As you may have seen in my profile, I have writing listed as an interest. I am a writer. I'm not published; this won't surprise anyone, since I'm a teenager. I've only finished one novel, and it barely had a plot.

I've started countless more, invented two worlds with complicated rules of magic that are intuitive to me and quite possibly won't make the slightest bit of sense to anyone else, I'm a third of a way into another novel- thirty-five thousand words, if you're interested- and I have ideas dripping out my ears. I think almost entirely in words, I play with my characters constantly- when I'm in the car, when I'm eating, when I'm in dance class, when I'm riding- and I don't think I'll ever stop being a writer.

I don't care about being published.

I don't mean that in an "I'm my own person, damn everyone else, I'll write what I want" sort of way. A month ago, if I'd said that, I would have- hell, a month ago I never would have said that. Why? Because a month ago, with every sentence, every new beginning, every ten thousand words done, I thought, This could be the one. The one that gets me published, the one that starts off my career as a real author. It felt like every time I scribbled down the words for another idea, I was praying that, if it wasn't the one, it would bring me to the point where I was good enough to be published. Where I was professional.

I have to say, I no longer care all that much about that.

Sure, it would be nice to be a professional writer. It would be nice to get money doing what I love, enough money to live by. Even if I didn't get that much, it would be nice to get enough to help a little bit, to make a nice side income, especially since I'm going to be a writer until I die, even if I never pick up another pencil or type another sentence; the words won't get out of my head, after all. Not even if I want them to, which I admit I occasionally do.

Yes, that's right; I don't care if I'm ever a professional, but I'm going to keep writing. I'll write whatever comes to mind, I'll finish another novel, I'll write that short story about the teenager were-something in a ShifterPride! group, I'll eventually finish the lesbian romance/murder mystery with a female serial killer as the protagonist.

And all this without being published? Yes, without being published. My attitude may change in another year; hell, it may change by the end of this school year. I may keep thinking this way for a summer or a decade, and maybe then I'll turn my effort to getting a "first novel" out for the masses to read. Perhaps, perhaps not. In the meantime, I'll stay here in my attic bedroom, writing at my computer with the bootlegged copy of Microsoft Word installed in a room with very limited air conditioning and heating, because my characters want their stories told, and as it happens, I'm the only one who can do that.

As a writer, I can create whole worlds. What more can I ask for?

(Cross-posted to my livejournal. Because I can't limit my pretentious ranting to one site, evidently.)