Firstly: All things are connected, but distinctions need to be made…
This may seem academic—and it is—but sometimes a subtle distinction makes all the difference in practice: The writer is not the narrator of a text of fiction, and vice versa.
It is easy to forget this fact, especially when you change from Reader (studying books at uni or in a book club) to Writer.
This was driven home to me once, long ago, when an Author gave a talk and had the listeners eating out of her hand (sorry for the cliché but this is exposition), laughing our butts off, (another one!) but when I read the book, it was disappointingly dull. I decided, then and there, that she was more of a Speaker than a Writer. I learnt afterwards that she had, indeed, joined the International Speakers’ Circuit. Oh well, good luck to her! I thought… But I, for some unknown reason, wanted to learn how to write well.