Some of the clients I work with have degrees in creative writing and journalism. They studied writing and produced great works during their school programs. They’ve had their writing critiqued, workshopped and revised. They’ve edited and edited and edited some more. But even with all that formal training, they still don’t consider themselves writers and they don’t submit their work for publication. They have the most likely background for becoming published and yet, they are afraid to try. They’ve been taught and trained that their work isn’t good enough to be published and until it is, they aren’t “real writers.” They come to me because they can’t bust the cycle of endless editing that blocks them from sending their work to a publisher.
Many of my clients have very unlikely backgrounds for becoming published writers. Like me, they don’t have master’s degrees. They didn’t study journalism. They weren’t formally educated in how to craft a perfect sentence. They simply had an idea and decided to write it down. Some, decide they want to try for a book deal, or a magazine byline and they come to me for help figuring that out.
I was a nurse before I was a writer. Beyond high school, and a basic requirement class in college, I took zero classes to learn how to write. I studied science, art, sociology, and nursing! I didn’t keep a journal or diary. I didn’t write poetry. I taught sex-ed, worked in hospitals and clinics, raised kids, and kept ridiculous hours as a nurse that left no time for creative pursuits. When I eventually got burned out on my nursing career and was going through a big ass health crisis, I finally started writing and my education began. Not through formal classes, but through trial and error. That’s how it is for a lot of writers. There we are, doing our usual things, going about our lives and then, we get an idea and start writing.
At what point can we call ourselves writers? Are you a writer when you write your first story? Do you have to have something published first? Do you have to get paid for something you wrote? Everyone has the same question: When can I claim the title and say, “I am a writer?”
Here’s the answer: If you write your thoughts, ideas, and stories down in any format, for any length of time, you are a writer. It doesn’t matter if you have the correct education. It doesn’t matter if you write on a napkin, a journal, or your computer. It doesn’t matter if you wrote short pieces or long ones, poems or books, fiction or non-fiction. It doesn’t matter if someone else reads or likes your work. It doesn’t matter if you’re paid or published. All that matters for you to call yourself a writer is that you write. That’s it! It helps if you write regularly and a lot, but even that’s not mandatory.
My wish for all the writers I work with is that they explore the craft, challenge themselves to meet their own goals (even if that goal is not oriented towards productivity and publishing) and develop the confidence to claim the title. You are a writer when you say you are.
