Fear of writing

I never took a creative writing class in college

I never took a creative writing class in college.¹ I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t think it was actually a thing. I loved books and I loved creating stories, but it was incomprehensible to me that I could actually combine those things and write books. I put my talents into writing long letters to my friends.

I wanted to be a writer but I had no idea how such a thing might happen. My best guess was that someone would read one of the letters I wrote to my friends and send me a check, saying, “Here is money. I’m going to turn this letter into a novel.”

In many ways, that’s still how I want it to happen.

A great trouble was my misunderstanding about revising. Mostly that I thought it was a solely process for checking grammar. I was under the impression that revising, as I now know it, was for wimps, to paraphrase Gordon Gekko. 

This is the exact opposite of how I looked in college, actually.

I thought if I was a real writer, the writing would just flow out of me, and the confusing part about all of this was that the writing did flow out of me, but then when I read it all over to check for proper comma placement, I’d be discouraged by how terrible the writing turned out to be, and I’d close the document, written on a Brother word processor the size of a microwave that, when printing, essentially turned into a typewriter, which was a real bear when I finished a paper at 11 pm and had to print it out before my first period class the next morning and my roommates would wake up grumbling at the super loud clackening.²

See? Opposite of Michael Douglas / Gordon Gekko

Over the years, I’ve realized how wrong I was about so many things. I was wrong about what writing and revising meant. Writing anything is an accomplishment, and it’s a miracle to have a first draft pour out. It’s a joy. It is a joy, as well, to go in and tear it to shreds in order to make it better. A joy and a necessity.

I read a good book and I’m overwhelmed by the how of it. How did the author write it? Tell me how exactly. How long did it take? What was their initial idea and how much did it change? Did they write at their kitchen table or in a coffee shop, in their cubicle during their lunch break or in a cabin at Yaddo? I obsessively read about writer habits, not because I think any of them is the magic key, but because I want to try them all on for size, to see if anything fits, to see if it makes me feel more like a writer.

I wish I had taken a creative writing class in college, but I know why I didn’t. I wasn’t ready to face the reality of the work, the truth of all the toil that goes into writing and revising. I was still in a place of believing the first draft should be almost final, but deep inside me I surely knew that the work of it all would be to take that first draft, which took hours to make, and break it apart to build it up again. I wasn’t yet ready to face that process. I do regret it, though. I wish I’d gotten started on all of this so much earlier. It would have been so good for me to hear, “What you write is good, and now it’s up to you to do the work to make it amazing.” 

My way through is the basic knowledge that books get written only when I write them. They become good only by the messy work of revision. I didn’t think this process would still be a daily questioning, but here we are. Every day, I have to ask, “What are my plans for writing today? What if I got twice as many words written as I was planning on? What if I block myself from the internet and write for two hours? Or three? I know this project is daunting, but what if I just jumped in and banged my way through to the end, which yes, will be AN end, not yet THE end, but it will get me closer?”  

Not believing I could be a writer when presented with a list of college courses to take, instead I collected stories and studied books. I’m making up for not having taken those classes so long ago. I see now that it wasn’t only that I needed someone to tell me it’s up to me to do the work, but I needed an example for how to build the habit of writing. I find modern life is very tricky about trying to persuade me to do anything except for writing.

There is a collapsed-time feeling, where I am looking at 20-year-old Julie and telling her: just write. Get the words down. And at the same time, a version of me from 30 years from now is saying the same thing. Write the stories, Julie. Get the words down. The Julie from 30 years from now is saying something about computer chips implanted under our skin and how it has led to a typewriter revolution, and maybe I should have saved that Brother word processor, but oh, it wouldn’t work anyway because they changed all the plugs to get us to buy new appliances. I’m not sure what she’s talking about with all of that, but I do for sure understand the other part, that right now, today, I need to get the words down. I need to write the stories. And it’s up to me to do the work to make them amazing.

Barnes & Noble is having a preorder sale, which ends today. You can get Chester Barkingham Saves the Country for 25% off (if you’re a B&N member, which is free) if you enter the code PREORDER 25 at checkout.

Thoughts and Links

• I’ll be at the Bath Book Bash tomorrow, September 7, in quaint historic downtown Bath, Maine. My table is in Tent 2, and I’ll be reading Help Wanted: One Rooster at 11:30 in the Storytime Nook.

• Let me heartily recommend The Weekday Vegetarians Get Simple based on the ONE recipe I have made from it so far (Golden Greens Pie). I cook from The Weekday Vegetarians all the time, and I have dozens of recipes flagged in the new version. Thanks for saving dinner, Jenny Rosenstrach!

• I am so smitten with olivia rafferty’s 9 Tiny Songs About Lord of the Rings. It has me thinking so much about contagious creativity, about what happens when something is so fun and inspiring that it leads you to make something of your own, and the pressure that’s taken off by making something fun and silly and also TINY.
  (In many ways, this is what the Short Story Project is, and I promise the 2024 version is coming. I’m about 75% of the way done with everything we need for it, but Chester Barkingham comes out in 11 days,³ so the promotion stuff for that is edging most other things out of my calendar.)

Books I read recently and loved

Disclosure: book links in this newsletter are affiliate links to Bookshop.org, a site which supports independent bookshops.

• I’m not sure how I missed The Barnabus Project by The Fan Brothers — I love a picture book that tells so much story it’s a whole movie, practically. And the Fan Brothers’ illustrations are incredible as always.

• I have such a happy book hangover from Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe. It’s been a long time since I finished a book and wanted to start it again immediately just because I wasn’t ready to leave the world yet. Family, love, parenting, money, sex, addiction, Arby’s, Milky Way chocolate bars, OnlyFans: it’s all in here, and more.

• Nicholson Baker’s new book Finding a Likeness is all about the process of getting better at a creative pursuit. He wanted to get better at painting, and the book chronicles a few years of regularly making drawings and paintings, taking classes, and trying new techniques to see what helps. I love that he starts off wanting to paint trees, clouds, and dappled sunlight, and at the end, he’s happy to be freehand pencil sketching. So relatable. (His drawing is so good by the end! And I love that it’s still very much an ongoing process.)

• The emotional transference in Liars by Sarah Manguso is massive. I’ve read that she wrote it in a rage. Yeah. It’s so good. I gulped it down, and it left me gutted.

1. I was an English major. A creative writing class certainly would have “counted” toward my degree. (Also, after editing and rereading this essay many times, it might be a good argument for “why you don’t need college.” I love school, but did I really need it? I’m not sure. It might have been more helpful to have someone say, “if you want to be a writer, start writing! And let me give you the number of a writer I know.”)

2. I found a video of the Brother word processor printing, and the sound instantly transported me back to that time of being so glad my paper was done, but also being keenly aware of just how much noise the thing was making.

3. This is your reminder that if you want a signed, personalized copy of Chester Barkingham Saves the Country, you can get it from Print: A Bookstore.