When did you see yourself as an Author?

designatedvictim

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I signed in earlier today and when selecting the AH forum, a thought finally struck me: "Since when am I an author?"

I'm a complete beginner, here. I don't consider myself an author.

Many of the regulars who post here have four- and five-digit post counts. (Whoo-hoo! I just broke into two digits! This will be Lucky Post #13!)

Many of those same regulars have high-two-digit or three-digit story counts.

How long did you experienced writers spend writing, posting, and publishing before you really thought of yourself as an 'author'?

I'm curious.
 
I guess we need to define author? By that I mean what each person feels on the matter. Many will say by publishing something-even on a free site like tbis-that other people read makes you an author. I imagine that's true, but I didn't see it that way until I tried out the market and began getting money for my stories, but even then it was online.

I think the moment where I really felt like an author was after getting some works in print, I set up at local events to sell the books. Having someone hand me money for something I wrote, and signing for them gave me that "Wow, I'm kind of legit!" feeling.
 
There's all sorts of ways identity plays into one's life. One moment I'm a father. Another a friend. A helper, a caregiver. An editor, a reviewer. My profession. It is fascinating, actually. One consciousness, multiple lenses.

Even when not writing, I feel like an author. What writers do, what they think, what they observe, what they craft - all is enchanting territory to me.

I have to say however, that the first royalty check felt like stepping off the plank of the Queen Mary into a New Land.

One of the appealing aspects of Lit is that the doors are wide open to authors of every variety and capacity.
 
Once you've put your writing out into the world you're an author.
I liken it to running. Everyone can run, when you start to run for the sake of running, you start setting goals, you become a runner.
Everyone can write, but when you start to write for the sake of writing, and you make it public, share it with the world you are a writer.

Getting published, getting paid, those are all great milestones, and things to take pride in but they don't make you more of a writer.
I've run marathons, and I have a dear friend who struggles to finish a 5k. I'm not more of a runner than she is, we're just at different places.
 
I considered myself a story teller when men on a prison range cried after reading my story which was the exact response I was hoping for. So I suppose when my writing elicited an emotion from the reader.
 
I associate "author" with the idea of a professional who earns significant money from their published works. Along with that, in my mind, goes an idea that they engage in writing more or less full-time.

I don't think I'm an author at all. I've made money from my stories, but nothing all that significant, and I am FAR FROM a full-timer.

I do this as a hobby. To me, "Writing" is the name of that hobby. "Authoring" is not. I'll always refer to myself as a writer.
 
I've been writing as a hobby since 1973, some of which made it into print as magazine articles. Originally technical topics, and there have been vast dry spells, but, yeah, I've been doing it a while.
 
I think if you write, you're a writer. It's the doing that matters. I've never made a dime from my writing but I thought of myself as an author the moment I published something at this site (my first publicly published creative fiction ever, if one doesn't count stuff I wrote in high school).
 
Once you've put your writing out into the world you're an author.
Yeah, this.

But I get what you mean when you say:
I signed in earlier today and when selecting the AH forum, a thought finally struck me: "Since when am I an author?"
I did feel like I was a bit of a fraud for the first 4 -5 months or so. I wasn't until I'd got into double digits story wise that I felt like I had some measure of competence and could comment constructively to discussion here. It didn't help that the author who inspired me to write posts regularly on the AH (indeed, she's posted on this thread). That intimidated the fuck out of me for a good while. Like the time I ended up sitting on a table with Terry Pratchett and was too shy to actually speak to him.
 
...if one doesn't count stuff I wrote in high school...

Heck, on second though, with that as a parameter I'll have to take my "start" in serious writing as a freshman in high school. I wrote a 30+-page white paper in Space Science class covering the current state of nuclear fusion as a power source - Tokomaks, toroids, pinched plasma excursions, the whole nine yards. I fancied myself as a budding applied nuclear physicist at the time and blew the entire faculty's minds. Sort of a "Sheldon", I guess.

I was given wide berth the entire four years, even after I met my Waterloo - calculus. Never could grok it. Went on to computer science, and still somewhat regret not going into music as a performing professional. ...sigh...
 
How long did you experienced writers spend writing, posting, and publishing before you really thought of yourself as an 'author'?
When I wrote a story that touched a lot of people, with comments like this:
Although I’m not a wheelchair user it seems your account of being one and becoming emotionally entangled with one is very perceptive, some of your insights really made me think. A beautiful story, looking forward to reading some more of your stuff.
I thought, I can do this.
 
I don't think of myself as an author. It's just something I do, some of the time. Of all the hats we all wear during our lives, this one is way down on the list for me. But it is fun.
 
To me, the word "author" has connotations of "authority", or at least a trustworthy basis for the reader to build on. That's not something I hope to achieve. Instead, I think of myself as a "writer". I write things, other people read them.

As for post counts: I might write more if I spent less time posting here. Nearly 7000 posts in a little more than a year and a half? Where did that come from? How much time have I wasted?
 
I don't think there's a professional, commercial or success-driven threshold to becoming an author. If you write, you're an author. This is the Author's Hangout and most people here write as a passion, not as a career.

When I published my first novel, I definitely had that thought: "Wow, I've really made it as an author." But in some ways, traditionally publishing your work might make you less of a "pure author." You're no longer just writing for yourself and your literary interests. Suddenly there are responsibilities to boot.

It's a matter of definition. As far as I'm concerned, if you love to write, you're an author.
 
When I signed a contract with a company who wanted to feature a story I wrote in a video game a few years ago.
 
I've noticed that some people have, under the cover title of their published works, the words:
'A Novel
by ABC'

I think that's a clear indication of when some writer has, in their own mind, made the psychological transition from 'mere writer' to 'Author'.
 
Thanks, guys. (And I use that term in the most general, gender-neutral fashion possible. :))

I'm getting a general drift, so far that having put something out publicly is enough for most of us to consider ourselves authors, although LC68 hit an important note:
I guess we need to define author?
LC68's other comment about having someone hand you some money for something you've written is a pretty high-level form of validation.

I know a clutch of fairly- to wildly-successful main-stream published fiction authors (who would, no doubt say 'Yay! you took that first step into a wider world,' but why that way?' ) and, so far, I wouldn't dream of including myself in their ranks. Imposter Syndrome, I suppose.

Many, many moons ago, so long ago that I'd pretty much forgotten about it, I wrote the occasional technical article for two hobbyist-level technical publications.

Got paid, and everything! Discovered the wonderful world of residuals, too!

It was weird how my name turned up on one magazine's 'contributing writers' banner section (sharing the same section with many of the godliest of Subject Gods, too) for many issues afterward.

My first taste of Imposter Syndrome.

I suppose it could be argued that I'm lying and I've been a lapsed-author for quite a while, now.

But this has been my first foray into fiction. I am the very definition of a hobbyist writer. I started my story solely as a bit of a sort of shared-joke between myself and the one other person I'd shared it with.

And it grew, and grew until I had to share it (anonymously, in my case) with someone.

I suppose I wanted validation, so I published here. I just wish I got more comments (Yeah, not enough eyes on my stuff, so far, and now that the published parts have fallen off the New list, reads have dropped off a cliff to low-single-digits-per-day).

I didn't have the balls to put out the call in Story Feedback for a newbie's fear of getting his ass whipped. :rolleyes:
 
Like the time I ended up sitting on a table with Terry Pratchett and was too shy to actually speak to him.
I can relate, so hard!

I've met one of my favorite authors several times. He knows me from a hole in the wall, too. Been out to dinner with him and his wife a few times.

But I'm always leery of being too interactive on writing with him because I can't write! :ROFLMAO:

As a writer, for the last thirty years he's been at the It's his Day Job level of competence.
 
I’m with Simon (@SimonDoom) on this one. Many years ago I wrote an article for a nationally published magazine and was on the front cover. I got paid and thought I was on my way. Then the editor changed and that was that.
I write and that makes me a writer. I publish on this site and have ambitions to do so elsewhere, so that makes me - in some small way - an author. Though I think that the title is degraded due to the ease with which the internet enables it.
 
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