When Can You Call Yourself a Writer?

Whenever I tell someone I’m a writer, they ask me about books. And when I say, well, I haven’t published any books yet, they look at me like I’m delusional.

I suppose with every profession, there has to be a tangible manifestation of your work. The more useful your labor is to capitalism, the more legible your work is. Your value is connected to the marketplace.

Published writers, those cultural demigods who have actually released books, will say that a book doesn’t make you a writer. It’s something you determine for yourself. But that’s easy to say when the lady at CVS isn’t staring at you pitifully because you haven’t published a bestseller.

Of course there are those who will say that being a writer isn’t the same thing as being an author. That’s a debate better left to the parking lot of Waffle House.

For a long time I believed that being a writer was a title you earned. I’m not sure exactly when you’ve earned it, I just feel like it’s an achievement. Something that ends with a ceremony, a sash, and a crown. Or maybe you’re knighted. Like Joyce Carol Oates will jump out of a chariot, pull out a sword, and issue a proclamation that from henceforth I am to be known as Sir Charles, first of his name, writer of the realm, House of the Baldwinian Bennett Morrisons.

Admittedly, I have a complicated relationship with the word “writer.” Of all of the professional identities I’ve held over the years: student, activist, advocate, cultural worker, community organizer, nonprofit leader, those labels didn’t seem as questioned, as interrogated, as being a writer. There wasn’t the need for proof. If I called myself an organizer, no one was like, “what campaigns have you won.” If I called myself an advocate, no one would say to me “tell me about legislation you’ve championed.”

What I’ve learned about myself this year is that being a writer is less about what I acquire, and more about what I’m willing to reject. I’ve felt the most like a writer, not from the rooms I’ve been invited into, but the rooms I’ve walk away from.

And in a space where rejection, no matter how beautifully framed, is still rejection, and more common than not. I’ve felt the most like a writer, when I’ve said no to something, especially when it didn’t feel right, or if it took away from my writing life.