coming back home

July 27, 2018
Why

I’ve been in the midst of a panic attack for five days now, all because I am supposed to write a few paragraphs of copy for a website I’m being paid to create. Every time I sit down to write out the simple, expository text about a business, I freeze up, get sick to my stomach and retreat into the comfort of YouTube videos and a light snack. Things are not going well, OK?

When speaking to a close friend who is collaborating with me on the site, I mentioned that I was anxious about the copy. “But aren’t you a writer?” She asked, confused by my apparent horror at having to produce something other people will read.

It was an incredible relief to know that someone finally figured out that I am a fraud. It’s about damn time.

I studied creative writing in undergrad, but managed to graduate with almost no portfolio thanks to professors that just wanted me out of their program. I was paid to write for a small newspaper for about six months back in 2011, but quit in favor of menial jobs that emphasized not writing every day. Now, I am in a professional program that doesn’t require or particularly encourage publications, so I am able to eke out a master’s degree with hundred or so pages of writing read only by a few professors and call it a day. While I have been actively avoiding writing for 11 years, I’ve had dozens of decent ideas, and as many false starts at blogs, screenplays and essays. I can’t get out of my own way enough to write any of them. The idea of doing so much as writing to a congressman makes me terrified.

Yet, at the same time, the instinct to write things hasn’t gone away. It bubbles up about once a year and I follow it until it gets scary, which is usually about 800 words into any given piece. I don’t revise. I don’t edit. I either scapr the draft or hit “publish” and forget. It’s killing my once creative soul a little bit at a time AND it’s giving me panic attacks. Something’s got to change.

I can either continue to be a fraud who produces okay content after a few missed deadlines, or I can finally do the thing that every professor, author and expert has told me to do — just write a lot more words every day until it’s easier.

After buying and reading the first few chapters of Ann Handley’s Everyone Writes, I’ve decided to just write more and unlearn all the things my Alabama education ruined about writing. I’ve set a timer and am 22 agonizing minutes into my first day as less of a fraud. I am publishing this on brand new blog and not sharing it with anyone, not even my own husband, who has been my cheerleader and editor for 6 years of continuously giving up on writing. When I’ve reached some artificial milestone, I’ll share it…maybe. (Note: I am now crossposting to Medium, but I won’t be self-promoting this or focusing on feedback. 30 days from now, maybe I’ll do something more focused and share it broadly.)

Let’s say 30 days? I can’t promise consecutive days, but I’m going to try my damndest.

Damn. 500+ words in 30 minutes. Maybe I’m not a fraud after all.

July 31, 2018
Writing about Writing and Reading

Well…writing EVERY DAY was ambitious, but I did have to write for my freelance gig, so I’ve still kept up pace…kind of. I’ve also tried to read a little more to offset the high volume of outright garbage I consume on a daily basis. Right now, I’m reading Daring Greatly by Brene Brown and trying to slowly wind through Everybody Writes by Ann Handley. I ‘read’ about one book a month on audible, but I’m taking my time with Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou since it’s long and quite interesting.

I’ve run from reading just as much as writing because it always feels as if there’s an endless stream of things I should read, love or be inspired by. Like, I’ve been starting the same copy of Ten Thousand Years of Solitude for 9 years and have regularly pretended to know the plot of Life of Pi so as to avoid being outed as a bad reader.

If it weren’t for nonfiction and the occasional flash-in-the pan novel, I’d be almost totally unread as an adult. For most of my adolescence, I didn’t know that anything existed outside fiction and stuck to the ultra-readable zeitgeisty stuff. Studying English lit in college meant staying from JK Rowling and Kurt Vonnegut to tomes that required deeper analysis. I wasn’t terrible at the analysis part, but I never really enjoyed the self-congratulatory discussions of symbols and archetypes among people that cared more about being heard than growing or learning. I actively avoided fiction and opted for poetry classes as often as I could. Netflix streaming emerged when I was a sophomore, and I quickly turned to analyzing TV and movies as often as I could to avoid having to work my way through books. It’s pretty mortifying.

When I started creative writing courses, I quickly discovered that I absolutely suck at writing fiction. I was devoid of creativity as an anxious and depressed 19 year old, but after some traumatic events when I was 20, I pretty much stopped wanting to create fictional worlds and escaped into the easier realm of expository verse and, regrettably, very bad elegies. I managed to graduate somehow, but I wish I could have done more work that I could be proud of.

My memory is also pretty dreadful. I can usually only recall high plot points and singular scenes from self-described favorite books and movies, which makes things like book clubs and general fandom daunting if not impossible. It’s hard to commit to a book that I will inevitably forget within a few months.

I realize now that a lot of this could be related to undiagnosed attention deficit disorder or a great byproduct of my very much diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder. I am sick of letting the broken parts of my brain dictate my life, so I’m trying to read, write and remember more while I have the time and luxury to do so! It’s frustrating to look back on the past year and realize I could have read and written so much more, but my brief dances with Handley and Brown are making me push myself to stop focusing on what I lack and work on something today.

So here I am, quick drafting at 1AM so that I can say I wrote for 30 minutes even though it was hard, scary and not any good.

I’m already done! Way easier than college.