Can You Call Yourself a Writer?

Writers: Bloom where you're planted

By Linda Wilson    @LinWilsonauthor

Writers just starting out might wonder: Can I call myself a writer, say, if I’m not published? If all I write are my thoughts, wishes and dreams in a journal? If letters, texts, and emails are all I write?

Well, I have the answer. I heard it once from an editor (so it’s got to be true). You can call yourself a writer if you enjoy looking up words in the dictionary. There you have it. It's that simple. So, are you a writer?

Not only do I like, no, relish looking up words in the dictionary, I also enjoy finding just the right word to use to express an action, emotion or to jazz up dialogue. I’m sure every serious writer has Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style at their elbow. It’s a big help, though not with every rule. I’ll get to that in a minute.

And what would I do without my Chicago Manual of Style? My Manual looks like a bird on a cold winter morning who has fluffed up its feathers to stay warm. That’s because I’ve had to look up so many rules, the same ones, mind you, so many times that I finally labelled my most troublesome rules on Post-it page markers for easy access, which flutter on the top and right side of the book. There are twenty-two of them. I just counted them. Guess what the biggest one is: Punctuation.

It’s okay, though. I once learned from yet another editor that writers can’t possibly remember every grammar rule and have to look up many. So, although some might think it’s tedious if they’re told to “go look that up,” genuine writers like you and me know that those people are not writers. We are because we don’t mind looking up rules (and words).

Take Lie, Lay, Lain

Lay is one of the trickiest irregular verbs. The word is categorized simply as "Lay" in Elements of Style, and is explained this way:

• A transitive verb. Except in slang (“Let it lay), do not misuse it for the intransitive verb lie. The hen, or the play, lays an egg; the llama lies down. The playwright went home and lay down.
• Lie; lay; lain; lying (I made a note in my book here: Past tense of lie is lay)
• Lay; laid; laid; laying

As much as this explanation is helpful, I still ponder the correct usage and have four different explanations for Lie and Lay in a Grammar file I keep on my computer. I finally found the most helpful explanation for Lie, Lay, Lain at Professor Malcolm Gibson’s website, “The Wonderful World of Words.” This site is fun for anyone who loves words.

• The principal parts (most-common verb forms) of lie are:
• lie (present,) lay (past) and lain (past participle).
•      The principal parts of lay are:
• lay (present), laid (past) and laid (past participle).

As an aid in choosing the correct verb forms, remember that lie means to recline, whereas lay means to place something, to put something on something.

Correct Usage

Lie

• Present tense: I lie down on my bed to rest my weary bones.
• Past tense: Yesterday, I lay there thinking about what I had to do during the day.
• Past participle: But I remembered that I had lain there all morning one day last week.

Lay

• Present tense: As I walk past, I lay the tools on the workbench.
• Past tense: As I walked past, I laid the tools on the workbench. And: I laid an egg in class when I tried to tell that joke.
• Past participle: . . . I had laid the tools on the workbench.

The professor has discovered an easy way to remember the rule so that it is used correctly every time. He has named it after one of his students who invented her own way to remember the rule. He calls it The Michiko Sato Rule.

Write these six words and then try them out:

                                Lie         Lay         Lain

                                Lay        Laid        Laid

Don't get me started on swim, swam, swum. Swum just doesn't sound right to me. Normally, I avoid it by tiptoeing around it. There are other ways to describe your characters while they're swimming than using the word swum, right?

Do you have a method for keeping track of word usage that you'd like to share? Please leave a comment and tell us about it. After all, anyone who reads this post must care about words and therefore is qualified to call himself or herself a writer.

Source:  Malcolm Gibson's website: Wonderful World of Words: Malcolm Gibson

Reading my stories 
to children is even
more fun than
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Linda Wilson is the author of the Abi Wunder Mystery series and other books for children. Her two new releases are the Spanish versions of Tall Boots, Botas Altas (2024), translated by Graciela Moreno and Adriana Botero, and Cradle in the Wild, Cuna en la Naturaleza (2025), translated by Adriana Botero. You'll find Linda on her Amazon author page, on her website at LindaWilsonAuthor.com, and on Facebook.