In Defense of the Aspiring Author

As you know from my previous posts, I'm trying to make a name for myself on Twitter. The hope is that if I talk to enough people there, I will eventually gather enough subscribers to my blog and have enough interested people in my book that they will go out and buy it. I want this. As much as I have loved writing The Winter Court purely for the enjoyment, I would also like to be able to sell a few copies.

On Friday, I was lucky enough to gain a bunch of new followers. I engaged in a few conversations, which felt meaningful.

Then I saw this on Saturday morning.

I have erased his username to protect his identity.

Why does this particular tweet annoy me and take the wind out of my "you just got a bunch of new followers!" sails?

Because of this:

I am an aspiring fantasy novelist!

There's no way to know for sure if this was directed at me specifically, but I don't want to talk about that. It's not really about that.

What I really take issue with is that I don't think the word "aspiring" lacks confidence. I actually think it's a very hopeful word.

I think that if you give yourself a title, deserved or not, you're telling everyone that you're happy with yourself just as you are. "Aspiring" means that you're leaving yourself room to grow. There are plenty of lessons that I still need and want to learn with respect to my writing. I want to be able to make mistakes and recover from them and change.

When I hear "you write, therefore you're a writer and you HAVE to call yourself one" I get my back up. It's just a natural instinct. I don't want to define myself by one particular title. I want to leave myself room to grow into it. Maybe when I'm 85 with two dozen published novels, I'll call myself a writer.

Maybe not. Maybe I'll still aspire to be a better one.

#writing #writingcommunity #Twitter #aspiringauthors #indieauthors #newauthors #new #followme