As a young child, I'd be inventing new stories and writing them almost every day. At the time I never thought "I'll be a writer when I grow up" - I was already a writer without thinking about it. To paraphrase Harper Lee (whose To Kill a Mockingbird remains a major influence on my writing), I never loved to read or write any more than I loved breathing. Creating stories and writing them down was a natural part of life, something I got used to as soon as I had learned how to do it.
Most people write but not all of them are considered to be writers - I believe that what makes someone a writer is their self-classification as a writer, or if others classify them as a writer. Being a writer is one of few things where you can be it just by saying you are. Whether you're a good writer or not is another matter, and can be very subjective. If you write, and are considered to be a writer by yourself or others, then you're a writer.
I consider myself to be a writer because I need to be a writer. I have a constant tendency to imagine stories and situations, being inspired or influenced by pretty much everything, and my imagination is bursting so I just need to let it out. I'm drawn to fictional writing in particular because there are so many things that I can't handle in reality, but I can handle almost anything in imagination - I can create alternate realities! As Margaret Atwood writes, we writers of fiction have an "attitude that what we consider real is also imagined".
Just like dreams, fiction can feel as real as 'reality' depending on your perception of it:
Interesting - we've come to similar conclusions about the writing process, i.e. starting in dreams. Yours focuses more on the nature of writing as escapism, I notice; how alternate realities and fairytale kingdoms are easier to cope with than, say, a school shooting. The Attwood quote and the Waking Life clip are particularly apt ways of demonstrating your argument.
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