I think a lot more people are writers than believe them to be.
You don't need to be published to be a writer. In fact, publishing is scary. It's also difficult to get a proper, physical-form book published, as opposed to publishing something online by yourself. Between the fear and the difficulty, publishing isn't for everyone. That doesn't make you a writer.
What makes you a writer is writing and enjoying writing. You don't enjoy it every time, but you come to your desk and pour out words to help you cope with life. Congratulations, you're a writer.
But what I want to talk about in this post, mostly, is that fear that's associated with publishing. Posting something online can be terrifying. People have opinions about everything. When you're chronically online like me, you get some idea to what people have opinions on: imperfect representation; "problematic" content, which can be anything from a 17-year-old and 18-year-old dating getting you labeled a pedophile to writing kinky 18+ smut; if you do not somehow behave perfectly, like you reply in a way they didn't like to a comment; writing something that's too long; writing something that's too short; and, you know, the fact your work exists at all.
Lots of people know to just shrug and move on if they have an issue. A few people give unsolicited criticism, both good ("you did this well, but you could improve on that") and bad ("you tried but this isn't very good"). And a very small but very loud and memorable minority absolutely despise everything you do and make sure you know about it. And that's scary!
I call it "the dread of being perceived", and I figure it stems from the same place that feeling anxious about what you do in public and how people think of you stems from.
But that dread is for imagined reactions, not the reality. You can't know the reality until you actually publish. I am sad to say that some of your fear will absolutely come true. Some people are just awful.
But knowing that you will have negative reactions no matter what you do, it's important to make sure you gird yourself against that. For some people, that means they never read reviews, good or bad. For others, they choose to save positive reviews to look back at when they feel bad. That, of course, is after publishing. Before you publish, you need to remind yourself: nobody has seen this yet.
Editors are often professionals who know what they're doing; beta readers are friends who, hopefully, will be honest with you. You'll undergo a lot of edits. A lot of edits. It's been... almost five years (yikes) and I'm still editing Unicorn Valley. Part of that is that I'm procrastinating because it is hard, but part of it is just how much needs to be reworked! And those edits are just a natural part of writing, too.
The people who matter are, always, the people who you care about. The internet will have their opinions, and you need to learn to roll your eyes at the internet, especially the people who are unable to see past their own face and decry everything as bad and wrong.
Your work is important. And whatever representation you give, so long as it is respectful and you put research and effort into it, matters. Be a Neil Gaiman, not a JK Rowling.
And make sure that, despite the fear of being known, you give yourself a shot if publishing is what you want to do. The dread is normal. But you've got this, and I can't wait to see what you make.