The writing program at UCLA is surprisingly solid for a school that doesn't have an MFA program. Since the instructors decide who gets into the class, you get both a baseline of talent and people who are fairly serious about their writing. With all this in mind I was chuffed as fuck to get into my first class.
To write for a class like that, you've got to have a lot of confidence in your own writing. If you don't, there's no way you're going to be able sit through an hour of people critiquing your work.
In order to have this confidence, I have to believe that whatever I'm currently working on is the best thing I've written yet[1]. If I don't believe that, then why bother. Why bother writing it, why bother sharing it, why bother posting it to my site? People know when you're phoning it in.
The first time I turned in for the creative writing class, I truly believed that the story I'd written was awesome. Not just awesome, but mind blowing. I'm not sure what I expected from my peers, applause maybe, but I knew that my shit was good and I expected them to recognize that in grand fashion.
What I got was exactly the opposite. It's not that they didn't like it, I could have written that off to differing taste. They tore it to shreds. My character motivation was nonexistent, my dialogue was weak, the plot had barely more than one dimension. It's not so much that they didn't like it, it's like they were frustrated that I wasn't a better writer.
Sitting there listening to the rest of the writing group tear into this story was awful. I really thought I might be sick and when I got out of class I went home and did shots of rum until I stopped feeling like a jackass. I just couldn't believe I had misjudged my writing ability so badly.
But worse than the embarrassment of sitting through that class was the loss of confidence in my own ability. For weeks after that, I couldn't write. I'd sit at the computer and just stare at the cursor. My fear that whatever I wrote wouldn't be any good wouldn't even let me start.
It's an awful feeling. Writer's block is a hundred times easier.
I don't bring this all up as interesting historical fact. Wednesday night we were talking about where we see ourselves over the next ten years. Obviously I want to write. I want to support myself as a writer and I want the recognition that only comes with being a best selling author.
The unfortunate truth is that I'm not there as a writer. Maybe I'm good enough to get published, maybe I'm even good enough to make an average living with as a writer. But that's not the point. The point is to make the best possible art I can make. It's not about writing well enough to get paid, it's being the best writer I can possibly be and letting the money follow.
I might have to spray paint that on the wall. Burn it into the carpet. Carve it into the desk.
Wednesday wasn't easy. It's never easy to have two people you like and respect tell you "there are assumptions you've made about your life and about your writing that are wrong."[2] And hearing that I need to challenge those assumptions is scary and uncomfortable. I don't want to shine a light on a lot of things that I've lived comfortably with for many, many years. I don't want admit that I've been lying to myself, or that I haven't been true to myself.
But easy or not, it's necessary. Without challenging those assumptions there's no way to grow as a person or as a writer. And that means I have to make a choice. Am I willing to do what's necessary to take my writing to the next level? Am I really committed to this, will I push through what's comfortable and easy or do I blow it off, tell myself they're full of shit? Or worse, do I say the work necessary isn't worth it that I'd rather accept who am I at this moment and never leave my mark on the world, never move past this point.
I guess I've chosen to push through it. I sat here Wednesday night and most of Thursday and almost all day today afraid to put anything on the page. Write a line, delete a line. The only way to get through it is to get back on the horse and write. And so you get a bunch of naval gazing, sorry about that.
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[1]When writing fiction, blog posts are different
[2]Paraphrased
Posted by Ben Corman at 9:46 PM