I've been writing novels for as long as I can remember. It was never something I did for any specific reason; writing simply gave me an outlet for all the characters and stories in my head. I wrote to create a new narrative for my life, a different version of who I wanted to be, who I could be. And I, quite proudly, proclaimed to anyone who asked that I was a writer, an author.

It didn't matter that I wasn't published yet, that a majority of my stories lived only in notebooks, on my laptop, across various pieces of paper, shoved into jacket pockets and promptly forgotten about. I was an author because I said I was, a writer because what I spent my free time doing was writing. It was as simple as that.

But as I got older, I began to doubt this definition. I would tell my friends I was a writer, and they would laugh, jokingly asking when my book was coming out. When I told others that I was an author, they asked who I worked with, what I had written. And over time, author became aspiring author, became in a few years, became someday.

My freshman year of high school I successfully completed National Novel Writing Month for the first time, reaching my monthly goal of 50,000, the official word count for a novel. Surely, I thought, I can call myself an author now that I've officially written a novel? Surely I can be considered a real author now.

But when I told people I had written a novel, all they wanted to know was when they could read it. It seemed that I couldn't be a real writer, an artist, until my book was on a shelf in Barnes and Nobel, until they could google my name and my website would appear, until someone else had decided to qualify me as something I had long considered myself to be. This is the plight of the literary outsider; I never knew another word to describe myself, had always thought of myself as a writer. But none of that would matter until someone else agreed.

Three years and three novels later, I finally published my first book. After spending nearly a year emailing back and forth with agents, waiting for responses, for that verification I believed it was required I have, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and self-published my book about sixth months ago.

Yes, here was this qualification that I had sought for so long- I had a website, my name came up on Amazon, I had a physical story for sale, a book with my name on it. I'm a real author now, I thought. Finally.

And yet, I still found people questioning why I had self-published, saying that anyone could self-publish a book if they wanted to. Forget the two years that went into planning, writing, editing, and marketing the book- no, anyone could do it! And yes, I suppose that anyone who had gone through this process could publish their story on their own, the same way I had. But if you reach that point, if you get past the months of drafting, of writing, of editing, of waiting for reviews and opinions, of entering entirely into a world and a story and loving it with all your being, then I believe you've earned the right to call yourself a writer- whether the rest of the world chooses to agree or not.

Last night, I hit the 50,000 word count, turning my draft into an official novel. It's the 6th book I've written in five years. By most qualifications, I'm an author now, though I can't say it makes me feel any differently. Watching the word count click over from 49,999 to 50,000 hardly made a difference. Reaching that official qualification, something I had strived for for so long, hardly matters to me anymore. What matters is that I keep writing, that I keep working to tell the stories I have to tell, the stories that burn and rage within me. That is artistry, the ability to act upon that passion and turn it into something that transcends your mind.

And so it really can be as simple as being able to call yourself a writer if you write, a painter if you paint, a singer if you sing. We don't need to overcomplicate this; we don't need to make people feel as though they cannot be what they know they are. I know that I am a writer. I know that as long as I sit down and continue to put words on a page, I will always be a writer.

I do not know if I will self-publish my new book, or whether I will ever publish it at all. I do not think that it matters. Even if I am the only person who ever reads this draft, even if the only face it ever sees is that of my computer screen, I am still a writer. And I always will be.