{"id":975,"date":"2026-05-15T18:48:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T22:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/?p=975"},"modified":"2026-05-15T18:48:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T22:48:22","slug":"the-minutiae-of-a-writers-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/?p=975","title":{"rendered":"The minutiae of a writer’s life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This is so typical of the scraps to which writers must cling in order to convince themselves that they are writers, and not hobbyists or imposters. I don’t know why actors have no problem with this. An actor may never have had a gig in his or her entire life, but she will still proudly call herself an actor. Writers are almost the opposite: we can’t even begin to call ourselves writers without feeling a sense of shame and braggadocio. The best description I read was in the Times — might have been the magazine section — where the very astute writer observed that writers must look to the tiniest of accomplishments: “I wrote a line for a movie;” “I got a job teaching at a community writing center;” or, in my case, “Once, I was a finalist in a New Millennium Fiction Award.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The prize for being a finalist in the 39th season was a copy of the anthology where all the first place winners works were published, and where the finalists’ names appeared on one of the pages. The thing is, I don’t know what story I submitted. I think the contest (it happened twice a year) was in 2015 or 2016. I suspect it was a story I wrote about a woman whose mother possibly kidnapped her from her father when she was a toddler, and then lived their lives on the run from the law and capture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I’m sure it made me happy at the time. Little things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is so typical of the scraps to which writers must cling in order to convince themselves that they are writers, and not hobbyists or imposters. I don’t know why actors have no problem with this. An actor may never … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":977,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions\/977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thomasfcook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}