Denial, Truth, Writing, and Listening to My 5 year old.

Here’s what’s happening when I write this week.  So I go along, click, clack, writing/typing away and then, suddenly I’m not sure what happens. When I first start, I feel myself inside the story, the plot and characters are just unfolding in front of me; each key stroke flashes a light on the darkness. The darkness is the story–it’s plot, characters, theme.  Writing is this long walk in the dark, and my creating is the light in this darkness. So, I create, the light is in front of me, the way it is when you drive at night and you look ahead and see the light on the road. But you know how when you look way ahead and all you see are the dots and beams of light far in front, and you kind of lose sight of the road? That’s what happens to me while I write.  I start off focused on what’s right in front of me, but, then– I don’t know what happens exactly.  Sometimes, I feel like the story is slipping away from me, so I hurry and look ahead, but all I see is this wall, and I can’t stop my approach to the wall. It’s inevitable. And, the closer I get, the slower my fingers are on the keyboard, until the wall is inches from me and my fingers stop completely.

This isn’t going anywhere…

What are you doing? More vapid, melodramatic, reality show bullshit?

Can you only write first person present tense?

This story is dumb. Really what the hell is it about?

Isn’t this the same story you have written 900 times…

Does the main character always have to reject sex and alcohol because she reads a lot of self help books and/or has a friend who acts as her shrink?

You are a one tricky pony my friend and that trick is up. 

So, then I take a breath, and stop and look around, talk to my daughter–yes, she is with me today as I write at Starbucks, and let me tell you, she is a prolific story teller.  She sits with her My Littlest Pet Shop figures and makes up elaborate stories about pets getting famous or two pets getting married. The greatest thing about her, though, is this total ability to being telling one story, get a little bored or off track of it and just switch it to another story. She is just having a good time. When I just stopped to take a break, I said to her, “I'm just not getting this story.”  She looked at me with her enormous chocolate eyes and patted me on the shoulder, “So just stop, Mom. Do something else.” I know.  I know she is right. Five year olds usually have this whole life thing down much better than grown ups.

“Just stop.  Do something else.”

I finally did. But the story…no, not the story, I’m not sure I give a shit about this particular story, the idea that I can’t GET IT, that’s nagging me.  I keep thinking I can get this…I just have to go back and try harder…

Really?  I don’t know. I worry now that I will do what I did last semester, spend all this time, the whole semester actually rewriting one story to the point where I HATED IT. That story from last semester–I haven’t looked at it since June and have no plans to ever look at it again.

How do I know if that’s what’s happening here?  I don’t hate this story, but since I started to revise it with my mentor’s feedback…I just feel like…See, I can’t even articulate what’s wrong.  I’m at the wall.  Looking at it as I write this. It’s a brick wall. You can’t post anything on it because nothing will stick. You can’t knock it down, and it’s tall. I can’t see the top, so I can’t go around it.

Hello, wall.

The wall doesn’t talk because– hello– it’s a wall. I want it to talk.  I want it to tell me WTF has happened to me since I started school.  Why does everything I have written or that I write feel sucky…? I feel disconnected from my writing.  I feel like I’ve lost whatever I thought I had.  Whatever connection to teenage years and the teenage mind. I feel old. I feel tired. I look back at my writing, and the only thing I really like and feel connected to is Maddie. I am so excited by the new book by the idea of going back and working on the ones that haven’t been published yet. That excites me. I feel connected to that. This short story stuff…I suck at it. More importantly, I am feeling connected to it.

I think I went to school to become the writer I thought I should be because the one I was wasn’t able to get a book contract. Maybe I thought back then, I am not literary enough. I don’t write deep beautiful books about swimming with dolphins or fantastical worlds. And I can’t seem to get the teen chic lit thing down either. My work is not enough…not enough of anything out there now. So I figured maybe I could change. I am a good student, and maybe someone can teach me how to be a real writer.

Aren’t I already a real writer?

That was kind of a major thing to write. I have never written that Truth down. Isn’t that reason–let me go to school so I can learn how to write in a way that gets me a contract–isn’t that kind of a completely unrealistic expectation– a kind of fantasy?  It’s magical thinking. It’s like saying there is a certain formula that leads to publication by a major publisher and that formula can be taught in an MFA program.

I can say this with full confidence: You get an MFA because you take your writing seriously and want to push yourself to grow. 

I don’t know.  Now I need to sit with this realization that I have been writing since January in the hopes that I will become changed into a literary writer who might have a shot at a book deal.  And I have to confront this realization too…that hope, that wish just isn’t coming true.  And, I have to look at the reality of the writer I am and the writer I want to be.

*After reading Joanne's comment I realize that I left something out of this blog.  I might have hoped for a possible shot at a book contract (what MFA student doesn't) but I did go into the program with the desire to grow as a writer and to add that professional credit as a writer and teacher.

Letting go

Funny how in one week, for me at least, my moods and feelings about my writing can fluctuate so much. I guess this is the life of a tortured artist…In my case, however, the torturing is all self induced. The thing is, unlike my teenage years, I am pretty happy in my life. I have an awesome family–my husband, kids, family, my work, and friends. I guess I struggle only in my head because there’s no other struggle really to be had! You know what? I think struggle is overrated and unnecessary. I bet can write better without all the self-induced b.s.

I attempted to write a story that dug deeply into a very painful part/time period in my life. My parents divorce.

And the verdict is…

I failed.

Yep.

I wrote about 22 pages of…blips, fits and starts, with maybe one actual scene…I ended this week feeling like complete and utter crap, too. By Thursday I was ready, yet again, to call it quits with school (my MFA program) and just hang up my proverbial pen–call it a day with the whole writing thing. I had trouble sleeping all week–yes, the heat is really bad and yes, I have a 13 month old…but I also have air conditioning and a baby who is a good sleeper. Suffice it to say, I am my own problem.

Speaking of, so what was my problem with writing this story?

I don’t know, exactly, but here’s what I learned:

You can’t write the story closest to your heart if every time you sit down to work on it, you want to throw your lap top across Starbucks and then stomp on it while screaming obscenities.

This is what I wrote in my journal on Friday:

The words don’t come. There’s not flow. I am blocked. I can’t write the story that’s in my head. It’s not fun. Maybe I am not cut out for this. I feel like I can’t quit. Not pride. Logistically. Quitting means losing a crap load of money, means I won’t get to study with all the fabulous, amazing courageous people at Solstice. But I am failing, and I don’t feel angry. I feel sad. I am in my own way, no one else. Frankly, this IS too hard and perhaps my years of resistance to getting my MFA was warranted, was instinctively right on. I don’t think I am going to make it through because I don’t have anything inside of me to write anymore. Nothing. All the ideas that come up are met with my own resistance, my own voice shaking a finger and saying, “That’s the same crap you’ve been writing. It sucks. Don’t bother. Can’t you do something better? Different? Deeper?”

I dream up stories about girls and the boys they lust/love/like. I want to write those. But when I go to do it, I feel like it’s meaningless and not beautiful, high literary quality. Vapid, Reality Show.

But the advice I keep getting is, write what you want to write. So, I guess this story about the two sisters who are in different ways deeply affected by their father and their parents impending split, which is torturous to write, I guess I have to stop. I don’t want to waste my time sitting here, day after day like I have been in the last week and a half, trying to write a story that just feels crappy inside, each time I sit down. It reminds me of when I dated this boy for a while in high school, and I absolutely didn’t like him romantically, but I kept telling myself I should. He was a “good” guy. We wound up breaking up. I’m not good at faking it.

So I give up this story that I don’t want to write.

Writing was an escape and love for decades for me, and now it’s torture. It feels like I was placed in a Math class, like Calculus, and I never took the prerequisites. The standard I’m holding myself to right now is impossible. I’m not ready. I’m not ready for the 24k run…


This morning, I had a nice, long, figure-out-my-struggle talk with my best friend (and husband). We took a long walk along the water where we live, our baby sleeping in the stroller and our older daughter with my mother. We just walked and talked–without interruption, without losing our train of discussion, and in so doing, I found the space and peace inside my head that just whispered, “Let go” and so…I did. I am letting go of the struggle with this story. In the case of this artist, struggle is not creating beauty. Therefore, I let go of struggle. But I am not giving up on writing. Never.

***Another version of this blog is featured on 5awesomeyafans.com.

I can see clearly now. The rain is gone (sort of)

First, a poem...

Shift

shift
subtle
looking through a more clear lens
like new glasses
going to an eye doctor as the
click, flick
different lens
which one is better
this one
this one

I can see clearly now

I’ve had a shift in perspective in just five days. The shift was slow like click, click, click, then– a-ha! I did a lot of processing about my semester with K.I and K.J–a kind of confession, reviewing, rehashing, etc. I got upset all over again, but it blew through me, and so I finally was “over it”. Then, it became clear, like the first moments after a thunderstorm in the summer. The clouds part, blue emerges, sunlight falls down.

Process

My writing goals have shifted. Before, in the first semester, I felt that I should not focus on the part of craft we writers refer to as “play”. The experimental exercises you might do with a piece that you have been working on. Maybe write a scene from a first person narrative in third. Maybe write a scene from a secondary character’s point of view. (These are things I have since done here at the residency). I wasn’t allowing myself to let go of “product”, of “finishing”. In so doing, I became creatively dead. I felt a pressure to finish. I felt a pressure to make my stories just so. What I needed was for someone to stop and shake me, then say, “Go outside and play.” Play can be very productive.

The Shift

It shifted when I sat with one of my teachers for a one on one. As we talked about my previous semester and what might have gone right and wrong, I realized my focus, before I even started the semester, was to finish and polish, no matter what. Oh, and I did do just that. But what came out was “perfectly fine stories”. As one teacher said, “There’s nothing wrong with your story.” It’s. Just. Fine. But, I want more, deeper. I want to get better. I want to be better than fine.

In my focus to finish I became a mediocre writer, focusing solely on the end result and not being in the moment of the writing, creating, and crafting. I became dull.

I am not dull.


The Risk

It’s risky to push yourself in the opposite direction. I got comfortable being focused on finishing stories, even feeling superior when people would say how they couldn’t finish anything. Well, not me. I. Finish. Everything.

Why Am I Like This?

The mode of “finish” of “product” comes from the past five years (prior to Pine Manor, that is) of having to be the one-woman show of self-publishing and self-induced deadlines. Yes, I have written. Yes, I have studied (attended workshops, classes), but always with this eye on the prize– another completed book for my Maddie series to be self-published or a possible book deal that my agent was seeking for me. I spent time waiting for updates from my agent and also editing with my editor for the third Maddie book. For all intents and purposes, I was living the life of an author– but truthfully not the author I wanted to be. I was kind of a reluctant author. Something was missing.

What was missing, for me, was formalized study of craft. There was more to learn. So, I applied to school. The idea of study, craft, and reading was what I craved after reluctantly stumbling into the author world. I feel like I missed a step.

So, I left my agent and started school, but, also, was in the middle of editing the third Maddie book. It was like two planets out of orbit banging into each other and BAM explosion! The rules and regulations I had been following for world of author contradicted the world of school. The message at school is: don’t think about the world of publishing, focus on craft, while you are here.

And, yet, I still do have my eye on the prize

My original reason for coming here, as I said before, was to hone craft, but also, let’s get REAL. I wanted to know, to tick off the list, that I tried going back to school, studying my ass off, polishing my craft, learning new craft, new perspectives. Improving, growing might just help me towards the goal of a book deal. After trying, in various ways to break in, before I threw my hands up and walked away, relegating writing to “hobby” status instead of MY LIFE, I wanted to make sure I tried every single way to get into publishing. What school is asking me to do is the one thing I haven’t done. Shift my focus off getting published or having an agent or submitting to editors. And, yet, while that is a great “ideal”, reality has to be reconciled with it.

It’s kind of joke to not think about it. Why are we writing if not to share, and isn’t publishing the ultimate sharing, the ultimate– if the tree falls in the forest and no one else is around, if no one hears it, does it matter? I say being heard does matter. Being published does matter.

So how do you reconcile the idea of not thinking about publishing while at school with the reality that, of course, that’s what you want? Here’s the reconciliation, and it’s simple; we want to hone our craft so we can be published. Yet the irony is many get published with shitty craft while others have stellar craft, MFA craft and have no book deal. So, we may not get the brass ring. So, this whole reconciliation ends without a real, solid answer or promise. Again, there is no brass ring. But, you have to try, to strive for the brass ring, because, if you don’t, you won’t know if the MFA is or is not your ticket.

Either way, for me, I choose the path of study now, not only for the hope of the brass ring, but also for the love of craft, study, and community.

Boot Camp, Brussels Sprouts, and Writing– oh, my!

CAUTION:
The following blog has way too many metaphors. That’s probably because I have had SUCH A HARD TIME WRITING over the last 5 months. : )

***

I’m in boot camp – climbing up steep hills while carrying artillery, traversing various obstacle courses, and marching until my feet bleed. I do this in sleet, rain, snow, sunshine– no matter the weather. I get up at dawn and work until dusk. I know that the goal of boot camp is survival. That’s it. Nothing else. Just survive. You don’t have to look pretty or smell good. Just get through it–alive.

I have been in boot camp for these last several months, my first semester of the MFA program at Pine Manor College, and am emerging battle weary. But, thankfully, it’s over, and I’m about to attend residency number two to kick start semester two. So, as a send off and farewell to the semester that was, I give you my parting thoughts.

***

Our program is a rigorous study made up of five 10-day residencies (over a 2.5 year period). Upon arrival home from residency, students begin their independent study, which involves turning in five packets of work, spaced out about a month each– 25 pages of creative and about 10 pages of critical writing (literary analysis)– to a mentor, who is a professional author as well as someone who has been through the same rigorous study (with their own MFA).

***

I went into the program looking forward to working on my creative writing . I finally could justify the hours and hours I spent at Starbucks drinking tea and clacking on the keyboard. I could tell my husband, “But I have to write today–it’s homework!” I specifically wanted to focus on a short story collection that I have been kicking around for a few years. Short stories are much harder for me than novels, which I can bang out in a few months. So, I looked forward to having a teacher help me hone my short story writing.

I pictured myself churning out story after story and my mentor giving me life-changing advice. I pictured us simpatico. I also was convinced that everything he or she was going to tell me would be THE THING that changed my writing. That I would grow and expand. That I would be humbled by my own growth and expansion. The skies would part and my writing Savior would arrive in flowing robes with an ethereal glow. As for the critical writing, I figured it would be necessary but not really a lot of fun. That I would, as my five-year-old daughter does with her vegetables, get that over with first and move on to my “just desserts"– my creative writing.

***

However, as life sometimes goes, I did not get my “just desserts”.

What actually happened was with each packet I turned in, I felt more and more depressed about my own writing. Worse though was that my “just desserts” turned out to NOT be my creative work. Working on my creative work was like being forced to eat the most dreaded vegetable ever–Brussels sprouts.

By the second packet, I wanted to just focus on the critical writing. Let me just keep reading other people’s stuff. Let me focus on how they succeed or fail in their story-telling. By the final packet, I actually pondered quitting the program and getting my PHD in English Lit…That would be so much easier than an MFA. Really. I think it would be. What gut-wrenching-muscle-aching effort is it to analyze other people’s work? Hell, I do that for a living anyway. I’m an English teacher by training. Teacher/tutor/coach by trade. Piece of cake. Almost effortless. Like breathing. Actually, I realized by semester’s end, it’s kind of fun, too. Really, it’s so much easier focusing on other people’s shit, right? It’s kind of removed because it’s not about you, so you can kind of relish in the severity of your analysis. Relish in how much you dissected it, relish in the decoding of it all, like you took apart the VCR and actually figured out how to put it back together.

***

It was the feedback.

With each letter of feedback on my writing I struggled. I struggled to figure out what to do with the feedback and how to do whatever it is I needed to do. With each packet, I would work furiously revising and rewriting based on the notes given. But it was like running up Mt. Washington, without sneakers, without water–hell , without clothes. In the rain. Eating Brussels sprouts.

This shocked me. I wanted feedback. That’s why I signed up for an MFA.

So, what happened?

***

Traditionally, in a class, you have your fellow classmates to commiserate with or to at least bounce things off of, you have other people to encourage you when you feel like giving up–someone other than your teacher. In a class, you have other students to talk you off the cliff when the teacher tells you that you got it all wrong and have to start over. Not that my mentor said those words exactly, but, unfortunately, that’s how I heard the words. I kept hearing, “You’re wrong. You’re ideas suck. You’re stories are vapid. You. Suck. A. Lot.” Again, she NEVER SAID THAT. But I heard that in my head. So, while she may have been criticizing my ideas and my writing, she never told me to pack it in. To forget it because I’m a no-talent asshole. But, again, that’s what I heard.

This same psychological phenomenon happens sometimes with my students–particularly when they are new (as I am to the MFA program): I will give some feedback that’s rather critical–not about them as writers or human beings but about their story or essay– and the look on the student’s face says, “You just completely ran me over with a large Mack Truck and now I am barely alive.” Not only will I notice this slack mouth, half-alive, barely able to inhale look but so will the rest of the students in the class. This is their cue to chime in: “Your story is great! You are such an awesome writer! Just a few more tweaks and this draft will sparkle.” Sometimes my students will come right out and say, “Hannah didn’t just tell you that you sucked, okay? She said that you just need to fix a few things.” Also, quite frankly, teachers aren’t perfect. Sometimes they say things in not the most gentle way, and it can hurt. Having other students around can be good for translation purposes.

Being the teacher, even if you are as I am, not on some kind of self-proclaimed pedestal of all-knowingness, you are in a position of authority. Therefore, no matter what you say– good or bad– it really affects the student. Deeply, intensely, and completely. So, to reduce the intensity and the shock of feedback from the teacher, students need one another. Being in a residency program, you don’t get that immediate support from your peers because you are truly on your own with your mentor. I guess I could have reached out to my classmates but that would have been through email, and I’m not sure how it would have been received if I emailed them and said, “I JUST GOT MY LETTER FROM MY MENTOR AND NOW I WANT TO HANG MYSELF. SO HOW ARE YOU?”

Instead, what I did was not say ANYTHING (although my mentor did sense things weren’t going that great with me and my writing). And, if you know me well, you know I can’t do this, at least without causing some severe anxiety and depression. So after I got my letter of feedback, I would just sort of try and do exactly as my mentor advised, without sitting with the feedback and really processing it. Then, I would get frustrated and feel like some of her feedback didn’t resonate. That maybe she wasn’t understanding what I was trying to do, and hell, maybe I wasn’t conveying what I wanted to do to her because maybe I was still evolving my idea…I think, worse of all, I didn’t pick up the phone and call her and tell her how I was feeling. That was truly stupid because see, I wasn’t alone. I did have her. That’s what she was there for, support and encouragement, just as much as she was there to critique.

It’s also vital to the mentoring/critiquing process that the student give the teacher feedback– that there’s a dialogue between teacher and student about the work. Because the work evolves. It isn’t just– poof! There it is. Feedback cannot occur in a vacuum because writing a story is a creative process, which is not formulaic or linear but circular at times. Crafting a story can be confusing, like when you have one of those thin chains that gets tangled up in itself and you have to carefully work out the knots, sometimes with a pin and it takes a while to figure out how exactly to untie the knot. So, if someone is critiquing your story as it is evolving, when it isn’t ready for a critique, a dialogue between writer and critiquer is vital.

***

What I’m figuring out here in this blog is that I wish there had been more time to talk. Talk about the work I was creating or rather the process I was experiencing with the creation of the work. The other problem was at the beginning of the semester my mentor suggested I do a loose outline of my project. So I did, hating every minute of it because I wasn’t quite ready to do that. Did I tell her this? Nope. I just was the good little student and did it. Then, I assumed I had to follow the outline. Except, I didn’t want to, so I really didn’t.

Additionally, there was a story I was working on, and it wasn’t really fully formed in my head, but I had to send her what I was working on, so I would try really hard to “figure it out” so I could answer her very valid questions about it. What I wanted to tell her was… “I’m not sure yet what I want to do with this.” But, again, I didn’t so…I tried to do what I thought she wanted me to do with it and…it turned into a mess and I got very sad. I wanted to dream and write and enjoy this wonderful opportunity to write . Yet, I constantly felt like there was a certain expectation on her part, and I wasn’t hitting it.

There was way too much struggle, and this was new for me. I have never had a struggle like this with my creative writing.

But the thing is…I felt like maybe she wasn’t understanding me, and I wasn’t really understanding her. See, this is all stuff we could have discussed. Should have discussed. But we didn’t. And it’s that that I truly regret.

***

Thus, with all that struggle, I feel sore. Tired. Weary. Like I did boot camp or climbed that frigging mountain. I ignored my feelings/reactions to the feedback letters. I kept telling myself I was too sensitive and had to “get over it”. I felt sad, I hurt, my muscles ached, and I seemed to wake up sore everyday. It felt like one long intense workout with out rest, like a marathon or something. One that just kept going and going.

But, I wasn’t in boot camp with a drill sergeant. I was a mentee in an MFA program that urges the student to communicate with their mentor about how things are going, really going, even if they are going really, bad.

***

So…

I know I have an abundance of metaphors here– see how my writing is suffering now! ? : ) But both metaphors describe what it has been like to do my creative writing this semester. It’s like eating Brussels sprouts while traversing some kind of boot camp obstacle course that involves climbing up a steep mountain, naked.

Gross.

Yet, I do not want to give up. I want to go through this process of intense study and writing. But how do I stop struggling? My muse is not struggle. It’s like how I feel about my study of yoga– “release into the resistance” is what one of my yoga teacher’s tells us. That and “lay down your arms”. Oh and this good one, “trust your process”. I just have to accept these yicky feelings. Stop struggling and accept where I am. Be in the moment and just sit down, one key at a time, and write.

Also, maybe I should try Brussels sprouts one more time?

Back To School

The following blog is a kind of meditation inspired by this past week at Pine Manor College where I am about to complete my first 10 day residency in the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing program.

It’s hard to not over edit this piece as you can imagine; I have just spent this week dissecting and rewriting my work to the point where everything I write seems wrong some how.

And, yet, in the spirit of “writing naked”, I hand you the following piece:

Part I:
Glowing Objects

I sit at the square table in a low cushioned chair. My teacher, late 40’s, mustached, hair short, spiky but not trendy, is waxing serious about podcasts, Abby Hoffman, and character development. His genius at pulling seemingly unrelated and even odd elements together to illustrate his point is slightly hypnotic-- even if you aren’t quite sure what he is talking about.

I sit so straight up, it’s as if there’s an opening at the crown of my head, an opening where this teacher’s wild, odd brilliance pours into me, and hopefully, transforms me from a good writer to a great one.

As much as I want to focus on this energy pouring into my brain, as engaged in this moment, as hypnotized as I am, something distracts me.

Just to the left of my chair in my overstuffed backpack are two precious items that nag at me, beckon me. A beckoning I feel so strongly that I fear they might actually be glowing, glowing hotly, brightly, trying to get my attention. Now I’m convinced that any moment they will actually develop arms, hot glowing arms, to reach up and unzip the bag, and burst free in all their glowing glory. I glance over at the backpack, surprised when all I see is this ordinary, slumped over, olive green bag. No glowing. No smoke. Nope it’s just me, as usual, overly and hyperly self-conscious about these two items.

I take them with me wherever I go, even places that have nothing to do with writing or reading. I take them on trips to my in-laws and leave them the glove compartment in my car for when I do errands.

Just in case.

Just in case, over the course of conversation or errand running or in-law visiting, the Subject comes up-- oh, you’re a writer? What have you written? Well, actually, POW, look at that, here they are actually. Would you like a copy? I often examine why I feel the need to do this. I have no clear explanation. It might be insecurity, it might be a need to connect with other beings.

So of course I brought them with me to school, to my low residency MFA program, Semester 1. And now, sitting in this class, they have decided to do a light show in my mind, calling attention to themselves and forcing me to take them out.

Okay, not really, but that’s what it feels like. Even though, when I packed them, I tucked them deep into my bag, not really to show anyone, but more to remind me that this is a part of my writer-self, a part I often feel self-conscious about, especially when I do “writer stuff”, like attend a class or retreat or workshop. I carry them much like how I wear a tiny Jewish star necklace, to remind me of who I am. Even if who I am brings up issues of fear or shame or just good old fashion self-consciousness.

I don’t take out my books during the workshop. But the entire time I feel their hot and glowy presence and worry they might just come out on their own.

They didn’t.


Part 2:
Sordid Past

I feel weird about it. About my seemingly, at least to me, “sordid” publishing past.

Why didn’t I just whip out my books for my classmates and teachers to see? Was it because I feared looking like an insecure, egotistical, ass? Was it because I worried it would set a tone for “show off” or “she thinks she knows everything” or “why the hell is she here if she thinks she’s so great?”

Yes. That’s exactly why I didn’t do it.

Within in just hours of arrival, days before that workshop, I realized in talking with some of my new classmates, that I came to this program with a little more “baggage” about publishing and even writing than most of my fellow MFA students. I already have a membership (recently expired) with SCBWI, know the art of the query, understand the frustration of rejection and submission– a.k.a the waiting game. I even know about agents, book signings, and school visits. I know about royalties and Amazon ranking.

In the MFA program, the premise seems to be that you have NOT been published, that you need/want to study BEFORE publication. That we take our work seriously and want real, full lives as writers. Therefore, someone like me, who started off writing and submitting, studying craft at retreats and workshops, someone like me, is well, I don’t know. In the first draft of this blog I said that I felt like a fraud and then an impostor. But now, it’s the second to last day here, and I realize that my classmates and teachers do not feel that way about me. In fact, I don’t think anyone really cares what I did before, the self-publishing. It’s kind of irrelevant. But my background as an author (which, truthfully, I feel weird calling myself) is not the norm among my classmates. And, as usual, whatever is different about me, I obsess about and worry over. I want to fit in and felt, at first, this might be the thing that makes me NOT fit in. It turned out to not be, however. It turned out, it didn’t matter.

But, none-the-less, I am self-published, which in and of itself, might be viewed by some of the serious writer students, MFA students, as fraudulent and “self indulgent”.

Don’t get me wrong here. NO ONE during this week has said this or made me feel this way. My anxiety, once again gentle reader, (those of you who are new, please take the time to read some previous blogs and you will see my history of self-flagellation) is all in my head.

And I realize, finally, why I am so judgmental about my self-publishing. Because I did it, I published the books myself because I couldn’t make it the other way. So, really, my reasons were more out of defeat than anything else. I guess I can’t quite get over that, get over my failure to break in the way I wanted to, with a book deal. That's why I feel weird calling my self an author. I am not sure if I have earned that, not because a self-published author isn't a real author but because I didn't want to self-publish. I did it because I failed the other way.


Part 3
Secret’s out

During the course of the week, I let people know, as needed, that I self-published some books. As it comes up, as conversation leans toward discussion of publication and submission, I offer, simply, my own experience. Ironically, I feel by not telling, I would be fraudulent. I would be pretending to be innocent and naive to the ultimate reality of life after the MFA, the thing that we will face, hopefully, later on.

But one thing I did not do was take out those hot, glowing, eager little books and show them, in all their glowing glory, to anyone. If I did, it was brief, like taking them out to get other things, a brief flash, but not to share. Yet, I carried them with me. Every day.


Part 4
Relief

I have to say it’s a relief to finally be somewhere in the writing world where publication is NOT the focus in the process. Where it is not emphasized, in fact, it’s discouraged from the dialogue for 1st and 2nd semester students. I guess a writer doesn’t need to know the ugly realities of publishing while they are in the process of honing their craft. It is distracting and burdening. It was distracting and burdening to me all these years. So, for now, I feel relieved. Back in my regular life, I even tell my own writing students, let’s focus on craft, publication will come later, and it’s a relief to have teachers telling me that here. Leaving that subject off to the side keeps the purity of the art we are trying to create. Entering the world of query letters and submission means losing the innocence and purity of just working on craft. So, it makes sense to not emphasize that.

Part 5
Acceptance

I am here because I want to study craft more. Not because I don’t think I’m a good writer already but because there’s a greatness deep inside that I’m too close to myself to be able to pull out and make room and space for. That a set of good teachers and talented fellow writers will help. I’m not deluding myself into thinking that this is the brass ring though. But, now, I can challenge the assumptions and insecurities I have about writing and my self-publishing with something I can stand on. My craft will be validated through receiving my MFA. Instead of worrying about the sales of my book as validation, I can stand on a body of work and a degree that proves-I did it.

My contradictory feelings about being self-published, pride with shame, power with fear. I can’t fully explain. I haven’t reconciled the feelings. I used to try and in the trying I would struggle.

My theme in my life is letting go of struggle, coexisting with any pain or conflict, with not struggling with the frustration around me and my not getting a book deal. I want to just be, be whatever/whoever I am and not justify it.

Maybe my past experience in publishing can help, help me and my fellow writers. But I think the real challenge is for me to not let one world collide with the other. Now, I can have separateness between craft and business. Finally.

Part 6
Conclusion

I stand in between the chairs that form rows in an old, dark wooded, high ceilinged room where Virginia Woolf sits like a guru in a painting. This is where we sit each night and listen to our teachers read. The hour and a half always flies by as we travel far away into our mentor’s stories hypnotized by their voices reading from their own work.

But of course I’m distracted. We haven’t begun yet and are just arranging our hats and coats and bags around our seats. My spiky-haired, mustached teacher is in front of me doing the arranging winter gear dance the rest of us are doing. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch him. I stall sitting down because once I sit, I will lose the courage and those two books will start to burn brightly in my bag and will probably ruin the rest of the evening for me. I stall by arranging and rearranging my hat, coat, and gloves tucking and folding and moving and shifting. My teacher is about to sit, and I know if I don’t act now I will lose the moment, the opening. So, I reach into my bag and grab them. They are cold from being in my backpack all day while I traipsed around campus. I turn to my teacher quickly and thrust the books at him. I mumble something about wanting him to have them and he says I was going to ask you… We both laugh. It’s clearly awkward but he asks me to sign the books and I do, fumbling and uncertain of what to write.

No one around us really notices the exchange, and if anyone does, they don’t say anything. When I sit down and the first reader begins, I am wholly focused, completely engaged, and not once thinking about those two glowing objects now in my teacher’s bag.