Writing Post (Warning: Very Meta)

I have about a dozen short stories, and two longer pieces of fiction (I hesitate to call either a novel) sitting on my hard drive in various stages of editing. The two longer pieces are NaNoWriMo monstrosities, one a disjointed rumination on how the media creates its own narrative surrounding a tragedy (the Boston bombing happened when I was about halfway through, which made me not want to finish it), and the other is loosely about semiotics, gender roles, and how to age gracefully in a scene defined by youth. (In simpler terms, it's about a bunch of douchebag hipsters as they inch toward middle age.) Yeah, I tend to bite off a bit more than I can chew.

For what it's worth, I do write during non-NaNo months, I just use NaNoWriMo as my main motivational tool for writing longer pieces of fiction. Of the short stories, I like about half of them. I've written one over four different times, and it's still is heavily (if subconsciously) influenced by David Leavitt. The others are workshop-able, at best.

Recently, I read a quote from Rick Moody that began, "I am never terribly comfortable with the word writer." I'm okay with the verb, but not the noun, particularly as an unpublished writer. I know, I know, it doesn't matter: if you write you are a writer. At least, that's what we're supposed to be telling ourselves, but I don't want to get too complacent. I've always been suspicious of people who emphatically state "I'm a writer, particularly when they fail to produce any writing, even if that writing is just sitting abandoned in a drawer on in a long-forgotten folder on the hard drive.