Creative professions are hard to claim. What makes someone a writer? (Writing is my thing, so that’s the example I’m going to run with here, but feel free to sub in whatever creative pursuit speaks to you.) At what point does one go from being someone who writes or someone who’s written a piece or two to an actual writer?

At a meeting for a creative writing group I’m a part of, we discussed this question, turning over the possible answers and debating our ideas at length. It turns out that most of us previously or still do struggle with owning the title, Writer.

If you asked me a year ago when the transition from One Who Writes to Writer takes place, I might have said when someone was doing it full time. There are two problems with that though. One, I quit my pretty job in business to be a writer and I still don’t feel like I can call myself one. Two, what is full time writing anyway? I’m not sure if full time writing exists, not in the most literal sense of the idea, but that’s another topic entirely.

One of the women in the creative writers group brought the debate full circle with a very succinct question. She asked, “Is it what I hand into a publisher that makes me a writer, or is it carving out time every day to sit at my desk and write?” Basically it was just a more beautiful way of saying it’s about the journey not the destination but the question is still rattling around in my head waiting for me to dredge up an answer.

At a certain point, it gets down the fight between confidence and validation. Are you going to define who you are or wait for others to give their stamp of approval before you make your claim? Normally I take up residence in the latter camp, feeling as strong and confident as anyone else until you ask me to be vocal about it, and then I cower down and wait submissively for my stamp. I’m working on it.

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