Embrace Your Writing Calling. Devote Yourself Fully to Being An Author

Being in the writing community I am constantly seeing people introduce themselves as aspiring writers or aspiring authors as well as person after person asking, when am I able to call myself an author?

These post always makes me sad because it makes me aware that some believe there has to be some reachable measure of success they have to obtain before they are able to call themselves a writer or an author before they're allowed to embrace that part of themselves. 

Even when I first started writing I never fully embraced the title of author. 

I wasn't ashamed of it or trying to hide it I nearly was afraid of being looked down upon for pursuing my dream, what I spent too much money on to obtain a college degree in to the disappointment of my mother. I still don't understand why the thought of being a writer leaves a bad taste in some people's mouths as if by choosing it as a profession I was dooming myself to live off scraps and be forever indebted to my student loans. 

I had stories that I had written that were published, which should have given me the permission I needed to call myself an author, but something was holding me back. I was self-published -  real authors are traditionally published. I only had a handful of book sales, barely enough to buy a nice dinner -  real authors were able to support themselves with their books...

One day I realized that this negative mindset was holding me back in more ways than one. 

I was wasting the opportunity to network naturally and promote myself when others asked me what I did for work. all those times when I was asked I only said I was a writer. 

If I had told them I was an author maybe they would have decided to ask where they could buy my book and I would have seen more sales in the beginning. 

Maybe I would have accepted my role fully and focused more on my fiction work than I did on other writing projects. 

The world is already holding us to some pretty impossible standards, it's not fair to us to hold ourselves to even higher ones. 

We are writers.

We are authors.

No level of success or sales gives us that title, we earn it with our dedication to the words and stories we create and share with the world. 

Even if you're not an author yet, drop the word aspiring when you introduce yourself. Just because you're not published yet doesn't make you less of an author.

Your story is a work in progress, not you. 

You are an author. Embrace it. 

Now go get to writing.

With love, 

B. King xo xo

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