I've spoken to people where the conversation went on for a while, the other thinking I was doing copyright law and me thinking they knew I was doing copywriting. The people either had the awareness to clarify, or have probably gone on to thinking copyright is a very different thing than they always thought.
I also think we might have a different understanding of what a beatnik is, based on the vernacular you just used.
Ultimately the issue with calling one's self a writer is the same as being a photographer. I am apprehensive to call myself a writer because there are innumerable amounts of people who write, and even call themselves writers. I don't want to call myself a writer until I stand out above the droves. There are no entries to barrier to being a writer, but there are many significant elements to being a good, great, and/or amazing writer.
Don't worry about it. I was being facetious in reference to a thread from a few days ago, where we were all joking around as friends. I wasn't talking about you.
I didn't think it was about me. I didn't post in your non-fiction thread. I wondered if you were calling other people on the forum assholes.
Of course not. I don't take anything on this forum personally enough to hold a genuine disdain for anyone here. Occasionally I'll be sarcastic with people who know me well enough to know when I'm joking, like when directly replying to a specific member, but I would never genuinely call anyone an asshole. I appreciate the concern, nonetheless.
She was calling me names! All i did was say she wasn't a writer, non-fiction writing belongs on medicine bottles, not this forum, and like 4 other mean things i'm not creative enough to make up right now. So how does this work, is she in time out now? Also i don't want her to know that i ratted her out... she keeps messaging me pictures of knives with what i can only hope is ketchup on them.
Someone once called me a writer. "No, I am not," I said. "But you write!" they said. "And sometimes I paddle my feet in the lake," I replied. "But that don't make me a duck."
So then you can use qualifiers. What people who don't think others should use the word writer are doing is quite arbitrary, so one has to wonder at the motivation behind it. When do you feel it is OK for someone to be a writer? When they've sold one short story? Ten? How about one at a pro-rate versus ten at a semi-pro rate? How about one self-published novel? How about ten of them? How about a decade spent working on what, after release, becomes a critical success? Are they not a writer during those ten years they spent all their free time pounding out the novel, revising, rewriting, etc.? They're only a writer once the New Yorker calls it a modern classic? As @mrieder79 noted, above, if you're putting the time in to pursue the craft in a serious way, then you're a writer. I know a guy here locally who just sold a number of paintings in the last year. But in the years before that, he spent almost all of his free time painting. A long time developing his style, form, etc., before he saw any commercial success at all. So...he wasn't a painter all those years? He suddenly became one last December? It's a poor distinction. Under this scenario, John Kennedy Toole was never a "writer," though his book, published after his death, won the Pulitzer Prize. That's an absurd outcome. This is really just a way to elevate oneself. I'm a writer, but that person certainly isn't. Or, I'm going to be a writer and therefore elevated over these other poor saps, etc.
Yep. And that's also why we have qualifiers and other words. An amateur writer is still a writer. A professional writer is also, of course, a writer. That seems self-evident, just like my friend was a painter for many years (amateur status) and remained a painter, though a professional one, when he started selling his artwork.
I do like the idea that if you spend a portion of your free time doing something you otherwise wouldn't have to, it makes you that thing. Also, qualifiers work perfectly because they will define how your time has paid off: [good, bad, decent, budding, up and coming, diamond in the rough,] writer.
I think the trouble is we're tying in occupation with who we are, when who we are is not always how we earn are money. What we're passionate about is who we are. If a person earns a living by being a cashier, is that all this person can ever tell people she 'is'? But if this person spend 4 hours a night making jewelry and selling it here and there can't she call herself a jewelry maker who earns her living at Walmart? Why does success have to define us? Was J.K. Rowling a writer prior to getting published, was she a good writer? Didn't she just step from being a writer to becoming a successful published writer? And if publication validates everyone to this title there's thousands of people who have published one short and then moved on to something else. I think a person knows whether they're a writer or not and other ones who throw the term around and aren't well who cares about them.
I started calling myself a writer when I took writing seriously and actually started to edit and care about the quality of my writing, when I wrote with the intention to publish the very piece I'm writing. I'm a writer because it's what I know - I feel pretty knowledgeable about it (at least the doing part. Don't quiz me on literature or writing models and dialogue types and such!) I'm a writer because it's become a part of me, something that I do that I deeply care about. I think I associate the title with actually being good at it, and I think I'm good I haven't been traditionally published, but my beta readers enjoyed my work and their own writing is pretty damn good, so I trust my own is at least tolerable if they enjoyed it. That's good enough for me, for now. But reach for the stars and all, one day I'm gonna snag a publisher, you just wait
I wouldn't be comfortable calling myself a writer. Not sure why - I guess because it's mostly just a hobby? If I retired from my day job and wrote full time, I think I'd be a writer. But as it is now, even though I have stuff published and make okay money, I'd just say I write. No judgement on what other people call themselves, though.
Okay, i think i finally figured it out guys. How to tell you're officially a writer; whenever you utter the phrase, "I'm a writer" the little voice in the back of your head doesn't start laughing. Just to be clear- Crying doesn't count as 'not laughing'
Like I said, I can't speak for anyone else's self-definition, but, for me? "Writer" is a profession. But I have another profession, one that pays me way more than writing does and where I spend way more time. If I wrote the same way I do now but my other job was as a part-time clerk in a convenience store, I might call myself a writer because it would be my main thing, my main challenge. As it is, though? I guess for me, I need to be one main thing. And writer ain't it.
