But What Do You Do for a Living?

Before I left the corporate world, one of my major frustrations was that I felt like I had lost my identity. And it wasn't the corporate world (although this can be argued) that took it. I don't know how many times (when I identified myself as a writer) that new acquaintances asked me "But what do you do for a living." Naturally, this was after I revealed that none of my novels had been published. I finally quit telling people I was a writer. Instead, I gave them the same old schtick that I worked in "Office Services" (code for mailroom) for a rather large corporation and I crocheted in my free time.

I can't be alone in this.

It was only after I "edited" a few books for other people and left the corporate world to "write for a living" that I rescued my true identity and didn't feel like a fraud when I identified as a writer. Keep in mind, my novels still remained unpublished. And one could argue (and my wife would be one of those people:) that I wasn't really "writing for a living"...because money was tight and our new lifestyle barely qualified as "living."

While it can be argued that I "write" more now that I don't have another "job to pay the bills," I don't know if that would be accurate. I just go to bed earlier now. When I was in the corporate world, I still wrote...I just wrote after working a ten-hour day sorting mail and making sure the back office was running smoothly.

I tell that really long story to serve as an example of what "NOT" to do.

It's all about branding. If you write (whether you are paid or not, published or not, renowned or not) you're a writer. If you're a writer, identify as a WRITER. Join an organization. Join a writer's group. Dump your unpublished fiction onto a blog. Start building your brand. And do whatever you have to do to pay your bills. There is no guarantee that you'll ever be able to "write for a living." But I can assure you that if you quit identifying as a writer...if enough years go by, you'll stop writing. And that would be bad for all of us.