Literary Aims & Romanticizing the Struggle
I hope to change my habit of “romanticizing the struggle” into romanticizing my life: bringing in as much literature, bookish, and writerly things as I can.
American poet Mary Oliver once wrote,
“What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
When we seek inspiration and fulfillment in our lives, it’s easy to focus on grandiose goals. But what about the little things? Perhaps bringing more of what makes you feel most like yourself is terribly underrated.
Looking back, five years ago in 2019, I was a twenty-something and working as a bookkeeper, managing a Piggly Wiggly.
After years of studying creative writing from books from the public library, and other life events like the loss of my mother, I began thinking about how to do just this: bring more of what I loved into my life.
In this blog, I hope to chronicle some of this journey, thus far! As we learn, success isn’t always a single path, or even a linear progression, but rather what we make of it.
I suspect most aspiring writers have their self-conscious, hiding their WIP (work in progress) in a desk drawer phase. This was that era, for me. But perhaps the most important thing I learned was that my goals may look different from conventional paths, but I could make it my own.
But what would this look like? I started by bringing literature and writing into my everyday life:
· Reading those Classics that had been waiting on my TBR list.
· Connecting with other people that already inhabit the literary world: readers, writers of all sorts.
· Writing more!
The list went on. But this was a great place to start. I dusted off a whimsical work of fiction I’d been working on since high school, and this was my first completed work. Carefully scrawled in ink-stained notebooks, then later typed up on an old computer. Having been homeschooled, I began to research the next steps, which led me to the concept of querying.
While my first attempt at querying in 2017 received the dreaded Form Rejection Letter, looking back at the query letter I sent, I can now see how far I’ve come in my writing journey. Knowing more of the expectations for query letters and presenting professional pieces of writing, I would now have approached the entire thing differently. Whether it was my rambling wordiness or lack of following query-letter-conventions with my first-born query, I’ve learned so much since then.
Sure, Rejection letters are heartbreaking, especially because the writing we create can be so close to our hearts. But in my case at the time, I wasn’t ready for this step. While in other cases, your work may just not be for the agent.
That is where the knowing anecdotes of greats like Stephen King about the hundreds of “yellow slips” (back in the day) that they received come as welcome inspiration; this part of the process is normal.
Or my funny, self-deprecating tradition I started —
a Gmail folder entitled “A Record of Rejections,” based on L. Frank Baum’s (of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) folder of the same namesake.
By incorporating literature into my life in different ways
(more to come on this!) …
I hope to change my habit of “romanticizing the struggle” into romanticizing my life: bringing in as much literature, bookish, and writerly things as I can.
After 2 years of querying, writing, and making literary connections, this led me to embark on my next bookish pursuit: my BA English with History and Writing minors at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods college.
Oh, and turning in my Piggly Wiggly uniform in favor of new adventures…
