From the President: For February 2008
Being a writer, I suppose, is about being paid to write, or at least about being published. There is a huge continuum from the few blockbuster authors, to those earning a decent living or part of decent living or earning pocket money, to those getting published for little or no money, to those across the river from being published, to those still grappling with writing what might be published. Being a writer, more than anything, is about having written and continuing to write.
It's time for me to produce my 29th annual Academy Awards newsletter. It's a modest rag with a modest distribution. Just shy of doing it for 30 years, I manage to look at any measure of what it means to be a writer and find satisfaction with the person who produced that little niche across so many years. I found myself looking at a raft of poems I've written across more than 30 years, poems that haven't made it into the four volumes I've published, and I start to wonder how many of those should I use to assemble a next book. I think about ongoing and projected writing projects and what I've got to do to bring them to fruition.
Being a writer, I suppose, is about sitting down and writing today. Money, publication, what you've done, what you're going to do ... they all whirl above the heart and mind and hand that writes.
Charles Jaffee