Aspire:

1. To have a great ambition or ultimate goal; desire strongly: aspired to stardom.
2. To strive toward an end: aspiring to great knowledge.
3. To soar.

I used that word in a bio on a social networking site, as in "aspiring writer," and it prompted one of my friends, also a writer, to send me a note that read, "Aspiring? You ARE a writer."

I don't know why someone else had to tell me this. And yet, I still view my writing as an aspiration even though I'm doing it right now—and was doing it yesterday, the day before that, and will be doing more this evening, as well as sharing my latest story with my writing group so they can tear it to shreds (which I'm actually looking forward to). In the past two years, I've had an essay published, three stories accepted for publication, and written and published articles (and even gotten paid for it, which is a relative novelty). On top of that, I've finished a load of other stories as well as the first draft of a novel. So he's right, I am a writer.

But I'm also an aspiring writer. I aspire to write more, to write better. I aspire to have more people read what I've written. I aspire to finish revising the first novel so I can move on to the second, for which I'm already gathering research. I think I'll always be aspiring.

The more I thought about it, though, I decided to take that word off my bio.