Staying on the Path
Dispatches from Somewhere in Mid-Writing Life
A few months ago, I went to a reading by one of my favorite writers, Melissa Febos. The reading was held in conjunction with the VCU MFA Creative Writing Program (aka my alma mater). The lecture room was small and I immediately recognized a couple of former professors. Instead of suffering through an awkward “Remember me?” song-and-dance, I opted to take a seat where I could safely observe the current MFAs, saving seats for friends and sharing opinions on a recent poetry collection. It felt impossible that I had once been just like them, eager to take part in everything about the program, casually tossing off names of poets and authors.
The reading was an excerpt from her new memoir, The Dry Season. It was insightful and funny, because, duh, Melissa Febos. Once the book signing lines began to form, I felt the familiar buzz in the crowd, a mix of eagerness and awkwardness to be seen by the author in some way, to have a moment as they signed their book in Sharpie. I felt pleasantly detached from the hunger to be seen, which was sort of bittersweet.
Several years ago, still deep in the undertow of grief, I went to a local author’s book sale. Saying hello to a writer friend, I was introduced to the other authors. Soon came THE QUESTION: “So, what are you working on?”
I immediately felt like I was under a spotlight. They knew I had botched delivering edits to my novel! They knew I was flailing! I don’t remember how I responded, but I do remember the feeling: I had failed. In reality, it was just small talk, no one there was accusing me of anything, but being in a group of my peers who had published one or two books while I was still floundering felt less than ideal. They had done it in the correct order–MFA, teaching, publishing. I was a mish-mash of all of it.
When I was still in the MFA, I remember reading a long FB post someone wrote about the “anointed writer” and the MFA. Basically, the “anointed” writer is deemed the best writer in the co-hort, has a professor or mentor who champions their work and guides them (a unicorn IMO), and writes letters of recommendation to residencies, maybe even connects them to their agent. In other words, they are on The Path, the golden path of the MFA: risk debt for your art and ye shall be rewarded with a publication deal.
For the un-anointed, or those without a Unicorn Mentor, it’s going to be a lot harder to make your way. The last decade my writing career has been less on The Path and more trudging through the poppy fields.
I still want for others to read my writing, but I’m far less stringent about how (or when) that happens.
Creativity is nonlinear. Like many things in nature—even the galaxy in which we live—creative growth happens in spirals. We’re always going round and round, circling back to the same places we’ve been before, except with new insights, new understandings, new depth of perception. Of course, this might not be what we want to hear when we are aching to break through, when we see our peers publishing books, staging shows, finding agents, collecting praise like fruit falling into open palms. We want to be told: keep going and you’ll catch up.
But there is no catching up. Because there is no race.
–Jeannine Ouellette, from her recent essay, The Crooked Rhythm of Becoming
Over the years, I’ve come to realize the “anointed writers” are often the ones who are better at raising their hand, asking for help or following up when they do meet someone who might be able to help them. I am far more able to share my resources with others and less able to share my vulnerabilities. Maybe it started in childhood, when I was always trying to be a good student and to not be in any trouble and cause my parents stress; they had enough stress in their own marriage. I still have a problem with time management and asking for help. I savor praise and then kind of let it get dusty on a shelf.
I’m also the type of writer who is happy to keep fixing and re-fixing my writing, getting 75% done and then abandoning it to start a new project. Production is not a problem, delivery is–which is how I ended up with two almost-complete novels at the end of my MFA and now have one almost-complete memoir. I joke I’m a hoarder of my writing, but now I think it might be true. I know it’s all part of my creative process, constantly coming up with new ideas, a new angle, a way to perfect. It gives me someone to be, a project bigger than myself, to be “working on X” feels like something meaningful. When you are continually in this state, you can avoid the dreaded “What next?”
Along with this “working on X” state, comes a love of workshops and opportunities to learn craft. Over the last five years, I’ve taken a lot of courses, some multi-week, others just a few hours. I’ve downloaded guides and templates on how to understand structure, how be better, faster, more of a different type of writer.
I’ve tried planners and flowcharts and phone reminders, but the only thing that really, truly works for me is knowing that there is an audience (hopefully?) waiting for something I’ve created. This Substack and the 50+ followers has helped me pull my thoughts together and, by doing that, I’ve learned a lot about my writing process and how to be honest with myself.
As a girl, I dreamed about the perfect dollhouse, now I fantasize about the moment when I would finally reveal what I’d been making in the garage and be suddenly seen, understood, and adored–or at least get to stay in a nice hotel. These rewards really took the edge off life, carried me through the endless cleaning and cooking and caring and working. As a child, I knew these weren’t just fantasies. One day I really would leave this house, these people, this city, and live a completely different life.” –Miranda July, All Fours
A couple months ago, my friend and author, April Sopkin asked me to participate in a Q & A for her Substack, SOON. It revealed some things that I had not fully admitted to myself:
It has been at least five years since I’ve written fiction.
My mornings are sacred, which was not always the case.
Living alone is as much of a hurdle to the creative process as having a house full of needy family members. It’s a different hurdle, but it’s a hurdle.
My thoughts around what success and ambition look like have changed, gotten looser and more human.
I’m still a writer.
Community is key. It doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s community, it just has to exist.
I have a writing group that has been meeting monthly for nearly 20 years, we share essays and short stories and novels. I have another virtual “tree house” monthly meetup group with two of my best friends from the MFA program who live on opposite sides of the country. I have pop-up writing times at coffee shops and other writing-conducive spaces with local writer friends, and I have another virtual writing/accountability writing group on Substack.
Nothing about my life this last decade as a writer or as a human looks like I thought it would. My mainstay has been my friends and my hodge podge writing community IRL and virtual forms, not a list of publications. Whatever you need to do to keep writing, don’t wait for it to appear, build it.
Speaking of Community!
Richmond friends–tomorrow, Sunday, June 1, I’ll be helping to facilitate a Q&A with April for her Vis Arts Residency finale. It’s a casual book swap and all about making community connections. Please come out if you can! Details below.
"Community is key. It doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s community, it just has to exist."
This sentence resonates. Gathering a new community of women writers has been the biggest surprise and reward of publishing on Substack.
Community implies a shared ethos, a center that holds. Isn't it also, you've made me wonder, a place where everyone meets everyone else where they are, who they are -- unicorns and nematodes. We write at our own pace with varying success. We write because we must.