What Does it Mean to be a Writer?
Photo credit: Nate Smith "I want to be a writer." That's what I would always tell people. That's what I always wanted to be when I "grew up." Being a writer has always been my dream. Something about it just thrilled me to my core. A writer. That's what I wanted to be. And yet it was always out of reach. I entered small contests and won a couple, but I wanted a novel that I could hold in my hands and that people wanted to buy. It was not that I sought fame, but I did wish for something physical, proof that I had written something worth reading. I wanted proof so that I could tell people "I'm a writer" instead of "I want to be a writer." I defined "being a writer" as being officially published, having a book on my shelf to look at and flip through that I made. But this is not what it means to be a writer. This is, in fact, the definition of the word author . Being a writer and being an author are two very different things...