The way you think about yourself influences the way others will think about you. It also influences you in showing the right attitude. Thinking of yourself as an author or as a writer influences your writing style and the way you present yourself to the reader. But it is also a matter of branding. Writer or author might appeal to different audiences. In fact, the difference is almost nil and yet profound.
Is there a difference between a writer and an author? The Oxford Dictionary tells me that a writer is a person who has written something or who writes in a particular way, a person who writes books, stories, or articles as a job or occupation. For author (or authoress to be concise), it tells me that that person is a writer of a book, article, or document.
There is a subtle but profound difference between the two. The writer is caught in the act of writing. He is reduced to the menial work of writing down words, a recorder, a clerk (to use the medieval meaning of the word as an illustration). The author on the other hand is seen as the composer of work of art, an inventor of ideas which he has transmuted into words. It is no coincidence that author and authority share the same root word.
As the lines are getting more blurred, you still might want to consider this. The aim of all the branding is to brand yourself as an author. You want to bring your ideas to your readers with conviction. If you accept the description author for yourself, then the readers will believe you, because you are an authority, an expert. If, on the other hand, you merely write articles, then that is fine, but don’t expect to make waves. You could write for a newspaper or your own blog for what it matters. Establishing yourself as a brand, an authority, an expert is the main objective, always.
Branding yourself as an author doesn't mean you have to write a book at a later stage or pretend to do so right now. You may be the author of informative, interesting, humorous, or weird articles depending on where your expertise lies. But should you want to write a book, your online presence as an established brand and author won’t hurt your impact with the publishers.
If you are content with what comes your way in views as a writer, then don’t feel disheartened. In time you might overcome the inhibition to call yourself an author. And there is money to be made out there. People are publishing Google Translate mash with article spin program sauce. Or at least, there seems to be money for them out there; so many do it. Don’t ask me about that aspect of online presence, I am no expert on this particular kind of earning money online. But I do avoid any kind of article titles derived from an obvious spin or the ones that yell Google Translate at me.
Using article spin software on your own articles still means that you have to rewrite most of it. The words these programs insert as synonyms aren't synonyms at all. Once you check what you wanted to say and how it was distorted by the spin program you'd have to rewrite large parts of the draft. A new article shouldn't just rehash what you said before; you need to add some new information as well. Once you have done all that, you would have been faster writing from scratch. The process of writing from scratch will bring in new ideas, too, that you didn't have in mind when starting out on the article. And if your rethinking of an article gets out of hand: Don't be afraid to contradict what you said in earlier posts!
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