Poll: Are you a writer or a novelist?

Writer. No question about it.

A novelist is a writer...so both.

Yeah that's true but a writer doesn't necessarily have to be a novelist. I like to write novels but don't have a clue about writing fillers or articles

Novelist and author both sound like slightly different things to me - a novelist is a swanky person who gets short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and an author is a guy who goes on talk shows and sells How To manuals (probably about how to get rich and famous in ten days). Personally, I like the term 'scribbler' - but some people think that's derogatory. So I'll just stick with writer.

I'm a writer. Everything else sounds pretentious

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I write.
(I'm not a writer.)

A wannabe writer.

Writer. Although "columnist" and "novelist" work, too. Writer is all-encompassing.

Is there a third choice?

Honestly? I say, "I write." subject, verb.

It's something I do. Labels make me itch, never felt comfortable in one. Writer sounds nice though. Maybe one day I can wear it proudly.
xxxrae

I don't know. I just write.

Writer. I do short stories and essays, too.

writer

Writer. Novels are only a small part of what I write. If it can be done with words, I've probably tried it.

Funny how life works. I was driving into work and I was going to post this exact same question (actually I was goign to do writer/novelist/author) but still how funny.

I think I am leaning on novelist.

When I introduce myself, I say, "I'm a writer. And I write novels."

However, in my bio (which is sales tool), I write: "Award-winning novelist..." or author -- "Writer" just doesn't sound right.

I rarely have any reason to describe myself in either way eveb except in short bio material where I sometimes use writer and sometimes author.

I'm a writer. I write a lot of things, so writer pretty much covers it.

Word pimp.

I say writer. When I think of "Novelists," I think of a particular author's 'how dare you call my book about wizards a fantasy novel; fantasy novels are all garbage and my book is deep social commentary that transcends genre boundaries' diatribes.

Going by the above description, I'd have to say I'm an aspiring novelist snob.

But really, I don't like saying "I am a ___", because I don't like defining people based on tasks they perform.

I made peace with the fact that I'm a novelist long ago. Everything I write turns into a novel, whether I intend it to or not. I am notoriously unable to write a succesful short story. I've tried--oh how I've tried! I still struggle with it because I would love to have more publishing credentials in the big-name literary magazines. It's very hard to just put a new novel "out there" with no name that is recognizable, and most writers build their credentials with journal publications. I've tried sending self-contained excerpts of my novels to the journals that accept them, but evidently the excerpts are never quite "self-contained" enough, as one editor recently wrote me back and said "This story feels too much like a novel; there's just too much going on."

I know that a lot of novelists have taken this route. You'll often see something in the acknowledgements like, "Chapter so-and-so first appeared, in slightly altered form, in The Atlantic Monthly as (insert title)." I guess the real question to ask is, just how "altered" is slightly altered?
I guess it might behoove me to do some research in comparison and contrast.

Sorry for getting off-topic, but anyway, I was pretty much branded a novelist in my MFA program when even the shortest works I turned in tended to be over 30 pages in length. My instructor said it's nothing to be ashamed of. She said some of us are simply born to be story writers, and some of us are born to be novelists. I felt a lot better after that conversation. I think a lot of it has to do with how a writer looks at a story. Short story writers have the ability to hone in on the single moment, the single piece that is an intricate part of the whole. Novelists, on the other hand, want to stand back and look at the whole, bigger picture. Or in other words, short story writers (and poets) are more concerned with the parts, and the novelist with the whole, if that makes sense. But good writing, of course, is really all about both--it's simply a matter of what we choose to leave in, and to leave out.

Definitely a writer- always been.

Both, with the word 'Aspiring' added beforehand for authenticity.

Writer. Or journalist. Depends who I'm talking to.