The Definition of "Aspiring"

I have noticed something lately. As some of you may know, I recently finished a project over three years in the making – a young adult fiction novel that sucked up most of the free time in my late twenties. Only my closest friends and family even knew that I was working on it until a few months ago. Now people are finding out about my book, and asking me about it, and for some inexplicable reason I find myself answering them apologetically. "I didn't know you were a writer," they'll say, or, "You never told me you're an author!" "Well, we'll see," I respond. (Insert sheepish smile here) Or better yet, I correct them: "Oh, not yet. I'm just an aspiring author." But a while back my mother gave me a box of papers and various whatnots from my childhood, and in the box was the very first book I ever wrote. It was made from construction paper and crayons, and titled The Mystery of the Red Rose Burglar or something equally edgy. Still, I was, after all, the author of the story. In middle school I authored diaries, in high school articles for the local paper, in college poetry and music, and now books. So what right does my 31-year-old self have to diminish my sundry earlier selves by insinuating that all they have written has not been "authored", just because it hasn't been published? Why do I have to have an "aspiring" label stuck to my back? Some of my writing has been poor, no doubt. Heck, maybe it is all poor. Don't expect The Mystery of the Red Rose Burglar to appear at your local Barnes and Noble anytime soon. But it's mine all the same, and in just as real a way as the book that was three years in the making. So are the songs that were written in the back of a van on a college trip. So are the poems I wrote curled up on the window ledge in my dorm room, with rain on the pane and tears on my face. All of them are a part of me. 

I don't know why we are so afraid to acknowledge any part of ourselves that is not considered successful, at least in the traditional sense of the word. Who we are is not determined by whether or not the forces that be acknowledge us. 

So from now on, I'm going to try not to apologize for who I am. 

I am an author.