I know we’ve talked about this before, but the questions about creative nonfiction keep coming up. I’m no expert by any means, but since I have chosen to align Writer Everlasting with creative nonfiction, I feel the need to defend it or maybe justify it or maybe just bring it up here as a subject to talk about again.

I came across my thoughts in a comment to a piece I’d written long ago at Constant Commoner about my need to be near water. The piece itself didn’t mention creative writing, but one of my favorite writers, , read it and wanted to talk about the writing of that piece.

(Several of my CC subscribers are also writers who subscribe to Writer Everlasting (Thank you, writers!), and as we read each other’s work, we often talk about those things that might trigger us into thinking about our own writing.)

I’m bringing this up now because someone at the retreat I attended last week asked for a definition of Creative Nonfiction, and those of us who write it struggled to come up with a short answer that might make sense. I wish I’d remembered our exchange from that Constant Commoner piece, where Nicci asked me what I thought the takeaway was for that particular essay. I answered it this way. I think it’s pretty close to what CNF is. See what you think:

I honestly have never thought of a purpose or takeaway for my creative writing pieces. I'm not even sure I know what that means. I write these pieces because something nudges me, and one thing leads to another and then another...

Most creative nonfiction pieces aren't written for a reader. They're written because the writer feels the need to express a thought or a notion or a dream. And they read that way if they're done well.

The reader should feel they're witness to a reverie. They're not participants and were never meant to be. That's the magic of CNF. It's to make the reader feel as if they've happened upon something special; something that would have been there whether or not they had seen it, and weren't they lucky to have found it?

It's mood writing and the writer's work is to make sure nothing breaks the mood. The ending has to satisfy, has to leave the reader grateful to have had the experience.

I’ve written about creative writing several times, including this piece called “The Art of Nonfiction”, where I wrote:

Creative Nonfiction appeals to the heart, to emotions, and tells a compelling story designed to make the reader feel something. There’s a passion to it. It’s usually told in First Person and is written in a conversational tone, as if you were talking to a group of friends and not standing on a podium delivering a speech.

The word “Creative” tells you that it’s different from ordinary nonfiction. The writer comes through as a personality and isn’t hidden from the essay. No matter what the creative nonfiction writer writes, a part of them shines through, and, if they do it well, the reader comes away appreciating the writer as well as the story.

CNF writers understand that no matter what they write they have to be in there. It doesn’t have to be about them, it only has to reflect their personality. Whether it’s politics or activism or reminiscences or humor or first world problems, the reader will know it all comes from the feelings of that particular writer.

The CNF writer insists the readers become involved in their story. That takes a special kind of talent, and it requires a kind of bravery.

It means you have to open yourself up to your audience in ways you’re not used to if your background is straight nonfiction. Our hearts have to be in it, and, since our natural inclination is to protect our hearts, it’s not easy to lay it all out there to an audience that may or may not be receptive.

But this is what makes CNF special and why not everyone is successful at it. When it’s done well, it soars, it inspires, it makes us laugh or cry or think or take action. It’s what turns non-fiction into art.

So there are some of my thoughts on creative nonfiction. What are yours? If someone asked you for a CNF definition in a setting where you didn’t have time for a long answer, what would you say? How would you define it? Does it even need a definition beyond what we call it?

CREATIVE NONFICTION.

Does it speak for itself? What isn’t creative nonfiction but often disguises itself as CNF? Is it okay to allow it into that genre?

Oh, wait… Is CNF a genre?

Do you have a minute? Can we talk?

My Constant Commoner

I'm at Bluesky

I have never used AI in any form (that I know of) so right off I admit I’m not an expert. What I think I know about it is that you can tap into it by giving it a nudge or asking it a question and it—whatever ‘it’ is—can, within seconds, write an entire article or essay based on those few ideas you’ve thrown out there. It can even write it in a tone of voice of your choosing.

“Write a story about a girl in a red hood who meets a nasty wolf on her way to her grandmother’s house. The wolf pretends to be her friend but he’s really a killer. Write it in the style of Margaret Atwood, with dialogue and humor but with a sense of foreboding.”

And it does it. It’s magic! And it’s not bad.

It might even be tempting. For someone else.

One of the things I love about writing—and maybe the thing I hate most about it, too—is the constant unpredictability. I sit down to write and I have an idea in mind. I even have a few lines. I struggle for that first sentence, that killer first paragraph, but I don’t have to get it right away. I may not even know where the story is heading when I begin, but I have some small bit of confidence that I’m going to be able to get there because this is a game my brain and I have been playing for a very long time.

We’ve grown to love playing this game. We love the little ins and outs, the surprises, the quirks, the unpredictable twists and turns. We love finding our way to the end. And we actually look forward to devoting the time it takes to get there.

Sometimes I win and sometimes I don’t, but it’s between me and my brain, and I have to trust that my brain will either help me get there in a way that satisfies or will convince me before I waste too much time that I’m way off track. Sometimes we decide to scrap the whole thing. The one thing we would never do is ask someone else to do the job for us. It’s not their baby, it’s ours.

Most of you—maybe even all of you—aren’t into using AI as a writing buddy, either. I venture that you’re wondering as much as I am how the hell this even got started. I mean, the biggest draw to writing—or any art—is the creative aspect.

There are no player piano stars. You can’t fit a piano roll into a piano’s innards and claim you’re a pianist. You can’t take a picture of a painting and claim you’re an artist. You can’t grab a sweater and claim you’ve knitted it, just because you came up with an idea for a sweater just like that.

And you can’t claim you’ve written a piece you’ve only suggested. (I don’t mean ‘you’, of course. It just fits here.) It’s embarrassing.

Someone wrote a piece (well, maybe wrote a piece) bragging about giving AI directions for an essay that turned out to be amazing. They are going to keep on doing it, now that they know it can be done, probably better than they could do it, and they’re going to put their name to it.

Imagine a pastry chef buying a pastry at a bakery and claiming it’s better than anything they can bake, so from now on they’re going to buy those pastries at that bakery and tell everyone they baked them.

Sometimes I think those people who call themselves ‘writers’ don’t have a clue about what that word means. It seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it?

WRITER. A person who writes.

I thought about ending this with one of those ‘Written by a Human” or “No AI involved” badges you see everywhere now, but wouldn’t I be taking something someone else came up with and using it as a thought of my own? Or am I getting in way too deep?

So, okay, I’m done. I’ve looked this over and my brain and I think it says what we wanted it to say. How about you? Where are you in all of this? Am I missing something? What’s going on here?

This is what The Authors Guild has to say about AI. I’m a member, but I think this article is available for anyone to read.

The Impact of AI Technologies on the Writing Profession - The Authors Guild

This too: Constant Commoner

I’m writing to you as a writer today. Bear with me, please; I want this to make sense. I don’t always feel as if I’m making sense, and when that happens, I sit at my desk in the quiet and I type. I type out momentary thoughts and if I like what I’ve typed, I keep it. If I don’t, out it goes.

I do this, I realize, as a way to clear my head. It doesn’t have to make sense at first, it just has to be the beginning of something. Something has to happen as I type, and it almost always does. It’s the only way I can do it anymore, my fingers tapping a keyboard, automatically striking the right keys as I stare out the window. (Looking now at snow falling again—three inches last night, four days after the First Day of Spring.)

After a while, I can sit back in my chair and give thought to what might come next, but first I need to be able to see a page where words have already begun to form. Then I can formulate a story. Why am I feeling this way? What’s prompting—no, compelling me to sit here and type when I could be doing other things? What do I need to say?

I’ve noticed as I’ve become more comfortable with this method that I don’t think at all about who will want to read what I’m writing. It’s not that I no longer care about my readers. I do. Sometimes frantically. But that urgency to be accepted is no longer there. Not while I’m writing.

I’m in a cone. It’s just me and my machine. We work together in tandem, I as the leader, my machine as my loyal, trusty stenographer, doing my bidding without judgement—except to correct my spelling, which I almost always appreciate. Together, starting from nothing, we build a record of my thoughts. It feels like a miracle.

It reminds me of my days when I would spread out a length of fabric on the floor, pin patterns to it, then cut them out and sew them until I’d created something one of us could wear. Something fine and unique, embellished, like nothing anyone else had ever created.

That’s how I see writing. It starts with nothing but a vague idea and builds into something unique and wholly my own. I add to it, I embellish it, I put my own stamp on it, and when I’m finished, when it looks and feels and sounds like the thing I might have had in mind, I’m satisfied enough to share it with the world outside my cone.

I love my writing life. I marvel sometimes at how lucky I am to have chosen this life and to still be so madly in love with it more than a half-century later. But these days my words aren’t just tools, they’re weapons. They’re meant to be weapons. Almost every hour of the day I’m in warrior mode. Donald Trump and the horrors that follow him have changed my life. it stands to reason it would also change my writing life. It’s the way it is and must be.

There’s a decision we all make when we commit to writing publicly. Sometimes it comes to us later in our writing life, but if we’re at this long enough we all come to this:

I get to decide what I write and how I write it.

I became a better writer when I signed on to that one thought. I became braver. I think I became who I was meant to be. And now I’m so comfortable with that notion it’s as if it’s etched on me. Or in me.

It’s scary at first. I wasn’t even sure it was true. I looked to others to tell me what to write and how to write it—for a long time—but when I became sure enough, it felt as if I could fly. I could go anywhere with my writing and I would be at ease. It would reflect who I am, if even for that moment. I could change my mind. I could change my style. This is how I write. This is me.

So here I am, still at my machine, still trying to make sense, and a snow machine is outside making noise, clearing paths, giving us a chance to make our way.

We’re both at work.

My latest at Constant Commoner:

Constant Commoner

I choose Decency. I choose Dignity. I choose Joy.

Yesterday, in the early hours of the morning, I wrote an entire post that read like a call to give up. It was how I woke up feeling and I wrote it fast as it came to me, my own personal cry for some semblance of understanding. Because the truth is, I do not understand…

Read more

a year ago · 83 likes · 32 comments · Ramona Grigg

There are no paywalls or closed comments or special gifts, but becoming a paying member helps me to keep going here. You can join the paying ranks (Thank you, paying ranks!) through Substack below, or you can support my work by tipping any amount at any time at Ko-Fi or at Paypal. Thank you.

I'm at Bluesky

I realize I’m coming at this from the standpoint of someone who started this Substack to help other writers get through the process, but I hope I’ve never claimed to be a teacher. Even when I signed up to do it way back when, in rather casual classroom settings, I made it clear right from the get-go that I wasn’t standing there to teach, but rather to nudge.

My goal, since the people in the room had nothing to lose by being there, other than the paltry sum they paid the school and ultimately me, was to make them comfortable with their own skills and talents, wherever they may lead. Some saw writing as a nice hobby that costs almost nothing to pursue. Others, usually older, wanted to write their life stories for their families. Still others wanted to go pro and make money at it. (Did I discourage that group? No, never. But I did warn them I would be harder on them as an editor. I figured a more merciful approach was to show them how far they still had to go.)

Since I’ve been here at Substack I’ve had a chance to see our quests to become the best of the best—or at least better—from all sides. Some want instant fame or monetary success while others spend an inordinate amount of writing time seeking that one path that will lead them to their goals without curves or obstacles or roadblocks. Others spend way too much time lamenting their failures, as if each failure is a dead end rather than an opportunity to learn from it.

So I’m wondering now, as I’m feeling a bit inundated by all of the ‘how to write good’ noise, what’s so wrong with just writing? The only sure way to learn how to write is to write. Writing as practice. That thing that every single book on writing ultimately gets to. They all tell you to practice.

Put the book down and practice.

Every art, every craft requires practice, practice, practice. It’s the only way to get good at anything. The ONLY way. It helps to have role models who show the way by being good at the craft we’ve chosen, but they can’t teach us. Our work doesn’t get better because we’ve followed lists or guidelines or someone else’s claimed road to success. It gets better with practice.

And, in the case of writers, with reading. If you haven’t been reading those writers who are there to influence and inspire you with their works, you’re missing a key part of reaching your goals. You’re going to have to be inspired, and you’ll only be inspired by reading other writers.

The lessons you’ll need to learn are there, in their choices as storytellers, in their bravery, in their wit, in their charm, in their use of words, in their attitudes. The best of them work to wow you. Did they? Then see it as an opportunity. How did they do it? What jumps out at you? A scene? A passage? A single sentence? Many of them?

In time, after you’ve been reading for instruction as well as story, you’ll begin to understand the mechanics. Ah, I see! Perfect! That fits! You’ll find yourself reading as a fellow writer, if not an editor, and your reading will be the richer for it. It becomes more personal. The two of you, reader and writer, are in it together as savvy, knowing companions and not as strangers.

You get it now. And you love them for it.

Now remember to thank them.

There are no paywalls or closed comments or special gifts, but becoming a paying member means I can keep going here. You can join the paying ranks (Thank you, paying ranks!) through Substack below, or you can support my work by donating any amount at any time at Ko-Fi or at Paypal. Much appreciated!

Me at Constant Commoner

Trigger warning: This could hurt your feelings.

I’ve been a writer for a long time. Through many, many decades. I’ve been a member of writers organizations, I’ve been a speaker and workshop leader at writers conferences, I’ve taught classes on writing, I’ve written in many different genres and I’ve been involved in writing communities off-line and on-line. All of it was scary. Really scary.

Now I write this newsletter, geared mainly toward creative writing—the personal, the painful, the sublime—and this is scary, too. I’ve been there. But you’ll notice I’m still here.

What I say here today is meant for those writers who write from the heart and from the gut—those organs that produce fear among writers. I concentrate on the creative aspects of writing but I want to do it without scaring anyone. Creative writing is scary enough without adding those burdens by describing in detail all of the reasons it might be scary.

Who needs that?

Well, apparently a lot of new writers think they do.

There are thousands of stories about writing here at Substack. Many of them are exceptional — full of ruminations and reminiscences and revelations—but way too many of them start out and end up as anguished personal confessions about what the post writer sees as his or her own failures.

So many stories about threatening to quit writing; so many about how unfair the world is when it won’t recognize their talent. There are so many stories about the downside of writing it’s become a freaking cottage industry.

If you’re one of those writers and you came here looking for solace, I can’t give it to you. I’m not here to hold your hand or to beg you to keep on keeping on.

You’re either a writer or you’re not.

Writing is an ancient and revered form of communication. Over eons we’ve learned to understand the world and its people through writing. Without writing we would still be separate tribes isolated by our ignorance of life outside our own villages. Writing helps us evolve. Writing inspires us. If there were no writers the world would be a cold and dreary place.

Is writing hard? Damn right it is. It’s supposed to be hard. The hard work is what separates amateurs from the professionals. Professionals work on honing their writing. Amateurs work at getting noticed.

I realize not everyone writing here wants to become a professional writer. Many of you are just grateful for a platform for your thoughts. I get that. And I’m happy when I see some of you go on to shine. Sometimes I think you even surprise yourselves. You didn’t know you had it in you! It’s a joy to watch.

Keyword: joy.

But let’s be clear: Even when the writing is brutal and hard to read, when writers bare their souls and tell us secrets they’ve kept hidden because, until now, shame has guided their lives, there is a kind of joy in the ways they’ve chosen to tell their stories. They’ve learned how to make us care.

The good ones build the story and tell the tale, not because they want your pity, but because they want their story to resonate, to speak to someone out there going through something similar, to let them know they’re not alone — and to let us know that the human condition is complex. The more we learn, the less inclined we are to judge.

The good ones aren’t complaining about a lack of audience for their writing, because they’re too busy writing stories that will draw readers. That’s the goal. Writing to draw readers.

So the next time you’re feeling miffed or sad or insulted because nobody wants to read what you write, think again.

Writing about how you’re feeling about your writing is an exercise in self-indulgence.

Most of us are writers, too, and the truth is, we can’t get too excited that you think writing is ruining your life. Honestly. We’ve got our own problems and when we see another Poor Me story about writing, we pass it by. It keeps us from screaming out loud.

There are other hobbies, other professions. Writing isn’t for everyone. If it’s more pain than pleasure, that should tell you something.

Get out. Get out now. Why are you still here?

Another thing. My goodness, PLEASE: If you are a writer—and you’re sure of that—don’t ask the world and your readers what you should write about. You’re the writer. They’re waiting for you to come up with something.

Writers look at the world and the world looks different to each of us. We find those things, often exquisite things, nobody else could write about in the same way we can. And honestly? That thrills us. We live for those moments of discovery. We work at getting the words just right. We want to do those moments justice and it’s worth the time it takes.

Over time, it gets easier, but it’s never easy. If it were easy anyone could do it. They can’t. Not like we can. We learn to trust our own instincts. We learn to love our search for words. We feel it over time, and before we know it we’re saying it out loud: we’re writers.

The thing that separates us from the would-be’s is our commitment to our craft, our dedication to the words. We’ve chosen to do this, and, even on our worst days, when we want to fling whatever writing implement we’re using against a wall, we know we wouldn’t give it up for the world.

We’re stuck. Happily, miserably stuck. Our writing owns us now.

If that’s not you, by now you have two choices: You can either quit and save yourself even more misery, or you can choose this writing life because you know at some point it will give you more pleasure than pain.

It’s up to you. Nobody else can help you decide. So please stop asking any of us to make your decisions for you. We’re busy. We’re writing here. You might want to try that, too, instead of whining about it.

You’d be surprised at how the simple act of writing tends over time to make you a writer.

Find me at Constant Commoner

I came down with some sort of respiratory thing almost a week ago. I’ve had pneumonia twice and I’m in that age bracket where doctors get nervous if we even sneeze wrong, so I was a bit nervous at first, too, thinking those thoughts while living alone. No COVID—that was good—but I hacked and coughed and blew through two square boxes of tissues.

But no pneumonia signs and no wrong sneezes, so then I played the waiting game and here I am, still a little weak but telling you about it in past tense, which is as it should be.

I quarantined, I stayed indoors out of the snow (melting now), I ate mandarin oranges and avocados and slurped chicken soup, and, it goes without saying, I drank plenty of fluids. I binge-watched many, many, many episodes of Northern Exposure. (Ed Chigliak, played by Darren E. Burrows, is my favorite character, by far), and of course, I read.

I sneezed a lot and my eyes watered so I kept to short essay pieces, mainly from my Substack stash, and, as I read, I came to realize something I might have known in the long, long ago but had forgotten:

I’m most comfortable reading those writers who are most comfortable in their own skin.

It’s not hard to detect ‘comfortable’ writing. It glides along from one sentence to another on a path that’s easy to follow. It skips from one paragraph to the next, enticing me to come along—to relax, to laugh, to cry, to think, not just as an observer but as a participant.

There are two of us on this journey and I’m along for the ride because, right from the start, I feel as if I’ve been invited by someone who has somewhere to go and thinks I’m just the person to have along. They’ve written something they hope will speak to me, but, more important, they’ve written it in a way that speaks to them.

I’m not the sole reason for their effort. They’re not trying to sell me anything. They’ve given me a gift. Without strings. And it feels right.

Now here I should be giving you examples of what I mean from the stories I’ve read this week. I’m not going to do that. I’d have to leave too many out. Instead, I’ll give you this example:

Go back to the top and read this again. Were you okay with where I took you? Are you hanging around to see where I’m going with this?

Oh, man, I hope so.

It turns out I’ve finally become one of those writers. I won’t say I’m the best (I’ve read some of the best and I’m not them), but I’m good enough to use as an example here. It took me long enough to get here, but I’m finally comfortable with writing what I write in the way I want to write it.

And this is how I want it.

I could never give lessons on how to do it. I wouldn’t know the steps, even if there were any. I only know getting comfortable has to happen at some point or neither of us—reader or writer—is going to be happy.

Getting comfortable with our own writing, no matter where it takes us, may well be the secret weapon we’ve been looking for. I don’t mean just personal writing, I mean writing in any form. It’s writing that’s uniquely ours. Nobody else could write what we write. It sings our songs.

That kind of writing comes from deep inside and it can take a while to dig far enough down to find it. Most of us, let’s face it, look for it from the vantage point of disinterested writers trained over a lifetime of reading to observe and cull out, on a quest for those absolute gems, those once-in-a-lifetime gems…

We’re not looking for it as us.

As writers we set ourselves up for ridiculous expectations, based on what we’ve come to believe the really good writers have mastered. We write a couple of lines and they look pretty good. For a while. Until we compare them to something a really exceptional writer has written. (Meaning any writer who writes better than we do.)

Then we hate what we’ve written.

That kind of makes us idjits. Don’t you think?

But we don’t have to be. We could just be us.

You and me. Just us.

So what do you think? I’m kind of tired and couldn’t come up with a zinger of a last paragraph, so this is it. Comments are open as always. If you’re still with me…

If you want to support my work but would prefer not to sign on to a paid subscription, you can donate any amount at any time at Ko-Fi or at Paypal.

Find me at Constant Commoner

Share Writer Everlasting

I love reading the published diaries and journals of famous writers and artists. My interest in how they think and create borders on the obsessive. I want to know how they did it so I can do it that way, too. But here’s the thing about journals: Unless it’s from Virginia Woolf or Joan Didion or John Steinbeck or Dave Barry, a real-world journal is nothing more than a workbook.

Don’t kid yourself: Those writers above knew full well their journals would be published some day. Nobody writes journals like that unless they’re in Famous Writer mode. Or in Wannabe Famous Writer mode.

I see journaling as the private warm-up exercise, the word salad meanderings, the lazy throwing out of thoughts that come before the good stuff starts to happen. Coming from those of us without a soaring talent or a juicy public life, they’re—I’m sorry—just so much junk.

To the outside world nothing could be more boring than the day-to-day word-wander of the unknown journal-keeper. One of two things happens when a journal becomes food for a blog:

Either the writer is so wrapped up in writing it down fast before any thought leaves her head, she forgets that other people will be reading it slowly, thinking there must be something worthwhile in there when there almost never is.

Or the writer writes to an audience, in which case it’s not really a day-to-day journal but a pushy attempt to interest readers in a whole mess of words that in the end don’t amount to much beyond ‘what I want to do’, ‘what I have to do’, ‘why I didn’t do anything’, ‘why I hate myself’, or ‘damn, I’m good!’

They’re missing the best part of keeping a journal: the loosey-goosey joy of writing down any damn thing that comes into our heads without having to worry about who might end up reading it.

Nobody will read it unless you want them to.

And you shouldn’t ever want them to.

I’m a believer in keeping writing journals. I have a couple dozen spiral-bound books filled with the everyday things I’ve recorded over the years about writing and other writers and the writing life in general. These journals often move into the moody stuff—joys and triumphs, for sure, but also crying over rank failures or self-imposed embarrassments or grudges I plan on holding forever. They’re not meant for prying eyes. They would hold no interest for anyone else, and when I write in them I don’t think of myself as a writer but as a person in the throes of writing something down that I either don’t want to forget or I’m hoping will inspire me.

As I said…boring.

Natalie Goldberg started me on my journal-keeping, and if I could thank her in person, I surely would. In her excellent book, “Writing Down the Bones”, she told me a journal was an essential tool for any writer, and even told me why. (Practice, practice, practice.)

But, more important, she warned me against trying to fill a fancy, blank journal with my everyday thoughts on writing. Fancy is as fancy does. If you buy a fancy journal you’ll think you have to fill it with fancy words. Thus the cheap spiral-bound notebooks. They work just fine. Probably better, since they lay flat and don’t get in the way.

Here’s another tip: (It could be this came from Natalie, too. I don’t remember.) Only write on one side of the page. Keep the other side blank for filling in when you’ve forgotten something or when you want to add something later. It’s not a book, it’s a journal. Keep it loose.

I keep a travel journal in the car and fill it with things I don’t want to forget: road conditions, gas prices, good and bad motels and restaurants, the sighting of roadside oddities like The Creation Museum. Things like that. It’s simply record-keeping without worrying about who’s looking over my shoulder. 

I keep notebooks in my purse and in my pocket and if I can’t find paper when a thought jumps out, I suppose I could make myself bleed and use the blood to make notes on my arm.

(Oh, I’m kidding!)

But what I never want to do is muddy up my blog with out-of-the-gate random thoughts without benefit of editing. I want my public work to ooze perfection. (Remembering that my idea of perfection probably isn’t the same as yours. Hell, my idea of perfection today probably isn’t the same as it will be a week from now—which is why I reserve the right to change anything I’ve written here at any time, no matter what. That’s the beauty of a blog: Freedom! Independence! It’s also the ruination of some I will not mention.)

I’ll probably keep talking about that idea of perfection, since it’s one of those wiggly things that pretends it’s something it’s not, thus making it endlessly perplexing and fascinating. But for now I just want to beg you not to use your blog as a journal. You can call it a Journal if you wish. (And who am I to stop you?) Just don’t treat it like one.

Treat your blog like a finely-honed public work and remember that it’s not just for you, it’s for those other people who come in, sit down, and want to be enlightened or entertained. They’re the reason you push the “Publish” button in the first place.

They deserve to know you’ve noticed they’re there.

Find me at Constant Commoner

I don’t know when it started, but the notion of writing to an audience of strangers who wouldn’t necessarily love me and tell me lies just to keep me happy became a thing. It scared me silly, but I wanted that. I wanted what I wrote to go out to complete strangers for reasons I can’t even conjure up anymore. It’s not because I had a huge ego. I was mousy and unsure and given to heaping undeserved praise on people in order to get them to like me. It made no sense, yet there it was—if I were going to write, it had to be for an audience.

My early writing was bad at first—of course it was—but I must have thought I could get better, or I wouldn’t have gone on. I did go on, and finally I decided what I was putting down on paper was good enough to show to someone. Not a stranger, exactly, but someone I trusted. Someone I’d never even told I’d been doing this.

I’d been writing.

My best friend Dorothy didn’t know what to say. She stared at the pages long after she’d read the last words, and I knew it was because she didn’t know how to tell me she didn’t like it.

We were both around 16 and she was into horses. In her room she had horse posters and horse statues and horse books, and they were her life, even though she didn’t have a horse and had never even ridden one. She found romance in horses, and I’d like to think she didn’t like what I wrote because it wasn’t about horses.

But soon enough I didn’t like it, either.

I know now that that’s what growth looks like. I didn’t see it that way then, of course, and I was crushed, but if I’d liked it enough to want to share it but later it seemed like junk, it had to mean I’d grown enough to see the flaws.

I could see better ways of writing things, and maybe someday, if I kept at it—and I wasn’t saying I would—I’d even write something that would become a book or get published in a magazine. A one-time deal. That was the goal.

I wasn’t yet thinking about actually being a writer, and it would take decades before I would use that word to describe what I did—even after I’d been published in real newspapers and magazines. It wasn’t until I could claim it as a job title on my income tax forms that I began to say, out loud, “I’m a writer”.

But writing was never a hobby the way drawing (badly), or painting (excruciating), or crewel stitching (passable) was. I don’t think I ever just wrote for the fun of it, even in my diary. (I fully expected someone would find it someday when I was long gone, so I wrote in it as if that was going to happen.) If I was writing, I was writing with readers in mind. At least that’s the way I remember it.

But that’s not to say any of it was ever good enough. Some of it was truly awful. Even the published stuff. I look at some of my early columns and I cringe. If I could, I would rewrite them in my voice today. And maybe 10 years from now I would want to write them in my 10-years-from-now voice.

But some of it was good enough. I couldn’t have kept going if I didn’t think that. Still, good enough then looks pretty mediocre now. And I’m seeing that as a good thing. That’s progress.

We’re never as good as we think we will be, but we’re better than we were. So I say let’s go back and read some of that junk and revel in our decision not to quit. If we had quit, that’s where we would still be. We’re not. We’re here now. We got here by moving on from there.

The road ahead is wide open and we’re on it.

The rest is in the rearview mirror.

Find me at Constant Commoner, too.

Tips are always welcome.

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