When is one a "writer"?

[Lumiere]

I realized something interesting today: without being conscious of it, I have considered myself a "writer" for years now. I have not published a single word, and I have never finished a story I started. I have always regarded the art of writing with passion, and it is continually in my thoughts, but I am otherwise completely unjustified in considering myself a writer. But in my mind, that is exactly what I am. On the other hand, I have been running consistently for a few years and still do not by any means consider myself a runner.

What do you make of it? Do you folks consider yourself "writers"?

[Lokasenna]

I think it is a method of self definition. I consider myself a writer, even though I'm unpublished. I have written a complete novel, but as a product of my 16 year old self, its so dreadful I would never even consider giving it to a publisher. Nowadays, though I'm working on a new, better novel, I have so little time for pleasure-writing that it will be years in the making.

Still, to all intents and purposes, I am a writer!

[blazeofglory]

Of course I consider myself a writer no matter whether I have published or not in point of fact. Writing is not just a publicity but also a matter of personal interest. I enjoy writing always

[Dinkleberry2010]

When is one a "writer?"

The obvious answer is one is a writer when one is writing, but since the question was framed with quotation marks around the word writer, it refers to a person who does more than merely write. Publication does not make one a writer. Publication might make one be called a professional writer. I think a writer is someone who more or less writes regularly (by regularly I don't mean every day) and is serious about his or her writing.

[AuntShecky]

A quotation on a similar subject comes from Linda Pastan, something to the effect that she won't consider herself to be a poet until it says so on her tombstone.

[blazeofglory]

Writing and creativity is synonymic and one is one who comes up with creativity or creative ideas becomes a writer. Writers therefore must have an air of creativity in point of fact

[Jozanny]

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, as they say, but one can be a writer and still fail. I considered myself a writer worthy of my own esteem when I started to get paid regularly, and right now I am in that murky area between having emerged yet not quite being established. However, I am mature enough in my career to realize I may never receive true exposure as it plays in the media today.

It is a growth by degrees, and if any of you start publishing consistently you will feel differently than you do here. Most writers at my level do not post in forums like these. My poet friend Robert, who followed me here, made all of four posts, by way of example, but the internet is my only social outlet, and with fits and starts, I have made something of a nest on LN. So one day Chris will say, hey, she posted here regularly during such and such a period, and maybe we can turn a buck on that! ;)

[PeachesPieces]

I would have to say that yes i am a writer, i am also an artist and i DON'T stick to a single medium of expression ever. In the same way that you don't have to have paintings in a museum to be an artist, you don't have to be published to be a writer. that is just silly, it makes your self worth as an expressive individual be based solely on a monetary or celebrity scale when in fact your notoriety and financial status have little to do with anything that occupies a free thinking mind.

[Jozanny]

I never posted one has to be published to be a writer. One can make it a vocation or a profession, and to me it has been both, but if you don't take it seriously and fight to get good at it, you're toast. Anne Frank is a great example. Fascism transformed her in a very short period of time into a mature author who mastered her craft, as opposed to a 13 year old scribbling what 13 year olds normally do in journals.

[aquarium444]

I realized something interesting today: without being conscious of it, I have considered myself a "writer" for years now. I have not published a single word, and I have never finished a story I started. I have always regarded the art of writing with passion, and it is continually in my thoughts, but I am otherwise completely unjustified in considering myself a writer. But in my mind, that is exactly what I am. On the other hand, I have been running consistently for a few years and still do not by any means consider myself a runner.

What do you make of it? Do you folks consider yourself "writers"?

There are worse things that you could be doing besides writing. I might as well try to do some writing because it is a good challenge, but you have to get organized and be in the correct position to get to work. I'm always running around shopping, working, cleaning, and more....

Maybe you will write in the future. You could be waiting for something to happen before you can start, but it is hard to take anything seriously when you are not getting paid up front. It has much more to do with quality time and quality effort being directed into something. That is just my opinion.

[blazeofglory]

I am a writer only and only when I can interest you

[wlz]

eh, sadly...

[WingedWolf]

A writer is someone who writes. Not someone who has ideas for a novel and hasn't started it (though there is a good chance they will become a writer.)

I took a creative writing class through my local community in the fall and my teacher put it well. She basically said that anyone can be a writer, but there is this abstract idea of what a real "writer" should be, and that once you get your first piece published you get this abstract "writer's membership card" that makes you an official member of the collective group of people who write. That doesn't mean that being unpublished makes you not be a writer, but just that you really join the club when you do get published! :p

[blazeofglory]

Everyone is capable of being a story writer, a poet. The basic difference between a writer and a non-writer is the former can give shape his ideas the latter cannot do so running of course short of words.

[MANICHAEAN]

Its not so much that there are no writers of authentic ability. Its just that there are not many anywhere, ( unless of course you can tap that node of unpublished, private writing, the extent & quality of which by definition will remain unknown).

In the public world I believe that too much preoccupation with the mechanics of writing is a sure sign of a weak talent or none at all. Everything a writer learns about his craft takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.
Original talent? Dont look to the average critic. He never recognizes an achievement when it happens. He explains it after it has become respectable. The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off. He can't do it by trying, because the kind of style I am thinking about is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it.

You can't make a writer. Preoccupation with style will not effect it. No amount of editing and polishing will have any appreciable effect on the flavour of how a man writes. It is the product of the quality of his emotion and perception; it is the ability to transfer these to paper which makes him a writer, in contrast to the great number of people who have just as good emotions and just as keen perceptions, but cannot come within a cricket field's length of putting them on paper.

[prendrelemick]

Manichaean, I agree with almost all of the above. You are saying writers are born not made. There are a couple of contributors on this site I would class as writers, one I know is an actual writer (and it shows). Another just posts about stuff that interests him, but he has the knack. Many others have the ideas and the technical know-how and the almost crippling desire, but somehow fall short.

[Virgil]

I realized something interesting today: without being conscious of it, I have considered myself a "writer" for years now. I have not published a single word, and I have never finished a story I started. I have always regarded the art of writing with passion, and it is continually in my thoughts, but I am otherwise completely unjustified in considering myself a writer. But in my mind, that is exactly what I am. On the other hand, I have been running consistently for a few years and still do not by any means consider myself a runner.

What do you make of it? Do you folks consider yourself "writers"?

Other than a poem in a college magazine, I've never published anything either. But I share the same feeling. I think it's because I try to write and think about the nature of writing all the time. Of course I would defer to any published person any day, but I do consider myself a writer. :)

[skib]

I began considering myself a writer when I needed to write to stay sane. I was a writer long before I acknowledged it, but I think back to my early days and wonder 'how on earth did I not know?'
Some things that led me to the conclusion:
Staring at the computer for hours with five words written, looking for something to do with them.
Wandering away, only to come running back a few minutes later with a sudden inspiration.
Loving the few pages I just wrote, then waking up the next morning to find the work horrible, deleting it all and writing it again.
Writing something, loving it, only to have someone come through and tell you they don't like it and that you should change it.
And, on the rare occasion for myself, having a vision of a story and actually completing it.
Just some things I think qualify me as a 'writer.'

To add onto what Manichaean said:
and old cowboy once told me 'People, dogs and horses all either have the herding instinct, or they don't. It ain't somethin' you can teach.'
Same thing goes for writing, I think. You either have it, or you don't. Not to toot my own horn here, but as far as technicality, I'm horrible. I can't tell you a single thing about sentence structure, proper usage of this or that, and I'm even having trouble coming up with examples of what I don't know. But I have been told by quite a few that I've got an easy style to understand, it flows well, I project an image rather than words.
I'll crawl back into my hole now and put my modesty back where it belongs. :D

[Lumiere]

I began considering myself a writer when I needed to write to stay sane.

I think the need is key. I can't for the life of me remember the actual quote, but a great writer once described writing as his demon, something he was compelled to do, sometimes unwillingly.

When I'm not writing, (which is most of the time), I feel I should be. On a conscious level, I can reason with myself that "writing is not important", "it'll never get me anywhere", "there are plenty of other writers in the world and they're a lot better than you", etc. But somehow, I can't shake it. It feels of dire importance.

[skib]

;) exactly!

[MANICHAEAN]

Skib
Did the old cowboy ever tell you that:
Dogs look up to you.
Cats look down on you.
And hogs are prepared to treat you as an equal?

[Veva]

I believe we become writers immedialetly, when we write something that changes other people, whether they are massively transformed, or you even make them laugh a little.... you can already call yourself a writer, because you changed something in the world :) and that is the point

[skib]

Skib
Did the old cowboy ever tell you that:
Dogs look up to you.
Cats look down on you.
And hogs are prepared to treat you as an equal?

nope! :lol: I'm sure if we were herding pigs he might have brought it up though!

[MANICHAEAN]

Another aspect of writing that I think is important is to enjoy what you write. A bit like enjoying your own cooking in so far as both are creative!. You hear all the guff about writer's demon's & its most probably so true for many writers. They have to suffer mental anguish and to be forged in the furnace of affliction to produce their particular unique brand of writing.

But consider the man who thrives on writing.

George Bernard Shaw for example. He enjoyed firing off letters in French that were so "extremely Brittannic" that they must have been positively painful to any man of literary sensibility to read them. "Hard as nails" - " dure comme in clou" is an expression which ought, he judged "to enrich the French language".

Likewise he often did other naughty things - writing to the newspapers, for example, after the Queen died to denounce the rapturous lying-in-state as "insanitary" and to recommend, as socially invaluable, her quick cremation or shallow burial in a perishable coffin.

[prendrelemick]

I began considering myself a writer when I needed to write to stay sane. I was a writer long before I acknowledged it, but I think back to my early days and wonder 'how on earth did I not know?'
Some things that led me to the conclusion:
Staring at the computer for hours with five words written, looking for something to do with them.
Wandering away, only to come running back a few minutes later with a sudden inspiration.
Loving the few pages I just wrote, then waking up the next morning to find the work horrible, deleting it all and writing it again.
Writing something, loving it, only to have someone come through and tell you they don't like it and that you should change it.
And, on the rare occasion for myself, having a vision of a story and actually completing it.
Just some things I think qualify me as a 'writer.'

To add onto what Manichaean said:
and old cowboy once told me 'People, dogs and horses all either have the herding instinct, or they don't. It ain't somethin' you can teach.'
Same thing goes for writing, I think. You either have it, or you don't. Not to toot my own horn here, but as far as technicality, I'm horrible. I can't tell you a single thing about sentence structure, proper usage of this or that, and I'm even having trouble coming up with examples of what I don't know. But I have been told by quite a few that I've got an easy style to understand, it flows well, I project an image rather than words.
I'll crawl back into my hole now and put my modesty back where it belongs. :D


I'm sure you've made a significant point there.

Good writers can bypass the interllect and and affect the sub-concious of the reader. It is like a sub-text of images and feelings passing from writer to reader, carried by the words - but not of them. I don't think this is an interllectual process for either the reader or the writer. It really does come from the heart.

[Jozanny]

Another aspect of writing that I think is important is to enjoy what you write. A bit like enjoying your own cooking in so far as both are creative!. You hear all the guff about writer's demon's & its most probably so true for many writers. They have to suffer mental anguish and to be forged in the furnace of affliction to produce their particular unique brand of writing.

But consider the man who thrives on writing.

George Bernard Shaw for example. He enjoyed firing off letters in French that were so "extremely Brittannic" that they must have been positively painful to any man of literary sensibility to read them. "Hard as nails" - " dure comme in clou" is an expression which ought, he judged "to enrich the French language".

Likewise he often did other naughty things - writing to the newspapers, for example, after the Queen died to denounce the rapturous lying-in-state as "insanitary" and to recommend, as socially invaluable, her quick cremation or shallow burial in a perishable coffin.

Eh. Yes and no. When writing is your job and your editor has his or her head up your tush, you do not enjoy, and sometimes, in fact, should not get too delighted with yourself, even with poetry, which earns comparatively less when it earns anything at all.

I do not write for myself. I write for an audience, and that audience changes depending on who and what that audience is--although god knows I will never go near theater--my first health article was about incontinence, and I could not enjoy writing it as opposed to handling it professionally and with sensitivity, given the nature of the subject--what I *enjoyed* was helping my audience realize they were not alone and that the problem could be discussed and had solutions--and this was before all these brand drug name commercials on television.

I am not trying to be a party pooper, but I know now that I should have really taken in what my instructors tried to tell me in my obstinate youth. Publishing is a business--soulful creativeness can get lucky and catch a break out of nowhere but that is rare, very. Most of you probably have not been rejected, repeatedly, and told very nicely that your characters or story or poem sucks and you don't know what you're doing. That has to happen. You have to pay a price to really become an author--not my price--because I have issues beyond the treadmill--but still, there is cost involved and this isn't magic.

Talent matters, but not by much, really. Practice, submit, get ignored, submit.
Stephen Dixon, an uber-realist whose fiction I like a great deal, got rejected in spades before he became the latest MFA darling of the 90's, and I doubt many of you even know his name. There is a lesson in that. He may enjoy his ultra realism, but he pays more than he enjoys for the distinction he has, in that anyone in the biz can recognize a Dixon story.

Stop posting here, work on your work, and learn how to get rejected and get better at what you want to do. Take classes, and when you get a byline, move on to the next goal. It is neither as hard nor as easy as many of you seem to think.

[Apathy]

I considermyself a writer though I have never published or finished a story completely. It is the passion to write that makes a writer in quite the same way it is the passion for dance that makes one a dancer and for art an artist.
One knows what they are, they can not deny it; it is not a job but a species. Until they realize what they are they are nothing, lost in purgatory. This is not to say that anyone can be summed up by only one of these vocations but one is a writer when they have the soul of a writer.

[MANICHAEAN]

It is the essence of the system that it seeks to exploit a talent without permitting it the right to be a talent.It cannot be done; you can only destroy the talent.

There are writers of authentic ability but the creative gift is a scarce commodity.There is no reason to expect from the front line toilers a quality which we are not getting from the compilers of fourth-rate historical novels which sell half a million copies. Not that all editors are bad. Some are able and humane men and yet others have the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.

The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgement of a committee. The money men will invaribly win, but what in the long run - the very long run - they can never defeat is talent.

[xtianfriborg13]

I think we should all consider ourselves a writer, especially when writing is one thing we're very fond of doing. However, let's also reckon the fact that we are "Amateur" writers and not push us being "Professionals" when we haven't even published a single thing we wrote.

[manuscript]

being a writer is when you consider writing to be your vocation, the work of your life, in the way that medicine is the life work of a doctor, or nursing is the life work of a nurse, or sales is the life work of a shopkeeper, or playing music is the work of the musician. these things are not defined by how much money the person makes, or how much recognition they get for what they do, they are defined by what the person does with their life. it is a matter of identity and dedication. it doesnt matter whether you are published or commercially successful to be a writer, and its not enough to enjoy writing as a hobby. the defining thing is that it is your career, the work of your life.

[miyako73]

I consider myself as a person who loves to write not a writer. A writer to me is the one who makes a career out of writing. My mother loves to nurse a sick family member. Is she a nurse? I don't think so.

[cacian]

A writer is one when a writer wants to write more.

[Delta40]

Define career. Not everyone is writing for a living for example yet they are driven to write anyway. To define a writer in such narrow terms is unfair in my opinion and suggests that anyone else who writes is a mere hobbyist whose work cannot be taken seriously. Perhaps they are realists living in a practical way because they have other responsibilities which supersede their passion. Their time is yet to come perhaps. I don't have the black and white answers and I'm loathe to offer one here but it certainly isn't 'a writer is somebody who makes a career out of writing' especially given the diverse circumstance which people find themselves in, such an opportunity doesn't always present itself to everyone who loves to write. Who am I to rule one person is a writer while another person isn't?

[manuscript]

yes. we all have to put food in our mouths. i meant career in terms not of income but of identity. i think there is a meaningful difference between a person whose meaningful life work is to write, how they define themselves as having a purpose through work, from a person whose meaningful career purposes, (say in contributing to society or human culture or whatever), are elsewhere and writes for enjoyment and self expression. this career writing person, who derives defining aspects of identity from writing, is likely to have cared much more about reading and writing, and given up more to it than a person who does it for fun, regardless of whether they work at night while putting items through a supermarket checkout to pay their way out of the rain. of course that is just my opinion. if a person who does not really give a **** wishes to define themselves as a writer, far be it from me to dash their fun. it is just an interesting matter to discuss.

[Delta40]

I think that is a better description manuscript. Alot of people are excellent writers but don't perceive themselves as such purely based on confidence issues and I suppose until they come to terms with their own conflicts, perhaps they cannot be considered writers - no matter how many people tell them they are.