I'm a Writer. No, an Author. No, a Poet. Bleh! Does It Matter?

There's this long and drawn out discussion going on in one of my LinkedIn groups about what constitutes a writer vs. an author. In my opinion, any professional term (author, technical writer, copywriter, novelist, screenwriter, poet, etc.) is just a different flavor of the same ice cream.

A writer is someone who writes. I think you can call yourself a writer using any number of flavors, but isn't the base idea the same thing? Maybe you have written in private journals for years...well I think that makes you a writer because you are inclined to express yourself with the written word. But you may not call yourself one publicly or show your work to anyone.

Maybe you've written user manuals for years and you call yourself a technical writer. Or you choose a different term like documentation specialist, business writer, corporate writer, or manual writer as your flavor. But labels and terms aside, you do the job you do because you enjoy using words as a form of expression. Whether or not the writing is any good is a whole other matter; once we move beyond basic grammar and organization, we get into a whole other messy gray area that I'll stay out of for now.

The point I guess I'm getting to is, does the flavor of the writing label really matter? At the end of the day, if you like to communicate through words in some form or fashion and you are inclined to do this on a somewhat regular basis, aren't you just a plain ole writer? And with regards to the flavor of your label, maybe all of us simply vary up the terms a bit to better categorize ourselves among the droves of professional writers, wannabe writers, aspiring authors, published experts, blah blah blah. Or maybe it's just our egos.

So what do you think about the various terms we use to describe writers? What do you call yourself?