When I worked in a mail room, there weren’t any mail clerks there at all. There were two writers, two musicians, and a photographer. I think that was the most creative mail room east of the Mississippi. 
This is also true, to some degree, of aspiring stage actors with extensive community theatre and university/college theatre experience but no professional theatre experience (i.e. not yet qualified to be members of Equity, AFTRA or SAG). Like one poster made mention of earlier, in L.A. (NY, Chicago and, to some surprisingly large extent Minneapolis), everyone’s *a writer, an actor, a director, playwright and a filmmaker… *
Duuuude. Out here, for the most part, it’s “Temp By Day, Act By Night” But then again, as they say: What’s the difference between an actor/writer/musician/artist and a Pizza? A Pizza can feed a family of four.
I don’t agree with the idea of cornering people and making them self-identify by their day job. Hell, you might as well just ask them how much money they make. I would even say it’s assholish to tell some MFA who’s waiting tables and writing at night, “you’re not a writer! You’re just a waiter! Make some money, then tell me you’re a writer!”
Besides, you can publish a book a year with a name press and win awards and still not make most of your living writing books. By your standard, even Pulitzer Prize winning poets would have to say, “I’m a creative writing teacher,” or a Newbery award winning kids book author would have to say “I give a lot of talks at schools and writers’ conferences.”
Well, not to put to fine a point on it, but a former English teacher at my high school won the Pulitzer (Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes), and up until the time when he quit teaching to write full time, if you asked him what he did he’d say “I’m an English teacher.”
Well, in either case the point is to let people just describe themselves however they want. If they write and call themselves a writer, they are telling the truth. If I ask someone what they do and they say “marathon runner,” because that’s what their passion is, but their day job is fitting pipes, I’m not going to be a jerk about it.
I don’t begrudge actors, writers, and musicians calling themselves that even if they’re not making a living at it. If someone is pursuing some notoriously non-renumerative career with persistence and determination, but still has to have a “day job” to get by, that is something to be respected.
However, I have yet to meet an actor or musician who is not doing something in their chosen field, even if it’s not bringing in money. An actor will be doing community theater, a musician will be performing at open-mike night at the coffeeshop, etc. Writers, however, are a different story. Some people call themselves writers when they aren’t writing a single freaking word. I know of no other field where you can get away with that.
Maybe I’ll start introducing myself as a major league pitcher. When people ask me who I play for, I’ll them I’m not currently playing for a team, and, no, I haven’t really played for any teams, and no, I’m not in the minors or even on an amateur team, but I have great ideas for pitching ballgames. For example, I have one percolating when I strike out every batter. It’s just an idea at this point, but I think it’ll work.
Interesting you should mention that, because I’m a Masseur To The Stars. I’m not actually giving any stars a massage at the moment, but I’ve got a great idea for one, you see, where I’m rubbing Scarlett Johansson down with baby oil…OK, yeah, I’ll be in my bunk.
As a former technical writer who spent over 20 years in the field, I have to say that I met very few tech writers who ever aspired to be tech writers. For the most part, they came from the creative or journalism fields, and as was mentioned above, went into technical writing when other writing opportunities were difficult or impossible to find, or who needed a steadier income than they were getting from shopping creative work around. The rest tended to be engineers, who were either forced into the field by their employers, or who saw tech writing as a skill that made them more marketable. Still, those creative/journalistic types who stuck strictly to technical writing were few and far between; most had some kind of non-technical writing project on the side. In my case, for example, I wrote a monthly column for a local magazine and ghost-wrote college-level textbooks, among other endeavours.
A technical writer is a paid professional–usually quite well paid–and is indeed published one way or another. The downside is that the published writing usually physically accompanies a product, which is the real reason for the “sale” of the writing. There are few opportunities for a tech writer to publish a standalone work, but they do exist in the form of manuals you can buy to, say, help fix your car (Haynes and Chilton car manuals, for example, are written by tech writers). You’ll also find such things in the form of Dummies books or Idiot’s guides to technical subjects.
Can a technical writer be called a “writer”? I’d say yes. No, we don’t write the kind of things that make the bestseller lists, but we do write, and people do read our work (though often reluctantly ). We need to know how to use the written word to communicate complex ideas simply and clearly, we must know grammar and punctuation, and we deal with the same tight deadlines that all writers face. In short, we write–but no matter how many books I wrote as a technical writer, nobody is interested in making them into movies. Maybe that’s the difference. 
Maybe there should be a term for the psychological syndrome in which people don’t do something, but are positive they’d be terrific if they ever actually tried it.
I had a friend in graduate school who didn’t play any musical instruments, but was positive that if he got a guitar he’d be the next Eric Clapton. He just intuitively knew he’d be great.
There’s a character in Pride & Prejudice who says, after one of the Bennett girls plays piano, “I would have been a wonderful pianist if I’d taken lessons,” or something to that effect. I think of her whenever there’s a Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve type discussion.
I think it’s part of the broader phenomenon in which people (and I’m as guilty as anyone) assume that anything they don’t know how to do must be simple.
That’s his lisp.
A technical writer can clearly be called a writer. The most restrictive definition is writing for publication, and it’s clear that a tech writer is getting published.
My general rule is “All writing for publication is equally hard.” I’ve done technical writing, and have reviews, fiction, and even some poetry published. But it requires skill to write anything, and there is no genre or form of writing that is easier than another.
Writing for yourself is a different issue, but I don’t think too many people who write just for themselves actually call themselves writers. My feeling is that if the writing is so private that they don’t want to show it to others, they aren’t going to advertise the fact they are doing it.
Yeah, it’s one of those funny, true to life moments that Austen was good at writing about. Here’s the full quote:
Thanks for the exact quote, Amok. I recently scoured an online version of the book and couldn’t find it. Now I know that my memory of the book was right after all!
Yeah, too bad she wasn’t a writer, what with never getting much of anything published for profit.
Not true.
I have to say, I agree with cricetus. If Harper Lee had referred to herself as a writer before she published TKAM, maybe people would have sneered behind her back. But then, once she published, in retrospect, wasn’t she right all along?
I remember reading some book about writing (possibly Bird by Bird by Lamott?) wherein the author- an honest-to-goodness “writer” by the SDMB-popular definition- advocated aspiring writers to go ahead and call themselves writers, because of the motivational factor of doing so. Telling someone you’re a “writer” as opposed to simply “I write” means that your hours of toiling are having an effect- you’re transforming yourself into the creature you want to be. You can call yourself a “runner” if you run recreationally. I don’t see why you can’t be both a “runner” and a “writer” or a “schoolteacher” AND a “writer”. When people ask me what I “do”, I say the truth: I do office jobs, but I’m trying to be a writer. I write every day but I haven’t yet published, and I still consider myself to be a writer. When I’m not writing, I’m phrasing my thoughts in such a way as to be able to write them down later. I compose when I’m in the shower, on the train, walking down the street- I have to keep pen and paper on me so I don’t lose the phrasing I fall in love with, all of a sudden, because of an unexpected train of thought. That’s what writing IS, fundamentally, and not simply some popular-consumerist definition.
So what if aspiring writers call themselves writers? Seriously, why do you even care? The phonies will be phonies and the ones who are meant to publish will publish. Why are you the arbiter of deciding who is a valid writer and who isn’t?