Like many in my profession, I’ve always known what I want to be when I grow up—a writer.
Specifically, I want to be a novelist, and I’m still working on that. Admitting that out loud was hard because that’s a pipedream, a pie-in-the-sky goal. It’s not a “serious” job. My dream to be a novelist stayed hidden for a long time.
In college, I studied journalism, which seemed to me a more respectable and realistic way to become a writer. It wasn’t novels, but it was words and stories. I told myself it’d be enough. Ever since my sophomore year, all my jobs have been in writing. Apart from one semester where my title was editor, I’ve been a paid, professional writer. And that type of writing has been really fulfilling.
I wrote for my university’s alumni magazine, the campus newspaper, and several college publications. I reported on the Utah State Legislature. I spent a summer writing for one of Utah’s biggest newspapers. After graduation, I reported on Capitol Hill in DC, writing articles for a political publication. Then I became a social media content writer, and now I’m a B2B marketing writer.
So when people ask, “What do you do?” I can officially, comfortably, and confidently say: I’m a writer.
But that took a while.
In the beginning, it was just a dreamy, wishy title—one that evoked coffee shops and snowy cabins and muses. I was embarrassed to say I wanted to be a writer. Until I was a “serious” writer (see above).
Only after I became a serious writer could I admit to it—and that was only for the professional stuff, the content I was paid to produce. I didn’t want to admit I also wrote off the clock, escaping in my made-up stories.
It took finishing a manuscript (writing and rewriting until it was polished) that I sent to beta readers and started to submit to agents before I felt like I could also claim to be a fiction writer. Never mind the hours and hours I spent on other fiction projects. I had to wait until some undefined threshold at which point I was enough of a writer.
I wish I’d had the courage to do it sooner.
Here’s why.
There is power in saying “I’m a writer.” There’s commitment.
I’ve come to realize that if I want to be serious about being a writer of novels, I have to take myself and my goals seriously. One important first step: owning that title. Even if it had to start as a secret confession to myself.
Also, writing novels isn’t easy! I’ve written a handful of “novels” i.e., lengthy Word documents that tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Most of them aren’t great. But I’ve learned a lot during the process. It’s challenging to come up with interesting, complex characters who don’t really exist but who need to feel real. It’s tricky to come up with enough conflicts and tension to fill up hundreds of pages. Writing is hard. Writing is work. It takes time. Weaving stories, building worlds, and breathing life into characters—that’s respectable, too.
There’s also power in saying “I’m a writer” and not feeling any associated embarrassment or shame. Not following it up with belittling qualifiers or downplaying my dream and work—just a writer, just silly little stories in my free time.
I’m still working on that. I’m getting a lot better about saying it proudly. Spoiler: not one person (yet) has said anything negative about it. No one has told me that it’s a stupid endeavor or a waste of time or that I’ll never get anything published. In fact, most people seem to think it’s pretty cool. They say kind and supportive things.
But even if they didn’t, I’m learning that it’s not the critic who counts. I get to give myself permission to be creative. To spend my energy and my passion doing something that brings me joy—even if it is a pipedream, a pie-in-the-sky goal. People have done it, so why not me?
So here I am.
I’m a marketing writer. I also write fiction as an aspiring novelist. And I’m owning the title—proudly.
