The Tradesman

I call myself a writer.

I'm not sure when I decided it was appropriate to do so, but I do. I've had about 60 articles published at our little rag here and a few at The New Times in Syracuse. I even got paid for those.

But it stands to reason that I didn't come into college calling myself a writer. I didn't walk out of my first Spectrum meeting and say, "Now it's official."

It must have been about the same amount of time it took for me to start calling myself a singer. When I was in eighth grade, I joined my high school chorus and found out I had a set of pipes more suited to singing bass than huffing on an alto sax. Somewhere between that point and now, when I offer my services to hardcore bands, I started saying, "I'm a singer."

Some of these distinctions are harder to make, however. Artists, for example, approach these self-declarations with greater caution, and poets to an even greater extent. Just the other day, my professor implied that Sherwood Anderson must have been full of himself to say that telling the story at hand was, "a job for a poet."

I made a painting once, and though I didn't think it was awful, I'd never call myself an artist in that sense. I write creatively, but I'm far from a full-fledged poet. I just can't seem to get myself too far past the topic of sex in my "poetry."

I remember feeling this same sense of belonging to a guild, so to speak, when I no longer felt odd or presumptuous when referring to myself as a wrestler. Once I had sacrificed, meaning starved, for the good of the team and had put in enough laps and push-ups, as well as memorized the lexicon of moves, I proudly referred to myself as a wrestler. I also quietly scoffed at those who joined the team their junior or senior year and referred to themselves thus within a week of training.

Some of these guilds are more easily distinguished. Engineers likely refer to themselves as students of the profession until they have been hired by a firm and are working in their field of study, earning a salary.

I suppose the distinction lies in that some activities are simply activities and aren't always paid positions. One can be a poet even without a business card and nameplate that say so. But conversely, a person isn't a stock market trader until they're trading. A lawyer isn't a lawyer until he's passed the BAR exam. A guy just pours drinks for his friends until he has done so with for a paycheck. Then he's a bartender.

When observed from this perspective, however, I'm no more a writer than a biology student with intent to attend medical school is a doctor. While I may undergo activities and stresses similar to those of a full-time writer, I'm no closer to really being one professionally than the biology student who has yet to take the MCAT. I have to graduate, perchance attend graduate school and find the job before I can say I'm a writer if the distinction lies in the earning.

Whether I'm a writer right now or not, I have something to which to aspire. There is, after all, a distinct difference in the minds of many between a writer and a good writer.