Us tortured souls

I feared fiction writing as an undergrad—even as a high school student. Those kids had it so together, smoking Clove cigarettes or Camels, waving their hands against the tapestry of their rumpled clothes. They were assured, positive that they were brilliant and alive, and, me, I felt intimidation and insecurity, and held them to me like Linus’ blue blanket.

Graduate school was worse. I went to a good school, a good English program, but I fell through the cracks. I watched all my sparkly peers get endorsements and encouragement and thesis help from the top professors. I watched them laugh together over literary theory. I watched the back claps and the promises of letters of recommendation and career advice.

When I asked for a letter of recommendation, I was asked, “Who are you again? Can you resubmit the papers you wrote for my class with my comments on them?” No career advice. No back claps. I just never fit into that program for some reason.

And I rebelled against it. I dyed my hair pink, I pierced my nose and my lip, “You won’t let me in your secret society? I’ll give you a reason not to let me in your secret society.”

Amazingly, at the very end of my very last semester there, the leader of the cool clique said to me, “You’re obviously intelligent, what did you think of last night’s reading?” And I was in. For two whole weeks, I was in the in crowd, because he said so, he acknowledged me. I hated him more than when I hated him from keeping me out. And besides, he was just pumping me for information because he didn’t do the homework.

The English Department elitism kept me out of fiction for fear that my insecurities would be discovered. I’d never wave my cigarette right; I’d never have the intentionally careless wardrobe or the signature all black clothing. I liked flowers and nature and Walt Whitman, not bridges to nowhere and Camus (who they never understood anyway).

Now I’m making up for it. Now that I understand they were never that casually brilliant themselves, that I was never as inadequate as I feared, I’m making up for lost time.

I meant this blog post to be an outline of my self-taught fiction process, but it’s become my own manifesto. I get Camus. I get Whitman. I get broken bridges and flowering trees. I didn’t need the in crowd to teach me what I already know, I only needed the courage to see what I have inside.