When I was a writer

Around this time fifteen years ago, I defended my master’s thesis. That entailed reading a short story I’d penned called “After the Curtain Falls” in front of a faculty committee before answering questions about my meager short story collection three years in the making.

Weeks later, I accepted a diploma conferring upon me a Master of Fine Arts degree in the discipline of creative writing. And I haven’t written since.

If you’d asked me how long I’d been writing before that, I would’ve said, “Always.” I started documenting life at age six in a pink diary with the Hello Kitty character My Melody on the front. Writing was part of my identity, from early sing-song couplets to short stories written for the school newspaper to the intense melodramatic verse of my teenage years. In college, a creative writing minor shaped me into something passably good, and even though I majored in PR and could’ve gotten a job straightaway, I decided to pursue an MFA. Because I was a writer.

Applications were sent to various schools in the southeast and mid-Atlantic, and rejection letters arrived one after the other in the spring of my senior year. The last letter informed me I’d been wait-listed. Just one program that didn’t offer a thanks-but-no-thanks offhand. And when whatever presumably more talented candidate decided to take their superior prose elsewhere, I slid into the vacancy like the runner-up I was.

Now, if you’ve never been in the position of knowing that you weren’t the first choice for something but have the fortune to serve the role anyway, I’ll tell you it’s not all underdog makes good. Instead, it’s like a black ball in your pocket, a reminder you can never quite ignore (but desperately want to keep hidden) that you almost didn’t belong. You wonder who among the faculty didn’t think you should make the cut. Whose remarks on the application rubric indicated that there were stronger portfolios or (perhaps worse) declared ambivalence about your work?

I carried that vulnerability into my first class. My tender impostor underbelly barely hidden, I was one of the first writers to submit a short story for review. The workshop was total evisceration. Imagine putting on the best outfit you have in your closet and having 12 people whose good opinion of your fashion sense is meaningful tell you how fat and ugly you look in what you chose. For a solid 45 minutes. Later, classmates would tell me bearing witness to my misery made them leery to submit their own work. It made me wonder if I could continue for a thousand more days of the same.

I didn’t quit. I suppose there’s victory in not being defeated. A consolation prize in exchange for my confidence. I’d gone from wondering if I belonged to knowing I faced a laborious battle to prove I did. I’d gone from speculating I might not deserve my spot to the brutal realization that maybe I didn’t.

If I were writing this story, here might be a good place for a character moment, where, after some reflection, I would emerge stronger and more determined. This moment of adversity would be the fulcrum of my transformation from confidence-shaken to cloaked-in-conviction. I wish I could say that happened, but instead, I chose the the adventure whereby my confidence died a death by a thousand cuts, and that first workshop was just one slash on the way to burn.

Fast-forward to January of my second year — the midway point. I’d achieved a polite invisibility. I clacked out more short stories that were received without much fanfare but also without ferocity. The cuts were more subtle, an exchange of derisiveness for muted indifference. And while I yearned to break through, I also took refuge in average.

We were abuzz to be in a workshop with a notable visiting writer that semester, the kind of charismatic creative figure who inspires want of approval. So when I found myself in the chair beside his desk reviewing my work, I imagine that I might’ve leaned too far forward, that my face might’ve been too open and hopeful, that my whole demeanor all too eager to please when he said to me, “Ashley, your writing is like a doughnut. Pretty on the outside but without any real substance on the inside.”

Perhaps he spoke it as a challenge; I heard damnation. Perhaps it was sugarcoated (PUN INTENDED) in a metaphor, but the gist was your words say nothing. Its impact on me was profound.

We want to believe our confidence is intrinsic to us — a thing that can’t be taken away unless we allow it. But often, when we need it the most, our confidence is in the hands of others. In the creation process, there comes a time when what you’ve produced must be shared, and, yes, considered with a critical eye. But if the eye belongs to one who is careless with your trust and vulnerability, it shifts from constructive to destructive. Their words are like stones when you’re made of feathers.

If I were writing this as a story, this would be the midpoint, and subsequent action would chronicle the comeback. Cue the montage of earnest pen-cap chewing and fervent scribbling. But it’s not that story. Instead, it was more T.S. Elliot than Rocky Balboa: not with a bang but a whimper.

My last three semesters of grad school were quiet. There were no breakout moments. There were no accolades. I never submitted a single story for publication. I did the work expected of me in a perfunctory way: write when submissions are due, edit others’ work thoughtfully, participate in the discussion. I became the doughnut — pretty on the outside but no substance on the inside.

Graduation wasn’t an exultation; it was a relief. I could leave behind the exhausting charade of being a writer. I could stop trying so hard. I could finally excuse myself from the competition. If anyone asked about writing, I could just say, “I don’t do really do that anymore” or make abstract assurances that I’d come back to it someday.

That was fifteen years ago. The weight of that black ball I’ve carried these many years is familiar in my pocket, a reminder of those collective experiences I reach for when I think of writing again. They are my proverbial hashtag-never-forget.

It’s difficult once you’ve surrendered your confidence to regain it. You have to commit and push and forget and want. And you have to be vulnerable again, knowing that what happened before could happen again. You finger your scars and know that more cuts could come.

And yet, here I am, fingers on the keys, committing, pushing, forgetting and wanting. And it is the beginning again, and if I’m writing this story, it has a different ending.

Related posts:

My dissertation question is How does film & TV present politics through pop-culture, it took me several drafts to get a solid idea of what I wanted to do for my dissertation. The reason I have chosen…

In the previous article, we explained the premise of realizing the trading strategy from the aspects of the introduction of the M language , the basic grammar, the model execution method, and the…

Coal was the fuel source that powered the industrial revolutions of both the UK and the US. These industrial revolutions shaped both countries to what they are today, to a significant extent the UK…