When Can I Call Myself a Writer?

Tippity tap tap, the soft patter of fingers over keyboards in the writing room.

At least, that’s what this room I booked at the local library is for over the next hour, as we sit around the table trying to find a way to take our experiences and lay them out on paper, for the enrichment of others, and perhaps also for our own self-reflection.

We’re all trying to earn the title “author” while doing what authors do. I can’t speak for every profession, but I’ve had quite a few in my brief but potent 37 years on this planet, and writing is one of the only ones where you don’t quite feel like one until you’ve been one for a while.

Perhaps it takes someone stopping you on the street to comment on a recent book, or maybe it’s speaking at your first sold-out conference. I’m not sure when it shifts from “I think I’m a writer” to “I’m a writer.”

In the meantime, we write.

Does ownership of the title of author work in the same way as say, the title of photographer? I felt I could claim the title of photographer pretty much straight away, perhaps because people paid me immediately for my photo work, which has yet to happen in my writing work!

Writing comes differently, and it carries a deep heritage that stretches back thousands of years. We sit beneath the legacy of countless writers, some of them insanely talented.

But none of them has been me, and that’s why I tend to write reflection.

Aristotle was not Naomi. He couldn’t explain what blue light does to a brain at 7am, when the first thing I do is reach for my phone. He probably wouldn’t care to. I imagine him tossing the phone at my head and telling me to go do something with my life.

Moses couldn’t possibly understand the anxiety of sitting in rush-hour traffic, just trying to make it to a colonoscopy appointment on time. But alternatively, it’s highly likely that no one is going to be reading about my colonoscopy woes 4000 years from now. So that’s probably a trade off of some sort. Moses wins on all accounts there.

In the meantime, I write. Probably not about colonoscopies though.