The most important aspect of professional registration with a governing body is the fact that it implies that you meet certain standards of competency. I’m an engineer, but not a professional engineer. I have not worked in the industry long enough to apply for registration. This does not mean that I am not a good engineer; it means that I am not a professional because I do not meet the requirements regarding experience. Yet.

Safeguarding professional standards is important when it comes to engineering because if you get it wrong when you design your pressure vessel/pump assembly/ bridge people get killed. The same can not be said about writing fiction so as I see it the whole issue regarding professionalism is moot.

Even if you wanted to there is no way in which the competence of a writer can be quantified and compared to an absolute standard, because writing is an art. Different pieces of art speak in various degrees to different people. (Really excellent engineering design approaches art, but only engineers feel this way about it. )

Some think it depends you are a professional writer if you get paid or are well respected for it.

This year I haven’t sold any of my books but I have written almost everyday and I can say I have written over 100K words.

And I think of myself as a professional writer. Anyone who writes and enjoys it and finds the love in writing is a professional to me.

Angela, you are TOTALLY AWESOME.

That is all.

Personally, I like Ann Somerville’s definition best:

taking it seriously, to the exclusion of all other optional activities

I have no problem with romfail whatsoever. I sat through Battlefield Earth–I wanted to leave halfway, but had to see just how crazy bad it could be. Ever since then, I have never neglected to use it as an example of the Worst Movie Ever.

And I do it with perfect knowledge that it was a work of love for John Travolta.

As long as a reader went into a book with an open mind, she can express whatever resultant honest opinion she has afterwards.

Re: Professional vs nonprofessional or pre-professional

Was I a better writer the day after I got a contract than I was the day before? Don’t think so. It’s just that now somebody is willing to pay me for my work. That’s all.

And @Magdalen,

Not sure whether men see each other in the loo, certainly the husband has never come home to say woo, so-and-so at work has a tiny pecker. But I do think there is a lot of validity there in that a minimally-endowed man might have certain issues that a reasonably-endowed one just doesn’t.

OK, I can’t decide where I come down on this — personally, wearing my RL hat, a lot of it comes down to what you do and what you do well. But I asked my dh, who is a consulting professional with a string of letters after his name, what he thought … and he said (paraphrasing a bit) …

A professional writer makes his or her living from her writing. A published author is not necessarily a professional writer. He used the example of one of my dd’s English teachers — the gentleman she had write one of her college recs. He has a couple published books under his belt but he makes his living as a teacher. My dh mentioned: jingle writers, newspaper reporters … yadda yadda: people who make their living with the words they write. And I asked about his profession (actuary) and he said in his opinion, what’s relevant is whether or not you’re a practicing whatever. Yet another opinion!

No offense but this comment thread is in some ways more interesting than the original post.

More generally, though, I’ve seen the putting down on both sides; in fact, probably because of the vagaries of my own community immersion these days, I’ve lately seen more active insults from genre fiction authors and readers toward lit fic and its writers.

When you said, ” The three original professions…” you forgot the oldest profession! You know, the one that can be made lying down?
0_0

sorry, but it had to be said.

I find it interesting that this is brought up by romance genre authors. After all, don’t the “literary fiction” authors, who usually make way less money (as a group and individually), look down on those writing commercial “trash”? (Like those Regency gentlemen who wouldn’t lower themselves to work)

It’s a bit like the lowest rung in the social ladder looking for someone to put down–it doesn’t bring them up a rung, but at least there’s something under their feet.

I don’t know if that makes sense…