What Do You Call Yourself?

How can you become anything if you cannot first say it to yourself?

Writing is a real job. It’s my real job. The way I’ve made my living for 26 years.

But the job only became real, when I started calling myself a writer.

I remember the day it happened.

I’d been self-employed writing corporate communications, marketing pieces, an article here and there for almost a year when I was invited to be a member of a test audience evaluating a new television series. Producers wanted to know our opinions and demographics. My friends and I were asked to fill out a questionnaire.

One of the questions was “What is your occupation?”

What Do You Do?

What would your answer be, if I asked you that now?

What do you do?

I was stymied then. My income was generated by using words to communicate a client's story or message. It was full-time, bill-paying work and yet, I called myself a marketing consultant, or a public relations rep, two markets that I wrote for.

In those first months, I never called myself a writer out loud. It felt aspirational.

By then I’d published several magazine and newspaper articles too. Yet I felt like such a fraud.

But nothing else on the questionnaire fit that night. No other title worked for me either. Not anymore. I stuffed down my insecurity and answered.