writer, author, novelist: pick one

I always pause when somebody asks me what I do for a living. I don’t mind talking about it, but it would be nice if there was a term to use that was not so ambiguous as the standard three are.

Here’s what I get:

Stranger: What do you do?

Me: I’m a novelist.

Stranger: Have you published anything?

————

Stranger: What do you do?

Me: I’m a writer.

Stranger: What do you write?

Me: Mostly novels.

Stranger: Have you published anything?

————-

Stranger: What do you do?

Me: I’m an author.

Stranger:

Me: I write.

Stranger. Oh. What do you write?

Me: Ransom notes.

Stranger:

Me: I write novels.

Stranger: Like, The DaVinci Code?

Me: Um, no. Quite different, actually.

Stranger: That was a good novel.

Me:

————-

So let me ask you, do you make a distinction between writer, author, novelist?

For me, a writer is somebody who could be writing anything at all. Technical manuals, greeting cards, letters to the editor — as long as it is a primary occupation. A writer isn’t necessarily published.
A novelist is somebody who writes novels, and, in my mind at least, has been published. Although I can imagine somebody saying: I’m a novelist, I have ten novels I can’t sell to anybody. So maybe an novelist is somebody who writes novels and tries to get them published, sometimes successfully.

An author is somebody who does not actually need to write, but who is published. So for example, OJ Simpson is an author (because there’s a so-called book out there with his name on it), but I wouldn’t call him a writer.

Joyce Carol Oates, on the other hand, is an author, a novelist, and a writer while Studs Terkel is a writer and author but not a novelist.

Do you use these terms the same way?  And do you have a suggestion for what I could say to people that would be polite, but forestall the “have you published anything” question?