Kia ora,
A writer I worked with earlier in the year got in touch recently with an update. He’d just finished self publishing his first book – the book we worked on together.
“I guess I’m a writer now!” he said.
I shared his joy, of course! Getting that first book out is huge. But I also said that he’d been a writer before he’d hit “publish”.
Blog posts, essays, trip accounts, walking guides, even the emails you send at your day job – all of that is writing. But does that kind of writing make you a writer-writer?
For sure!
For a long time, I didn’t see myself as a writer either. I couldn’t write – that’s what I told myself.
- I wasn’t someone who could write a whole book.
- I didn’t have the ideas for fiction.
- I hadn’t done anything exciting enough for a travel memoir, the very genre I love reading the most and the very genre I love working on the most.
I saw myself as just an editor, not a writer.
I saw myself as someone who couldn’t write, but could help those who were real writers.
Turns out, I am a writer. I write all the time. Here’s an incomplete list of what I write:
- monthly blog posts
- weekly emails to you
- monthly contributions to an editing industry newsletter
- allllll the comments and suggestions I leave in manuscripts (which often include rewrites based on the writer’s voice)
- the multi-page editorial reports I give my writers
- the journal I keep when I go travelling
To some people, to be a writer is to have written a book.
or to have sold so many thousand copies of their book,
or to have made so many $$ in sales,
or to have written multiple books.
But as far as I’m concerned, you don’t need to have done any of those things to consider yourself a writer. You don’t have to hold yourself up to someone else’s standard of what a writer is.
If you’re someone who doesn’t see yourself as a writer because you haven’t published a book, what would make you feel like a writer?
Take this email as permission to reframe how you see yourself. Your drafts, journals, Facebook updates and Instagram captions, postcards to friends, blog posts – that’s all writing, and as far as I’m concerned, that makes you a writer.
So, keep journaling, keep hammering away at your draft, keep publishing your blog posts. Keep writing.
Because you are a writer.
Yours,
Deborah, most definitely a writer
📚 What I’m reading
Beyond the trees: a journey alone across Canada’s Arctic, by Adam Shoalts.
📅 Availability
Now booking edits from January 2026.
If publishing your travel or adventure memoir is your goal for 2026, grab a free sample edit. Let’s make it happen!
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