Writer or Author? When I was at school, I wanted to be a librarian. When my son, who's 11, recently asked what I wanted to be when I was young, that was the answer I gave him. His reply was "You wanted to travel the world on adventures looking for priceless, magical artefacts?" and I said "no, I wanted to work in a dusty room filled with filing systems and books that would take me all over the world looking for magical artefacts and adventure." I've always loved to read and write. I've been writing snippets of stuff since I was 15 but writing an actual book was literally, a dream. Something happened that made me want to write a short book to explain and simplify that thing for others, to make it a more approachable subject and so I sp'd a book. It was all very exciting and I was filled with happiness when the ebook was quite well received but, the story was nothing I'd actually devised or dreamed up. It was something that I had lived, something that happened to me and my family, every word in the book is true so it was more of a factual (non-dramatized) recount of events. Then I sat down to rewrite some of the snippets I'd written all those years ago. They turned into 170 thou + words of my first fiction book. I still have the emails between me and a friend of mine where I tell her that it's "just gone live on kindle" and asking "does that mean I'm a writer?" She emailed me back with the answer, "yes! you ARE a writer!" You know when people meet comedians and they ultimately launch into a speech of "Oh, you're a comedian, well I bet you haven't heard this one ..." and then proceed to tell them the absolute lamest joke ever ... Well, sometimes it's the same for writers ... "What do you do?" "I do a few different things but I'm also a writer, I write books ..." "A writer!" (looks for the tell-tale arty-farty wave of my hand as I am obviously still in dreamland) "Yes, a writer ..." "I have this great idea for a character, his name is ... ... ... ..." And that's where I zone out, unless they ask me "what do you write" and then I produce my business card and start to tell them all about my books
Ten years from now, or when I've written my millionth word, whichever comes first. It's a hobby. Most fiction writers don't earn enough money to live from (assuming you are referring to this form). Get another job that pays the bills if fiction is your addiction. The sci-fi writer, Robert F Young wrote for decades, but worked as a janitor in the public school system.
There's nothing magic about ten years or a million words. Achieving either or both of these won't make you a writer. Commitment, and courage, will.
I was joking... It's a quote from an old timer Sci-fi writer I came in contact with. He said something about writing a million words, blah, blah, blah... I think Ray Bradbury said one is a writer if you write and keep at it. That's not a quote but the general idea. It might be in this Ray Bradbury lecture:
I'm not entirely sure I think of myself as a writer as of yet. I've been published, multiple times, but not for my creative work. I was first published at the age of 16 in the local newspaper's teen section. You had to basically submit an essay of why they should pick you to write in their section, they selected I think it was like 5 of us, and I think I had about 3 opinion journalistic pieces published from that. Then I came back to the university I just graduated from, and I started out doing photography for them, had 1 or 2 pictures published, but then I started writing for them, and I had one regular piece published about the death of a well respected professor, and then I had 8 more opinion journalistic pieces published. But that seems like nothing to me, I guess some people consider it something, but it doesn't seem like remotely anything significant to me. But I have yet to have anything creative published. What's kind of crazy is that regardless of published or not I think if I just fessed up I could have considered myself a write just about my entire life. Writing for me is what clear's my mind, and passes the time for me. In high school, I'd be in class writing various fiction stories, none of which I kept or remember much about. I know I should consider myself a writer, but I'm a bit timid to go there.