I am doing that middle ground right now.  In this very act of writing this blog, of putting my writing out into the world beyond the walled garden of libraries and bookstores, I am an author.  Authors are like a shaman, leading you headfirst into a world of mystery and enchantment, finding the same enchantment in the everyday.  Authorship is rebellion against the disenchantment of the modern age.

Becoming an author is being a rebel sharing his vision with the world.