I write stories. Everyone who knows me well enough knows this about me. I spend my time writing stories, I like to receive notebooks and planners as Christmas or birthday gifts, I have several folders on my computer with either novels or short stories, all of them neatly organized. I even have a book published. You could say I am a writer. Only, for a very long time, I was hesitant to call myself that.
It’s strange, really. If someone is a teacher, for example, they’re going to call themselves that, whether they’re working in a high school or with primary school kids or with adults (I used to teach English to adults. I had no trouble calling myself an English teacher because, really, that was my job). It feels more difficult to call myself a writer, though.
For a long time, I wondered how to define myself in relation to the stories I write. I usually said I like to write and left it at that. Only, as time passed, this felt less and less satisfying. Writing stopped feeling like a simple hobby. I’ve been writing more or less every day since I was about seventeen. I’ve been doing it even on evenings when I was tired after school or work, yet I did not want to end the day without at least one page written. I still do this. I have all sorts of tips and tricks to motivate myself to keep writing, to get over loss of inspiration, to push myself forward if I am ever stuck. I’ve got short stories published in several online magazines and one novel that’s still in circulation. I even held a book launch in 2018. I am currently looking at a 2024 filled with literary projects. I like to write seems like an understatement for what I’m doing. So, why not say: I am a writer?
In all honesty, it’s mostly out of fear. What are people going to say if I call myself a writer? I’m not famous. I don’t really earn a living from what I write (but, then again, not many people do). And I’m…well, me. I’ve got a fairly uneventful life. I wake up early to go to work, I like to play with my dog, I drink hot chocolate in the evening, and like to read science fiction books. Or mysteries. Or, any kind of books, really. I like to carry out long discussions about The Lord of the Rings (until people tell me to stop :P), and have a soft spot for Lloyd Owen's portrayal of Elendil in Rings of Power. All this seems fairly normal, boring even, right? It’s hard to reconcile a normal, uneventful life with the word writer. And, maybe, it shouldn’t.
A lot of people have this romanticized vision of what a writer should be. Lonely and eccentric and tormented. Removed from everyone else. Locked up in their own world, seeing things in the light of some arcane wisdom. With some painful experiences behind them. Like a god, untouchable, with unattainable knowledge in their minds. And I have no doubt there were a lot of writers like this. But, maybe, we should update our definition of the word.
I don’t see myself as a tortured genius no one understands (I might have, when I was fifteen, but, really, who didn’t at that age?). Being a writer is not and should not be something reserved to a group of select few who communicate with muses and have somehow discovered the meaning of life. A writer is not an unattainable being that exists on some magical plane and only deigns to show themselves to this world through their work. A writer is very much a person like anyone else. And, if you spend a significant amount of time putting stories together and trying to make everything work so that your next piece will get published somewhere – then, yes, you have every right to call yourself a writer.
I’ve got a “day job”. I’ve got ways of spending my free time that don’t involve making up stories (not many, but I really do). I don’t communicate with mystic beings that tell me the secrets of the universe. But I do spend a significant amount of my time writing. And it’s a big part of me. So, yes, I might look nothing like how a lot of people imagine a writer. But I am a writer. I’ve earned the right to call myself that.
So, if you’re like me, if you think telling people I like to write or My passion is writing would be a vast understatement, then take a deep breath and tell them the truth. Tell them what you really feel. Keep your head high and say: I am a writer. Because it doesn’t matter what else you might be – if you’re sure you’ve earned the right to call yourself that – then it would be unfair for you to define yourself as less.