Does calling yourself a writer make you a writer?

“How do you become a writer?” people ask me. While many of my memoir-writing clients are one-time authors, not everyone is in that category. There are a whole lot of people who join The Memoir Network who secretly want to become “a writer” and are hoping that memoir writing will be their ticket into the writer’s life.

I might, in all seriousness, respond, “Start calling yourself a writer and see what happens.”

“Does saying you are a writer make you a writer?” might be their comeback and lik...