@metautske I don't know how to quote reblog something without including my whole extraneous ramble that came before it but you evoked in me the urge to say something. Your questions and uncertainties are familiar to me, both from my own experiences and from what other writers have confided in me. So I'll say this to all of you/us.
Are you unsure if you're a writer? Do you write stuff? Do you want to call yourself a writer? Congrats you're a writer you no longer need to debate this ever again.
There is so much self-gatekeeping in this industry for a job that is already so nebulous that people can't agree on a single definition of doing it professionally. I get the impulse to look for a certain standard and I've done that myself constantly. But asking yourself if you're a writer to begin with is a line of thought fundamentally not helpful to anyone.
Are you a concise writer? Are you collaborative? Are you coherent? Do you value the reader's experience over your own? Do you execute whatever goals you might have in your writing? Those are all questions that might do more good than whether or not you're a writer to begin with.
I don't mean to sound too harsh because I care about everyone who has ever wondered this. I've also wondered this. But I'm almost 30 and every day I stay alive I find it more and more baffling how many people wrack their brains trying to figure out if they write stuff.
You see what I mean, right? Like, how that's conceptually a wild thing not to be able to answer immediately?
"Oh but it's not real writing -" yeah man I know but you have to understand that your standards are very likely a made up thing in your head specific to you and you understanding of art.
This ultimately won't do much to ease the melodrama of being an Artist. I'm sure I'll say all this and next week decide I'm a fraud. It's whatever.
But for now I am grabbing you by the face and saying this: if you want to call yourself a writer and you like to write stuff then you're a writer. "Writer" on its own is essentially a glorified verb and there is very little bar to entry. You're probably already a bunch of way more brag-worthy labels but at the bare minimum you writing things as more than a passing happenstance makes you a writer.
If you want to argue me on this I accept your rebuttals but only in the form of non-fiction think piece, spoken word poem, or one-act play. Get inspired fool.
