look and despair

I had a weird memory just tonight. I guess I'm getting old enough now to have unsolicited memories just shake right free inside my head, like big ol' limbs tangled up in dead wood that sometimes come randomly smashing down to disastrous results for the picnic. I can figure out where this one came from almost the way you can track back a weird dream: I was looking at somebody's facebook thing, somebody who was complaining about not being able to write fiction after being traumatized during a particularly critical session of a creative writing fiction workshop. Then I thought about my own writing and how boring.

Sometimes I feel like an impostor with "my writing." At Hollins, I met all these passionate, talented authors who would say things like I will die if I do not write and Writing is my life. And I don't feel like that. I've never felt like that. When I read the aforementioned facebook thing, I tried to imagine that circumstance: a writing rejection so utter and personal and debilitating that I could never feel the energy to write again.

So to the memory:

It was a final party of my second Hollins year, held at the house of the visiting writer in residence: a very famous writer in residence. Anyway, he had just been my teacher for the semester, and I was still not over being excited to just be in his presence. (There are rare people in life who never become exhausted with seeing you, and are genuinely thrilled to see you every time they get to--I was not one of those for him, I was just excited because he was funny and new and fairly famous and I liked his work.)

Anyway, he sat down beside me, and put his hand on my knee, and he said, "JessJessJess, you know, I heard a lot about you before you ever got into my class. There was a lot of "buzz" about you." I leaned my body forward the way a person does when they are readying themselves for a very splendid compliment and trying to make sure they spring back exclaiming humbly and dismissively at the right moment. No, no, not me, I'm just an ordinary girl. Whaaaat? I've won a writing contest I didn't know I was even entering, willy wonka style? I will accept this cash prize onlygrudgingly. 

"And when I read your first piece of fiction..."

Uh-huh.

"I couldn't believe..."

I'd like to thank...

"...how bad it was."

I remember sitting there, blankly, feeling him pet at my thigh like I was a confused golden retriever, and thinking wait what. He didn't have a larger point. He was just sort of rambling about how maybe I should stick to my breadwinners of poetry and essay and maybe never ever ever please god don't write fiction again because fiction was very hard and I wasn't good at it.

Me, so, I was used to being praised. I was often a big fish in a little pond with my writing before Hollins, and I did pretty well there. And here was this old famous dickbag with a bunch of fucking bird poems in the New Yorker telling me I'd done something badly--not just badly, but laughably bad, worthy of scorn and going on about. I blinked softly and dumbly in the fading spring dogwood light.

Almost immediately, I began to ignore and dissolve this advice and humiliation. It wasn't some kind of weird denial. I just really, honestly didn't care. I thought "Well, whatever, asshole." Not that it's good. Not that I wanted to ever publish it, or even show it to anybody. I literally do not even remember what short stories I cooked up for him; now, looking back, I'm sure they did suck. (I think it was a long series about a youth group who literally killed their youth pastor thinking he was Jesus, or something? I don't know, it's fine. I believe it was bad.) I never was a big fiction writer. When I did it, I just did it for fun, and I liked doing it.

And I immediately started doing it again. I went home and wrote something I loved writing. It's fine! I knew it was bad! That's not the point. Not for a second did I think to myself "Oh no, something's wrong with my talent, I should strip away any joy associated with this and replace it with shame."

I genuinely feel that about my writing sometimes.

My best friend could comment on this post and say, "Jess, it is so terrible to read your words." And I'd feel like, 'okay, yeah, that's fair, okay, okay, maybe less long run-on filled posts about my feelings. I should have cut some stuff." I'd love to say that it was some byproduct of my fancy training, but it's probably not. I like real criticism about my writing, and if you're just trying to make me feel inferior while touching my leg too much, I don't care at all.

I think I can honestly say I don't have anybody who it would crush me if they thought I was a total hack. Is that... confidence? I bet not.  I can be bad at confidence as a person. This isn't some cool statement of agency. I have people in my life who it would crush me if they thought I was bad about other things. Personality things. I've even recently had that experience of hearing something about myself that made me want to jump off a fucking cliff. But not about writing.

I write constantly. I write garbage. I create Mcdouble after Mcdouble of immediate satisfaction for myself, and then I cram the wrappers down into the backseat of my car where I never go and only clean it out occasionally. I love that about it. And maybe that's why I'm not a real writer. And that's fine.