When can you class yourself as a writer.

[Jason]

If you are JK Rowling or Dan Brown most people who are books addicts will automatically nod their heads and say, yep they are authors.
However, what if you are factory worker from South Wales who has penned two novels plus a short story series, can you honestly say that you are a writer. I recently read a letter in a UK writing magazine from a chap who says that he went to a career advisor and said he wanted to be a writer. The career advisor then turned around and said: Ah but writing is not a career it’s a hobby.

So my question is this: When can you class yourself as a writer? When you are earning a full time income from your writing. Or can you still be classed as a writer and still have a regular day job.

[Jan C]

I think you can be classified as a "writer" when you can afford to quit your day job.

[Rachel]

I was told the exact same thing by careers advisors - "you can't be a novelist, that's not a job: if you want to write for a living you'll have to be a journalist". I didn't become a journalist.

But as I understand it, most midlist authors (which is to say, the authors of most of the books in your local bookshop) also have some other source of income, whether that's studying literature or teaching creative writing or something completely unrelated.

I like Stephen King's definition, which if I remember correctly, basically amounts to "if someone has paid you for your work and you've used that money to pay your bills".

[David YB]

Stephen King had it right. And he's following a tradition of writers. Many great writers had day jobs, but we wouldn't say they weren't writers. Kafka was a government clerk, Melville worked at a post office, I think. Etc. But even if one hasn't made a sale yet, if one has completed a work and submitted it (ebooks, right?), why not say you're a writer? You can be more than one thing, obviously. (Another way to look at it might be if you can get tax credits or deductions for software, home office, ec.)

[D.J.]

I think if you deny that you are a writer, you are living in denial. Thus, keeping a creative side of youself weak and secret. I waited years to give myself the title, even though I had already published.

Published or not, if you were born a writer, then you are a writer. Anything else just pays the rent.

[Jason]

welL said D.J

[Sandi]

There's a fun little quote by Winston Churchill about painting. "If you put paint on a brush and transfer to canvas, you are a painter." So, if you put pen to paper to begin a story you are a writer? No, when the story, poem, haiku is finished, then you are a writer. Using words to create a tree is writing. Not as a profession, not to earn, but to pass on opinion or thought. At this moment I am a writer.

[Martyn]

I talked to someone who also considered someone an artist if they could live from their art.

Then I asked him if he had heard of the hobbyist Vincent van Gogh...

Many artists, especially those who didn't go for commercial mass appeal, are later acknowledged for their creativity and courage to fly in the face of conservative views.

Not to mention that a hack might be able to live from their products, without a sense of artistry.

I think a writer is anyone who writes something intended to be read by others (yes, I mean Anne Frank was not a writer). And an author is anyone who publishes or is published and their work are bought by strangers. It's not a measure of quality. You can be a prolific author of dinosaur sex books selling more than another author's literary fiction.

But if you write, you're writer.
And if you publish or are published, you're an author.