There was a long period in my life where I saw myself as an aspiring writer. My go-to ice breaker was my name, pronouns, and the fun fact that I was an “aspiring poet and fiction writer.” When people asked what I did, I said I was an aspiring writer. Each day I would hone various pieces, working each one to the finest point that I could manage. My walls were littered with diagrams of various stories and plotlines. My world revolved around wanting to become what I saw as a real writer, and I aspired to be like the greats. Blythe Baird, Paulo Cuelho, Tamsyn Muir—my idols were objects of my imitation. Those were people who had made it, pulled themselves out of abstraction and into the world of reality.
That flipped one day. Introduced to a family friend, I went through my usual conversational choreography of saying that I was an aspiring writer. That I wrote fiction and poetry, had for a couple years. Before I could respond by asking them anything about themself, they asked me what the difference was between an aspiring writer and a writer. After stumbling over what I would answer, fluctuating between various definitions, I settled on the idea that it was all about reception. Aspiring writers were only seen by the reflection of their monitors, real writers were seen and revered by the world.
“Sounds like you write quite a bit though. I would figure that would make you a writer,” they said to me.
When a person runs every day, they are a runner. When a person sings every day, they are a singer. I wrote every day, thought about it every minute, lived and breathed the art form. Yet I had never considered myself a writer. So wrapped up in the intricacies of what it meant to be beloved and adored, I had treated myself as secondary to my passions. If you have ever called yourself aspiring, its an honorable title. It shows a desire to improve. But if you love to write, love to watch words cascade into stories, you are a writer. It's up to the world to see that.
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