It is only when you are lost that you have the chance to accidentally stumble across the virgin territory of undiscovered ideas. Writing is a soltary activity for lost souls, but it feels great when you are lost. In order to be a writer, you have to sail away from the safe harbour and catch the trade winds, to paraphrase my hero, Mark Twain. You may have to risk social ostracism: people may not understand what you are about. The inner voice whipers to the writer to march to the beat of his own drummer, but this is frought with risk. You really have be be able to buck the trend and follow your intuition. Thus, writing is not for the faint of heart. So, there are a lot of stereotypes about writers and the writing life. Instead, they end up freelancing–another way of saying that writers are jobless or unemployed. Writers don’t graduate from Harvard with a medical/law/business degree. Writers do not follow the conventional path. Until then, they are content to play the waiting game. Writers wait for the eureka moment to strike like a bolt from the blue. Writers are considered “creative.” They are social misfits, introverted and can’t hold a job. In our society, writing has been equated with the creative arts. There is much to gain through self-knowledge and you can even make a career out of it. Writing is a journey of self-discovery, so plumb your depths. Through writing we exorcise our demons and restore our angelic selves. Writing is a creative enterprise, after all, it brings out the best and worst in human nature. If writing is your forte, do not hesitate to call yourself a writer and see yourself as a writer. However, writing demands discipline, so you just should go out and do it, like the Nike ad says. A chill ran up my spine every time I read my name in print. In my case, however, there were no delusions, for I always wanted to be a writer: it was my childhood dream to be a writer. That is why so many of them are afraid to speak their minds. They do not want to be labelled as crazy or worse. They fear what the public will say about them. That is why they are reluctant to call themselves writers. That is why I always enjoy what you write: I look forward to your work, always. Over time, however, that has been a feature of your writing. It cuts to the chase and gets straight to the point. It is one of those articles that add value to our work-lives. Time to call yourself a writer - and actually believe it.
Calling yourself a writer is an invitation to the world to take you seriously. When you tell people, “Writing is just something I do on the side…” you sabotage yourself before you get a chance to prove yourself. Unfortunately, we live in a world enamored of titles. It makes other people believe it, too.When you start calling yourself something, you raise the stakes. Not just for your self-esteem, but for the quality of work you do. Calling yourself a writer helps you do just that. No one wants to hire someone who doesn’t believe in himself. Nobody wants to read work that an amateur writes. When you call yourself a writer (or an entrepreneur, an innovator, or whatever), you unlock something inside yourself that wasn’t there before. Guest posts, book deals, invitations to write for magazines, even cold, hard cash in my pocket - all because I called myself a writer. And all kinds of amazing things happened as a result. I began affirming something in me that I had always doubted. So I gave it a whirl: I started calling myself a writer. I thought that sounded ridiculous, but I wondered if it was crazy enough to be true. Is it when you get book deal? When you sell your first thousand copies? When you hit the best sellers list? When do you get to call yourself a writer? I once asked author Steven Pressfield when a writer becomes a writer. You’re going to have to call yourself a writer. They write confidently and courageously, without making excuses or apologies.Īnd if you’re going to do work that’s worth anything, you’re going to have to do the same. Take two minutes, read on, and make the shift yourself … What do real writers do that the rest of us don’t? It was a simple shift of mind that changed everything, and it’s what you need to do - if people are going to take your work seriously. I used words like “wannabe” and “aspiring.” I told myself I’d write a book and be a real writer … some day. Still, I never considered myself a writer. For years, I penned stories in notebooks, even wrote and published articles in magazines.