About writing and being a writer.

The truth is... I don't like calling myself a writer. I don't tell people that I'm an aspiring author (not in real life; I tend to flaunt it on the internet, though I'm often hesitant). This stems from the fear that people will not take me seriously. Everybody is a writer. Everybody writes books. Writing books is the new black.

I think people write books because it's cool now. It's a fad. This frustrates me, because nothing about books should ever be a fad. Books remain forever. They remain when lives pass. They should be revered, pondered, challenged, kept, loved. Understood. I think there are too many writers who do not think this way. How do you write books and yet totally miss the true weight of their existence?

I've talked about this before, how hard it is to be published. It seems so easy to be the author of a best-selling novel. I thought like that once, too. I was once a writer. I was once an aspiring author. I thought I was going to sell my books. Now I doubt. Uncertainty paints over my hope, black strokes across a canvas that was probably beautiful at one point. My level of thinking has steadily declined: "I hope my book is the #1 New York Times best seller!"

"I hope I become a best-selling author!"

"I hope I can get published!"

"I hope this agent likes my query."

"I hope I don't get rejected."

"I hope the agents respond quickly so I can know sooner that I've been rejected."

"My life is one big rejection letter and all I do is query even more agents."

It's not writing anymore. It's querying. It's waiting. It's embracing rejection. It's continuing on.
That's why I'm not a writer. I'm not an aspiring author.
I am just a girl with stories, ridiculously trudging through a vast forest of rejections until somebody finds me.