If someone at a party asks what I do, I refer to myself as a writer, but only to describe one of the ways I earn a living. If the person hasn’t walked away and left the party and possibly relocated to another country out of fear that I might don a wistful look and start talking about nostalgia or readership or some such thing, I might add that I’m a content writer, a term I dislike but use anyway. “Content writer” is a decidedly unsexy job title, but it does encompass some of what I write: ghostwritten articles, blog posts, interviews for publications, or even speeches, often for local media agencies, large companies, or state entities.
If I see that my conversation partner is still awake, or if I see one of their eyebrows rise more than a millimeter, I might add that I also write satire and humor. In 2017, I created a satire blog called the Luxembourg Wurst, which, as you may have guessed, is about Luxembourg, where I live. It is largely modelled on the Onion (the pre-corporate-buyout Onion – you lovely weird beast, you) and pokes fun at the Grand Duchy’s quirks. Since 2018, I have written a weekly Luxembourg Wurst piece for RTL Today.
Now, if and only if there’s such a great lull in the conversation and the world at large that emergency action must be taken, or if I’ve been trapped with another person in a bomb shelter for nine months and we’ve exhausted every other possible topic of conversation including our favorite mid-1980s television commercials and ranking the names of foot fungi in terms of how suitable they would be for minor Dick Tracy villains, then and only then I might take the step of adding that I write fiction.