#2 - On Defining Yourself as a "Writer"
In the preface of this of this book, I specified that my assumed audience consists of young writers who haven't read or written much. I didn't narrow down further and define their goals, however. Do they want to learn how to write because they enjoy it? Do they want to become novelists or poets? Do they want to become journalists, bloggers, newsletter-ers?
I could have specified, but that would have been unhelpful because over the 12 years since I first decided--in Class 7--that I would be a writer, my own goals have changed several times.
My first was to publish a book of poems, as I wrote previously. Then I hoped to write horror books like R. L. Stine does. Later, I wanted to become a writer of sad short stories. During my gap year between school and college, when I realized that it won't be possible to support my family by becoming a writer and I decided to become a therapist, I wrote mainly for my blog. Sometimes I submitted a story to a magazine if I thought it was really good. When I started freelancing last year, I thought I'd become a culture writer, writing magazine articles about food, books, and, well, culture. My attempts in that area failed, so I turned to writing about science fiction and fantasy, as well as articles on the craft of writing. And now here I am, writing a book on writing. What will I do once this book is done? I don't know; I'll find out when I get there.
I don't worry now about defining myself as a certain kind of writer. I realised only a few months ago that what I'd always actually wanted was to write whatever I liked and get paid for it. Those things don't always align with what magazines are willing to pay for, yet often I've written them anyway and published them on my blog because I love writing.
In fact, of all the thousands of pieces I've written over the years, the writing I've done on my blog is some of my best. I doubt any of it would find a home in literary magazines, but I do not really care. I enjoy those pieces every time I go back to read them, and sometimes people have commented to let me know they liked it too, and that has been enough for me.
Perhaps you must have a goal in mind when you sign up for cricket coaching or join a painting class or learn classical music. But you don't need to decide right now, when you're only beginning to write, what kind of a writer you are. You don't need to ever make that decision; you can simply write whatever you like, and if writing brings you joy--or at the very least--relief at having put down your thoughts somewhere, then it doesn't matter what kind of a writer you are.
And if you do decide, for example, that you want to be a children's author or a newspaper journalist, you are still free to do other kinds of writing.
And you're a writer even if you don't intend to make writing a career. You're a writer even if you only write for money, or if you never write for money, or if if you decide never to write books, or if you only write short stories or essays, or if you only write a newsletter or a personal blog. You're a writer if you write all of the above, or cannot fit what you write into any of these categories.
You may love writing so much that it becomes as fundamental a part of your identity as your name or your sex or your gender. Or it might just be a word for something you do at work or after it. It matters only if you want it to, and only to you.
The only definition of writer that matters is "a person who writes." Any additions, such as "for a living/fun/catharsis" is your definition. And it's valid.