On Identifying as a Writer - when does it count?

One of my friends wrote a blog entry about writing and identifying as a writer.  It got me thinking, when does a writer takes ownership of being a writer? When she finally publishes a novel? When one makes a lucrative career by writing like JK Rowling, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, or Stephanie Meyer? Or are REAL writers the literary authors like Twain, Hemingway, Lovecraft, Joyce, or Tan?

Sometimes, when I call myself a "writer," it feels a little fraudulent. I mean, am I really a writer? Do I have enough writing cred to call myself a writer, having nothing significant published under my own name?

When I was working on my creative writing chops in college, I had years of indoctrination on the idea that one was not a real writer unless one wrote literary works. Bullshit.

As for making a living writing? It's way harder, and way less money than people assume.

When I was in high school, I wrote for the school paper, got my poetry published in the school's lit mag, and wrote more short stories than I can remember. During my college years, I'd contributed as a writer for an anthology published by Harper Collins.  Since someone else, someone who didn't personally know me, liked my writing enough to publish it, it validates me as a writer, right? Does it not count because I was so young? Does it matter now, as I re-read my published work, that I think it's horribly written?

Or maybe I'm a writer because that's just what I do. At work, writing is something that is part of the development process, where I'm creating content for our e-learning platform, technical manuals, tip-sheets. Or when I'm writing up lesson plans or creating practical application exercises. "Writer" is not part of my job title, nor is it explicitly something that's written in my job description, but it's a big part of what I do. 

I do NaNoWriMo because it pushes and focuses me to not over think the process and just do it. Writing a 50k word "novel" in 30 days is daunting, but exhilarating. I did it once. Now, I just need to push myself to do it again. And to revise it to the point where I'm OK with sending it out for strangers to read. 

Some of the best advice I've heard to date - If you want to be something, then be it. If you want to be a writer, then you should be writing. Not tomorrow, today.



So... do I consider myself a writer? Only on the days I write.

Making Money with Writing.

A few years ago, I took on a freelance job writing for Demand Media Studios, a supplier of original articles for knowledge bank type websites like eHow.com and Ask.com,  (and thus contributing to the rest of the travel, etiquette and advice drivel that's on the internet.) I'm even embarrassed to say that I wrote those pieces because it's far from quality writing and haven't done a thing to share my work, but here's a picture of an article title and my by-line:

Want to know why most of these types of link-bait, how-to articles sound the same? Because all of the writers use the internet for research. And the pay kinda sucked at $7.50 - $15 per article accepted by the editors (and published). If you were really good, really fast at typing, and never had any revisions that were needed, then you may eek out $15/hr to earn $30K for the year. But a more realistic average is somewhere around $10/hr.  The 3-5 hours a day that I was spending stressing about my articles wasn't worth the check at the end of the week. Instead, I pushed for a promotion at work - and got it. Now, I make enough that it's hard to justify taking on the small writing gigs, writing stuff I just didn't enjoy writing.

And here's a big reality - sometimes, a writer will spend years writing (and revising, and re-writing) for no pay. And when one does get published and paid, it's going to be very very little at first. That's why most writers when they were starting out, had day jobs to pay the bills.