What to write vs. what to share
A year ago I set a challenge for myself to post here twice a month. I fell a little short of that goal, but I’m not taking it too seriously. I was adjusting to a career shift as a consultant, and a role that involves a lot of persuasive writing. Balance of the work-life variety eluded me in 2022, but I still managed to make strides as a writer. In thinking about the future of this blog, I have to consider what is worth writing, and more importantly, what is worth sharing.
I had the privilege of participating in StoryBoard this summer, a week-long writing workshop at StoryStudio Chicago. While the fiction cohort was led by the incredibly talented and on-the-rise Ingrid Rojas Contreras, I found inspiration and motivation from all of the instructors. At an opening Zoom panel conversation, essayist Megan Stielstra talked about how much of her writing goes unread by others. How she is picky and strategic about what is made public. And this was such an aha! moment for me, because aren’t so many of us stuck in this groupthink that expects and seemingly demands a steady stream of content creation?
Megan referenced an incomplete essay she’s been working on for years, which felt like such a relief to hear! I tend to imagine successful writers cranking pieces out easily, their first drafts nearly perfect, even though I know that isn’t true. That I, too, could spend years working on an essay and maybe still never show it to anyone — that great writers do this — felt like freedom to me.
Social media culture has warped my understanding of creativity and creation. It has me thinking that the point of creating something is so that I can share it. But really the point of creation is to create. Period.
For now, I am trying to untangle what I want writing to be for my life, where it has meaning and purpose and value. I would like to continue to use this digital space as one to share my thoughts, both fictional and non, and would like to be a bit more regular with it. I don’t feel expert enough to write about most topics. I don’t feel interesting enough to write too much about myself. I don’t produce enough fiction to stick to just that, plus I’m learning that if I want to submit a piece for publication, I can’t publish it on my blog.
Therese Mailhot, also a non-fiction writer and faculty for StoryBoard, led a craft talk about memoir. She talked about how her guiding question when writing about trauma is “can I liberate other women with this work?” and what a beautiful and worthy goal that is! I’m over here stuck in imposter syndrome, knowing that the world doesn’t need another middle class white woman giving her opinion about the state of affairs. Where is the line between performance and passion? When does it matter what I have to say? And how can I keep up with the daily horrors and injustices that I’m made aware of? But no one said I have to have all the answers. I like Therese’s guiding question toward liberation and honesty. I can only share my own unique perspective.
If I’m being honest (and Ingrid, Megan, and Therese have all set the fire in me to do that), I’m scared of getting stuff wrong. Of having a record here that I had the wrong thought or opinion or point of view. And of course, we all think that we want to embrace growth and progress and people coming around to the right opinion, but look at the general vibe of the internet and tell me that’s really how people feel.
Without knowing exactly what I want out of my writing, it is hard to know how to advance it. I suppose I want to produce, I want the validation of being published (whether in a lit mag or a traditionally published novel), I want people to actively seek out my words and thoughts. I like the Joan Didion quote about writing to understand myself, that has been true for as long as I’ve considered myself a writer.
The shrinking of our collective attention spans and the tendency to boil down our thoughts and arguments into 7-second videos and 240-character tweets makes me wonder why I bother trying. Should I use these other platforms to practice expressing myself? Do I need to express myself to strangers? I’m not interested in fame or notoriety, but I definitely have a desire to be seen. Even so, every time I hit publish on one of these posts, every time I tweet it or pop a link into my Instagram Stories, I get flushed with shame and regret. And then I remind myself that no one has an attention span and my most successful posts only get a few dozen reads, what’s to regret?
Do I care if I’m relevant? What do I want the sum of my work to amount to? I guess I’d like to write some powerful sentences. Strings of words that make a reader pause, scan their eyes back to read it again. Pause again and think about it. That’s what I’d like. That would be success for me. To describe something emotional in a way that is new and that is universal and that a reader is moved by.
My writing wins for 2022:
- Was accepted into a competitive writing workshop (see above)
- Submitted a completed novel manuscript to a fellowship (still awaiting a response from Book Club Queen Reese Witherspoon’s team)
- Shared said completed novel manuscript with my mom and with a stranger beta reader from the internet
- Completed NaNoWriMo while also writing heavily for work and dealing with PMDD
- Wrote a lot of short fiction!
- Gained 46 followers on this blog
- Submitted a short story to 8 literary magazines and was rejected by all of them (counting this as 8 wins!)
In 2023 I hope to keep the momentum going by:
- Recommitting to two posts here per month
- Experimenting with sharing my writing/stories on Instagram, my preferred social media platform
- Applying to writing residencies and workshops
- Submitting at least one short story to at least 10 literary magazines
- Completing NaNoWriMo
- Rewrite/edit two in-progress novella/novel length pieces and send them out into the world for consumption!
- Stretching my writing/editing legs some more at work via our firm’s blog
