Blogging Insights — Writer or Blogger?

Fandango

In this week’s edition of Blogging Insights, Dr. Tanya wants to know…

How do you see yourself primarily, as a writer or a blogger, and is there a difference?

Writing is a form of human communication that involves the representation of a language with written symbols (letters of the alphabet, punctuation, and spaces). It requires at least a basic knowledge of grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. Vocabulary is also necessary, as is correct spelling and formatting.

Blogging is also a form of human communication that involves the representation of a language with written symbols (letters of the alphabet, punctuation, and spaces). It requires at least a basic knowledge of grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. Vocabulary is also necessary, as is correct spelling and formatting.

So is there a difference between writing and blogging? Yes, the primary difference is the medium in which writing and blogging appear. Writing typically appears in printed form, whether in books, magazines, or newspapers, although these days, most books, magazines, and newspapers can also be read via electronic media. Blogging is predominantly electronic, able to be viewed exclusively on the internet.

All that said, I distinguish between being a writer and a blogger in the same way I distinguish between being a professional and an amateur. Professionals get paid for their work. Amateurs do not.

True writers make their living by being writers, authors, journalists. They get paid for writing and for having their writings published. Most bloggers cannot earn much of a living by blogging. They blog for their own pleasure, to pass the time, or to engage with other bloggers.

You need to be a decent writer to be a blogger, but you don’t need to be a blogger to be a decent writer.

I consider myself to be a blogger primarily. It’s a hobby, a pastime for me and I am neither seeking nor receiving compensation for blogging. In fact, I pay WordPress an annual fee to have my own domain name and to remove those tacky advertisements from my blog.

But I also think of myself as a writer because blogging is primarily a medium that uses the “written” word, albeit in electronic format, at its heart.

So, bottom line, I’m both a writer and a blogger, but I’m primarily a blogger.

17 thoughts on “Blogging Insights — Writer or Blogger?”

  1. Sadje May 17, 2021 / 9:32 am

    Spot on Fandango! I think of you as a good writer because you have the flair needed to write good stories

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  2. Paula Light May 17, 2021 / 10:18 am

    I think of this differently and I consider you a writer as well as myself. Posting mainly fiction and poetry and stories to entertain (true or not) an audience seems to me to be writing. In my mind, a “blogger” is someone who recounts events, usually in a boring way. I don’t have many (or any) of these boring bloggers in my feed, but there are a lot of them! Went here, went there, did this, bought that, tinkered with my puter, etc. Nothing wrong with this and it fits the original definition of web logger, but I’m not interested in it.

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    • Fandango May 17, 2021 / 10:54 am

      Thanks, Paula. Yes, originally blogging was like an online journal that could be shared via the World Wide Web. But like you, most of the bloggers I regularly follow are storytellers, either through prose or poetry. And that make them (and us) writers.

      I guess the way I distinguish a writer from a blogger gets back to the professional versus amateur designation. A person who writes stories and poems for pleasure or as a pastime and who posts their writings on a blog, is *primarily* a blogger. A person who authors books, magazine articles, or newspaper articles and gets compensated for doing so is *primarily* a writer.

      People can be both. For example, you have published a number of books, so I would consider you to be both a writer and a blogger. When I was working, I had about half a dozen articles published in professional journals, but I never really considered myself to be a writer and I didn’t get compensated for those articles. You have taken up painting and have painted some very nice pieces that you’ve displayed on your blog. But would you call yourself a painter or someone who enjoys painting as a hobby or a pastime?

      Anyway, I think we are both good writers and good bloggers, in my humble opinion.

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      • Paula Light May 17, 2021 / 10:58 am

        True, I wouldn’t call myself a painter. But I got paid two bucks by a magazine for a poem 20 years ago, so dammit, I’m a writer! 😂

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  3. newepicauthor May 17, 2021 / 3:26 pm

    I entered a short story challenge and I won the top prize of $250 which I never reported to the IRS.

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  5. drtanya@saltedcaramel May 19, 2021 / 7:24 am

    I agree that it is very difficult to make a distinction between writer and blogger.
    You cannot write a blog post without being a writer.

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  6. Lokesh Sastya June 2, 2021 / 8:30 pm

    Thanks for the clearance. Blogging is the kind of writing you can say. You have to be a good writer to be a successful blogger. Writing is in our core. ❤

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