Don’t say you’re trying to be a writer. If you’re writing then you are a writer. Publication is nice, but has nothing to do with the definition

I have a lot of trouble living up to this statement. Even when I was the editor of a magazine and writing for it as well, I was too ashamed to call myself a writer, mainly because I didn’t have a degree that said I could write.

It can be difficult to consider yourself a writer if you haven’t been published, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t. Earning a degree in writing doesn’t mean you are, either. After all, writers write, they don’t just have bits of paper saying they can do it. If you want to be a writer put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Let the words flow. Then and only then will you be a writer. Once you are doing that, you are one of us.