The Mark Of Inferiority

If you wish to be a Writer, Write. 

~ Epictetus 

I have always hated the Aspiring writer label.
I have merited it unworthy of every young or old UN published writer out there.
Mainly because I have to ask my self just because I don't get payed for my writing, just because no publishers or readers know my name. Just because I am not flying all over creation signing books for my latest hit novel. Does any of that truly qualify me as a writer ?
I don't think so, what I have just described is the product of being a writer,

Most of the time young penners go about saying they are aspiring, in a way giving them selves a note of ineligibility. But I must ask why ?
Why do we think that just because we have ignoble beginnings, that means we are not writers already.
If you have ever written a poem, a short story, a badly written novel that you are just terrified for anyone to see. Or just dream of penning something great, than you are in your heart a writer.
I myself have used the term aspiring, and every time I do, there is something in my heart that stops me cold. A sort of indescribable feeling, a feeling that I truly don't like.
Its as if I am pronouncing a sentence on my self. I truly cant explain why I feel so strangely, and its probably because in part I am a dramatic person, always have been.
But I believe that I am in some way right about this mark of inferiority we give ourselves, and the question I ask is why ?
Why do we feel that because we don't have a professional stamp on our foreheads and a check with our name on it that makes us in some way less than those who do.
When we say aspiring I cant help but see something thats yet to be attained, but clearly if you take up your pen and write words on a sheet of paper, or if you are typing them in a less old fashioned way, or have ever spent days plotting within yourself the worlds and characters and emotions, creating and shaping a world thats entirely your own.
Why to say you aren't a writer is like saying that the winter roses, are not roses, because they arent yet in full bloom.
Why do you say you aren't a writer, what is yet to be attained ?
I mean minus the check and international fandom's in love with your book, what is there yet you must get in order to feel like a writer ?
To be a writer one must write,
to be an artist one must draw or paint,
to be a photographer one must take a camera and photograph,
to be anything else one must first do that something in order to become professional.
I implore every person trying to attain the goal of professional status, just because you are not there yet. Doesn't denounce you as being the something that ties into that dream.
Lets stop the words of self given inferiority, and rise to who we are. Take our place among the stars and truly not care if we ever have the kind of fame that this industry creates.
And just write create because its in our very core to do so.

© 2012 Rachel hope