Call me "writer"

There is some debate about what to call people who write fiction.

Well, yes, insane, but I mean as a professional description.

When is someone a “writer”, or an “author”, or a “professional” at either of those?

For example, do my short story sales count? What about poetry? Nonfiction? I still have a day job – am I a “professional” writer?

I’d suggest that we keep it simple. If you write and get paid for it, you’re a professional writer. Everything else – whether you get pro rates, write novels or poems or short stories, etc – becomes – merely an adjective to “writer”.

The idea of further subdividing writers – by how much they work, what rates they’re getting, what form they work in – creates unneeded division.

So we are writers. Go write.