What an interested question that I have just posed to myself...
I do not see myself as a Professional Writer because I did not earn a living from writing, nor am I a Published Writer although I did self-publish a book of poetry entitled Reflections In Thought that I sold - 500 copies in all - but, that was mainly because I wanted to teach myself the printing process. I did all my own layout boards, burned my own printing plates, operated the printing press, collated all the printed sheets, folded, stapled, and trimmed the edges. I sold them at a local bookstore for $10 each, paying the bookstore a commission of $2 for each one sold. I have about 50 booklets left that I was giving away as gifts to people with whom I worked to show my appreciation.
But, that really doesn't answer the question, does it?
A wrote a couple of poems in high school but I did not really take writing poetry seriously until after graduating from high school and needed something to do while drinking coffee in the student union waiting for my 9 am classes to begin in college. I felt self-conscious just sitting there with a cup of coffee. I doubt those first poems I wrote were worth a damn, but when I stopped writing poetry on a daily basis in 2015, I had written over 42,000 of those
"suckers" and I am sure that some of them had to fairly good.
I write what I feel at the moment and NEVER edit anything unless there is a spelling mistake or a glaring grammatical error.
After writing poetry for several years, I created a fake profile on LinkedIn and started publishing 1,000 word opinion articles on that forum. I used a fake name in case my employers were checking up on their employees and I did not want to be
"fired" for writing something negative about who hired me which I did often. All totaled, I wrote between 1,200 - 1,500 of those articles.
Why the range?
Well, I decided to merge my fake profile with my real profile and in so doing I lost all my fake profile articles. I have written and published about 200 articles on my real profile. All my articles were saved on a file on my personal computer and I have not decided yet whether to take the time to publish them all again.
So, I wrote because I feel something that I want to put down on paper and I write because I have a
personal opinion that I want to share. Currently I am writing because I want to share my personal experiences being a cancer patient for over 12 years and my attitudes living with the highs and lows of being bipolar... so, there is a clinical and medical reason why I write as well that was not a foundation for my writing earlier as I wanted to keep my personal and medical life QUIET... but then, when that is done nobody learns from my experiences or mistakes.
This is why I write... at least, this is why I think I write today... tomorrow, I might find another or alternate reason for my public writing.
