Sometimes One is All You Need

When I was in college I fancied myself as being too punk rock to do things like study, but I did manage to make an effort in my creative writing class. I wrote a perfectly dreadful story—based on a British punk rock movie starring Adam Ant—about a futuristic society (in 1998!) where people go around beating each other to death for fun. The professor had no choice but to give me an A on it because, as loathsome as it was, he couldn’t find that it was badly written, just, as he dryly noted in the margin, overly determined to be shocking.

The class discussion was uncomfortable, to say the least. My classmates were appalled. One girl started crying while she told us she couldn’t read the whole thing because it made her sick to her stomach. Another girl wrote a poem as a sort of rebuttal, about city people who think they’re so cool but they’re really dead inside. (She was incensed by “kids who are all about orange hair and purple shoes.” Snap! I am a redhead and I had a pair of purple Mary Jane high heels.) In short, they all hated it and, I was pretty sure, they hated me for subjecting them to it.

I thought they were a bunch of babies. But still. That writer part of me was in there, buried deeply under the mountain of desperate insecurity that was buried under the façade of rebellion and indifference. And that tiny little writer was stung to have my story so roundly despised. I sat in the classroom feeling like I was being pelted with rotten tomatoes and poked with pitchforks and I tried not to care.

But there was one person in the class whose opinion I couldn’t pretend didn’t matter. The woman who sat behind me was a recently widowed housewife who was going back to school. She had always been genuinely nice to me, despite my orange hair and purple shoes. The others could bite me, but I suddenly felt like a big asshole for writing something that might hurt her feelings since she had just gone through the death of her husband. My thin façade was crumbling—I sucked and I knew it and now the whole class knew it, even the one person I liked.

Except she didn’t see it that way. Her soft voice began to drown everyone out.

“I disagree with everyone,” she said. “I really liked this story. It was supposed to be disturbing. It was supposed to make you angry.” She thought I’d really captured something important about casual violence in our society and what the future could hold. She was almost indignant that the others in the class didn’t see how good it was.

I’m pretty sure I started crying, at least a little.

After class I thanked her profusely for sticking up for me and over the years I’ve never forgotten. As a depressed, self-involved teenager it was certainly a pleasant surprise, having a grown-up not treat me like a pest or a disease. But as a writer I’ve grown to understand what a gift I got that day in class—an audience, a reader who truly appreciated my work. I didn’t necessarily deserve it, but I definitely needed it.

I'm a Writer

There was a time when I didn’t think about rejection. I didn’t think about it, because I didn’t know about it. I was new and shiny and naïve. I wish I could get back to that place in my mind, when all I would do is write and delight in what I created. I’d sit at my desk pushing myself ahead with my words, my goal—to write a book, fiction. The word novel sounded too snooty to me at that point and I choked on describing myself as “a writer.”

Back then, I’d wake up in the middle of the night with an idea and I’d write it down on an index card next to my bed. And then I’d get up early, sometimes 4 a.m., while the house was quiet, typing at dawn. All I really wanted was to go from point A to point B, logically, and to tell an interesting story. But that’s not the whole truth—like most people, I wanted to write a novel. And when I polished my words and it all made sense, I thought I was done. But then I learned about revision and how a skeleton needs flesh and depth, and I kept going, revising. And when I was told it needed more, I took classes, workshops, joined critique groups. And then I really became a writer. I wanted to dig as deep as I could.

Now that I’ve left my bubble of creativity and have joined the marketing masses, I want to go back to being that person who can barely eke out the words, “I’m a writer.” Because along with my new found confidence, this knowledge that I’m a writer, I’ve become over-informed about the way things work. I frequent writer’s forums. I hear. I see. I learn. And as I send out my queries, I am aware of the “brutal” state of the adult fiction market and about the almost impossible odds of publication. I am no longer soothed by the notion of the crappy books that are out there and published—because I know that doesn’t apply to me. I am no longer encouraged by statements like, “it’s a numbers game,” because I know that isn’t true. I used to think if you write something worthy of publication, you will be rewarded with publication. But I know this isn’t true either. None of it makes any sense. It might not even be fair. I have no control over any of it. And, I’ve learned there are tons of authors who don’t get agents, and tons of authors with agents who can’t sell their books.

Like I said, I know too much.

The challenge is to come out the other end and find the beginning again. This is where I find myself now, trying very hard not to be paralyzed by things that are not in my control. The easiest thing would be to get that validation, that external pat on the back to keep going, publication. And believe me, I’m still holding out for that. But because I’m a writer I must adopt that writerly attitude that I’m sick of hearing about, that you’re sick of hearing about. PERSEVERE.

It’s that coach-in-a-movie speech we all tell ourselves, “You call yourself a writer? Then pick yourself up Bucko and WRITE!”

It’s good advice. I like it best when I imagine Billy Bob Thornton delivering the punch line. And it’s all you can do. So, I’m heading in that direction; this whole journey—up and down, a roller coaster, a learning process.

“The challenge is to come out the other end and find the beginning again.”

I like this advice. I might even follow it.

Liz