When did you (or will you) start calling yourself a WRITER?

Already started. At this point, aside from college kid, it's the only thing I've really got to identify myself with.

I still haven't and probably won't for a long time. I have my reasons.

When I started writing stories. So, about third grade.

To me a writer is one who makes a living writing while an author is one who has penned / typed or otherwise set down a written work.
All writers are authors but not all authors are writers.

I'm an author. My goal is not to be a writer as defined above, although I do like royalty checks. So does my IRS agent!
C

I still consider myself an aspiring writer. I'll call myself a writer when I get a book deal.

I don't know what my agent considers me, aside from a client.

I picked "when I started making a living..." - though I haven't yet, so it's wishful thinking. For now, I call myself a "hobby writer", mainly for semantic reasons. When people ask "So, what do you do?" they're asking what I do for a living, not what I do in my spare time, or on the side. My answer to that in the literal sense has to be "I'm a webmistress", because that's what pays the bills. My answer to "what do you like to do/what are your hobbies" includes writing.

Once I have published a few things (published by a recognizable company that people who aren't writers might recognize), I'll feel justified to say that I'm a webmistress and part-time writer. If someday, by some miraculous feat I actually get to quit my "day job" to write, then I will unequivocally call myself a Writer to anyone who asks. Ironically, they will probably follow up with the same question I get now about being a webmistress: "You make money doing that?"

My reasons are really just for clarity - and not wanting to misrepresent myself to others who may not really understand the distinctions that writers themselves make within the community.

Just my personal reasons - I have no problem with anyone who writes calling themselves a writer...but I have no problem calling myself a hobby writer either (I don't feel that it diminishes me in any way), since it's what I do in my spare time, and I don't make any money from it (yet). I'm quite literal in that way.

As soon as I'd sold enough short stories to know the first few sales weren't flukes. So I'd say I'm a writer now. Though I'd like to be a professional writer, which I would consider making a substatial portion of my income from writing.

Nicole

When I made the vow to myself to write every day, because it was my vocation. Why wait for the world to say you're a writer? You are what you do. If you get paid for it, that's gravy.

If you write, you're a writer.

Author? Different story.

I like the phrase, 'hobby writer', mostly because if you call yourself a writer in public, people are going to ask what you've had published, and for me, right now, that is a big ole goose egg. I secretly THINK of myself as a writer, tho. My mother is waiting for me to get published before she calls me that to her friends.

She has been waiting for twenty years, poor woman.

Painters don't wait until they make money before they say they paint, do they?

I use published author to distinguish if I feel the need to.

Something else: When I started writing regularly.

I call my self a writer because thats what I do. I wont call myself in Author until I'm picked up for publication.

I iz a riter cuz I jus rote this. I rite in first persin cuz I iz a riter.

No, this is not LOLKatz

Clair Dickson said:

Painters don't wait until they make money before they say they paint, do they?

I use published author to distinguish if I feel the need to.

Click to expand...

I paint, but I wouldn't call myself a painter.
I run, but I wouldn't call myself a runner.

Just because I do something and enjoy doing it, even if I'm good at it, doesn't mean I'd necessarily consider it part of my identity. I think that's a decision each of us gets to make on our own.

Nicole

This question has been everywhere this week. Once I publish something I'll consider myself a writer. Author, for me, comes with publishing an actual book.

Finish a major project and I'll call you a writer. Of course, that plus $5 will only get you a Starbuck's coffee. But finish something and post it here

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118356

and you'll get one of my "I am a butthead" reps.

When I received a check and comp copy of the first magazine my first article was published in. Then I told myself - and others - I was a writer.

Because now I had a response other than "Uh, not yet" to the inevitable question "Are you/Where have you been published?"

Here's my grand theory. Feel free to poke holes in it.
(Slashes are and/or)



(This is what I do when I should be writing.)

Nicole

The first payment I received for my writing made me feel like a writer. I've been writing some sort of story since I was small, but that first paycheck made me feel a bit more official.

I write so that makes me a writer and I have been a writer since I started writing, for publication or not.

I personally think putting conditions on who is and isn't a writer is quite elitist and best avoided.

I write, so I'm a writer. An author? Not until I actually publish something substantial. Now, what is the definition of substantial? I'm still figuring that out...

Money would make me professional, true.

But I am a writer, I've always been a writer--Didn't I tell you?