"If you write, you're a writer - aren't you?"

“There is a time for art, and there is a time for breathing. To see no distinction is to birth an artist.”

JK Rowling wrote a list of ‘Writing Quips’ -  the dos and don’ts of the writing profession. What Rowling didn’t mention is: when is it you become a writer, as opposed to someone who writes?  When she was eight years old, she wrote a story about a rabbit named Rabbit. Was Rowling a writer at the age of eight?

When two words are more effective than fifty. When metaphors grace the page that have never been seen before. When you can write from the perspective of a puppy, an alien, and a teenage boy, and make the reader really believe –that’s when you’re a writer.  

Someone who writes understands writing as something she does, not something she is, while a writer captures the very essence of her soul in her writing.  As Isaac Asimov states, “I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.”

A large part of a writer’s personality is their voice. Emily Dickinson, for example, never says what she actually means. She uses symbolism, metaphors, similes and other writing devices to convey a message. For example, "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept Treading-treading-till is seemed That Sense was breaking through."  As readers, we’ve become accustomed to this, and relate it to her unique voice. A writer needs that – something different to stand out, and be recognizable.

Someone who writes splashes in a puddle. A writer dives and explores every particle of the ocean – and can sum it up in one sentence, and make you feel like you were there in the process.