What do we mean by “Thanet’s writers”?

A term that we have used on this blog a lot is “Thanet’s writers”. What do we mean exactly?

It could, for example, be taken to mean the historical writers from Thanet’s past. People like Dickens, for example. This is, I hope you might guess, not exactly what we mean.

For some people, “Thanet’s writers” might be taken to mean only full-time writers from Thanet. This is not what we mean. Obviously, we include full-time writers but for us, the phrase means so much more.

Others might assume we mean only those who self-identify as writers and are from Thanet. again, this is not what we mean but it is closer and does include these self-identified writers.

When we say Thanet’s writers, we are always talking about everyone who expresses themselves with words; especially if they do so creatively. Writing has two stages:

1. The art of coming up with something to say
2. The act of writing it down

We are almost always talking about the art, not the act.

For us, Thanet’s writers include (among others) poets, spoken word performers, journalists, playwrights, bloggers, essay writers, songwriters, musicians that compose, and of course fiction writers too. All of these are forms of writing and most of these are creative too.

For us, the act of writing is so much than putting words on a page. Writing something down is the mechanical action of writing – that is rarely creative in and of itself. However, the art that goes into choosing the words, beats, or notes – that is creative; at all levels.

This is why we changed our name from Thanet Creative Writers to Thanet Creative. While we will probably continue to talk about Thanet’s writers, we want to be clear we are talking about the creative drive, not the physical act of making marks on paper (or typing).