I didn’t know yet I was reading the wrong books-that there were books out there for me. I didn’t live in a world where books were made by small people like me. I came from a small town of loggers and teachers. When I was growing up in a small town, I’d flip to the back of every book I read, searching for the author bio. You might as well wander out into the frosty night of your small town, shouting I’m a writer at the cows as they stare back, dead-eyed, which is, at last, the one true and perfect response.īefore you can say you’re a writer and mean it, first you must believe you’re a writer. Do you know how to explain to your Great-Aunt Sally that it’ll most likely take months to hear back about that story you wrote? That when do you hear, it’ll probably be a no? Repeat after me: Aunt Sally, I don’t want to talk about it.īut at some point, more than likely, you’ll get this itch. Most of the world probably won’t understand anyway. You don’t have to be able to eloquently talk about your work in public. You don’t have to say what you’re currently working on. I know some editors with novels in their nightstands. You don’t have to tell anyone you’re a writer. Two fat rolls sat on my plate, reminders of how hungry I was for all of this. Everyone else had only vegetables and meat. I noticed I was the only one who’d taken the dinner rolls. Other writers sat at the table, eager-eyed and salivating. I’d never been in a room with an agent before. It was my first literary conference and I was sitting across from an agent and a book reviewer. It’s the place where all the things I’m too afraid to say in life end up. For if nothing else, I’ve found this shame works on the page. So instead I’m trying to make friends with this shame. But I’m old enough to know better than to believe in those islands. I want to imagine publishing a book will fix all of this. I hate that I preoccupy myself with such ordinary concerns. (I’m not ashamed I don’t have an MFA, although sometimes I wish I had one.) That I feared the prospect of conducting interviews so much I majored in literature instead. I’m ashamed I was too shy to major in journalism in college. Not because 32 is old but because my goal was to write a book by the time I was 30. I’m ashamed I’m thirty-two and still haven’t finished writing the book I started three years ago. Before you can say you’re a writer and mean it, first you must believe you’re a writer. Grraa, I say in response, or I feel I say, hoping these guttural noises make sense to the listener. “What do you write?” or “I’ve always thought of writing a book myself.” I hate the way my face contorts and my breathing intensifies when someone asks me what my book is about. How one expects them to follow up with la-de-da and a twirl. I hate the way people’s faces light up, as though I’ve told them my secret kink.
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