what counts as writing

[Listener]

I have a friend who is disabled and as a result is home most of the time. She's written something like three million words since either 1/1 or 11/1 -- stories, poems, book chapters, LJ posts, role-playing with others on the internet, etc. That's a hell of an accomplishment, especially since it took me six months to write a 135,000-word novel.

As I was writing on my LJ today (click here -- shameless plug, I know), I wondered if those 683 words counted as "actual" writing.

So... do you consider writing on your LJ or in an RP community as actual writing? Or do you only count what you might someday publish?

[Bdoomed]

well...
Lets say you become incredibly famous posthumously...
will people collect all your books?
will they also collect all your forum posts? or at least the most "insightful" ones?
will they also collect all your LJ posts?

and by incredibly famous i mean like if Dickens and Shakespeare and Plato fused into one super writer.
but that doesnt really matter.

i think "writing" is anything that expresses your opinion.  As far as i'm concerned, this post is "writing" of mine.  if people ever become interested in my life, this will give them some clues as to who i was.

[Raving_Lunatic]

i have small notebooks where I write ****loads of vague ideas and concepts, how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking- it's basically a map of my brain and emotions (there's fragments of song lyrics ect) and that doesn't count, to me, as writing, but who knows? I suppose it is writing even though it's not intended to be read by other people, but I think that's the cut off point. When you write something is it meant to be read by another person? Is it aimed at anyone but yourself?

[Agies]

Depends on how much I'm trying to trick myself. Some mornings I get sucked into writing elaborate comments or replies on blogs and forums instead of working on a story. If it's well written and thought out I tend to count it as a successful exercise. Blog posts count as double since I have this tendency to not write them at all.

As far as being publishable I think there are at least two books published in the last few years that a essentially collections of blog posts. Obviously this won't be the case for all blogs, but don't dismiss your writing just because it's in a non-traditional format.