Today is International Author’s Day, a day to celebrate storytelling, the books (and their writers) that inspire us, and the authors we often aspire to be. This is a great day to reread a favourite book, send a thank you email to one of your favourite authors, or to find extra motivation to start a story that you’ve been waiting to write. (If you need more writing motivation, November also happens to be National Novel Writing Month!)
Recently, I began to think about the term ‘aspiring author.’ So often, we interpret that to mean ‘not published’ or ‘inexperienced,’ that our desire to be an author is a phase or a distant dream.
Out of curiosity, I decided to search the word ‘aspire’ on Dictionary.com, and this is what I found:
“To long, aim, or seek ambitiously; be eagerly desirous, especially for something great or of high value.”
Dictionary.com, “Aspire”
To aspire is to eagerly and ambitiously reach for a goal, and that sounds like a great thing for everyone to do, especially writers with big dreams!
Next on Dictionary.com, I decided to search for the word ‘author,’ Here it is:
“a person who writes a novel, poem, essay, etc.; the composer of a literary work.”
Dictionary.com, “Author”
Note that nowhere in the entry for ‘author’ does it say ‘published.’ So if you have written a novel, short story, essay, article—any literary piece—you are already an author!
In a way, aren’t we all aspiring authors? We are constantly learning and discovering new things, always finding different perspectives to tell familiar stories. We challenge ourselves to reach a deadline, to win a contest—we aspire even to finish writing a story. Sometimes that alone is worth celebrating!
Authors are creators, storytellers, artists, and a central part of that creative process is dreaming—a dream that is not an unclimbable mountain, but something we can reach towards. We explore and aspire upwards to the summit.
We ask ourselves questions that we can’t find the answers to on the internet and seek out a way to answer and solve them. We may never find what we originally set out to uncover, but when we aspire, we will find something—a story. Perhaps a story completely different than what you imagined, but there is beauty in watching it unfold.
The writing life is a journey with no finish line. You never have to stop telling stories and sharing ideas and thoughts. I suppose when you decide you have finished writing, you are no longer aspiring.
Let’s not stop dreaming. Let’s not stop asking “what if?“.
Let’s be curious and chase ideas like they are fireflies, all the while seeing the wonder and thrill of creating.
Let’s not stop discovering and putting into words the amazing things we discover.
Published or not, you are an author. If you are still writing, then you are aspiring.
Write on, writer.
Abby Ciona 