Am I a Good Writer?

I have never imagined myself having a normal life. In the back of my mind I assume I’ll have a husband and children, but the older I get, the more I wonder if that’s even going to happen. [I have this uncanny ability to repel any man I’m even remotely interested in. I once argued with my dad, telling him that his advice to “just smile at boys and they’ll do anything for you” was inaccurate and not helpful. His reply was, “You don’t smile at boys; you glare at them.”] But family life has never been my ultimate goal [though I would like a hubby some day, before I’m 40]. My lifelong goal is to be an actress. I’m not actively following that dream because I’m a pessimistic Debbie Downer. But when I think about other things I want to do, they’re all along the famous lines. I want to write books; I want to write movies [and maybe they’ll let me be in them]; I want to marry James Franco. If I could sing even a little bit I would want to release great Christmas CDs. Being ‘average’ and ‘normal’ scares the crap out of me. How can I survive that kind of life? I know I’m dramatic. I’m 99% sure I’ll never be famous and never do anything extraordinary. [Ok, stop hyperventilating.] I’m just going to have to deal. I guess all I can ask for is to positively influence those around me [and lately friends have been telling me about the influences I have on them – feels kind of good].

I like to blame my lameness on other people. In high school I really wanted to be a veterinarian – or something related. [2nd dream job: dolphin trainer.] I found out later that my mom and my English teacher would just roll their eyes because they knew that I was supposed to write, that I was good at it. No one told me this. I thought I was your average writer. Yes, English was always my best subject, but that’s because it was easy. [Is it not easy for everyone?] Writing was just common sense. We had to do it all the time so how could we not know how? I have been an avid journaler since I moved to Texas, the summer before 8th grade [about a decade]. Is that not normal? I just like to document my boring and uneventful life [though when I read old journals, especially from the overly hormonal middle school years, I laugh until I cry. I even read them aloud to friends and they find my 8th grade drama hysterical.]. When I went to college I started out as a biology major [I was going to be a veterinarian, remember? Or at least a dolphin trainer!]. After my first semester I got two large C-‘s [in two 4-credit classes, sinking my GPA to a low I’d never even come close to experiencing before]. These classes were Calculus 1 and General Chemistry. I took that as a sign to move on. Actually, I decided that I would have to choose easier classes so that I could increase my GPA dramatically and keep my scholarships to stay in the expensive private college I chose for myself in 5th grade [I have written proof that I decided to go there, dated from 5th grade. It also says (scratched out so my parents can’t read it, heaven forbid, that I wanted to marry my best friend Aaron. That was false.]. Well, what was easy? Communications. I don’t remember how I came upon that choice, but it was a good one. It was so easy to get A’s and B’s without trying too hard. I didn’t even care about getting A’s. All I cared about was getting my GPA to 3.0 to keep all my scholarships. After starting off my first year with a 2.7 GPA, I almost graduated with a 3.5 because of those classes. [Looking back I should have studied Communications (my emphasis was journalism/PR) AND English/Literature, with maybe a minor in Marketing.] So for about 3 years of college I took communications classes [I started them my second semester and was done with that major after my first semester senior year]. Like I said, they were pretty easy. It was all writing: reporting, creative writing, poetry. I had some communication theory classes, rhetoric. All of it involved writing, which is so easy for me. My last semester, because I was done with all the classes I HAD to take but still needed some credits, I took classes like Creative Nonfiction and Shakespeare…for fun. [Hence the “I should have had English/Literature as my second major.] My college advisor, “Chet”, actually taught most of my communication/writing classes, so I interacted with him a lot, until my senior year. He frustrated me the most. He was my advisor. My go-to guy. I actually had him my very first semester, in an “honors” or advanced Oral and Written class, before I became a Communications major. I got great grades in that class, on all my stupid writing [I’ve kept it. I know what I wrote about. It’s all dumb.], and then I got a B or a B- on my final portfolio. Do you want to know why? Because it was too short. All semester I’d been writing things to put in the final portfolio…and then I didn’t have enough pages. How could I get A’s all semester and then get a B-? That sunk that grade. Chet continued to do this to me throughout my college career. I had numerous classes with him. I did well on all the homework and assignments and then when it came time for semester grades, I never got an A. I got a few A-‘s, one A, and mostly B’s and B-‘s. Yet all my homework/test grades were mostly A’s. How was this happening?? Needless to say, I decided it meant I wasn’t a great writer. This was very detrimental to me because I started losing confidence. It’s hard to attain a career in writing when you believe you can’t write. One day an older student, the editor of our school paper [I worked for the paper most years in college. I was eventually the sports editor, a position I didn’t even like. I should have been a reporter the whole time.] told me that Chet had said that I was on the brink of being a great writer. She said that he said something about how I just needed to push myself over that edge [my memory is fuzzy on what she actually said he said. I do remember the gist of what was said.]. Unfortunately this was already after the point where I’d decided that because Chet wouldn’t give me an A I was a bad writer. So it made little difference to me. Plus, why would Chet tell this student this and not me? Part of me didn’t really believe that this exchange had happened. The small part that did believe it still couldn’t accept it. So I stopped caring about writing. I didn’t try as hard as I coulda/shoulda/woulda in my writing/communication classes. The few times I did I just got disappointed again. I stopped writing so much for the school paper (except what I had to for sports – which was not interesting to me, even though I love playing every sport). I wrote what I had to for class and didn’t go above and beyond. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I started focusing more on the marketing/business side of things. I took marketing classes for a marketing minor and took all but one classes required for the business minor [I dropped the final class my senior year because it was Finance and really hard, haha]. I took an “internship” with the marketing department at my college (a very small office made up of 4 full time people, a secretary, student designers and workers) and worked with them for the whole year. I didn’t really do anything creative for them. I was an intern for the production coordinator. The next year, after I graduated, I started working for her to take over her position when she went on an extended maternity leave [triplets!]. [I’d applied for a total of two jobs because I had a horrible fake interview in one of my job-prep classes that made me feel like a failure at life. I realized I had nothing to offer anyone. Luckily God was watching out for me and brought me a job opportunity when I had zero prospects.] My boss went on bed rest three weeks into my training and never came back. Lo and behold, I was now the production [and social media] coordinator for my alma mater for a little over a year. There was absolutely nothing creative about my job. Sure I helped the designer come up with ideas for designs on our marketing and direct mail pieces and I gave opinions and whatnot, but my job was about scheduling, managing our huge budget [I knew where literally every penny of our money went], and working on the school’s social media presence when I had the time. I’d started a movie script a year earlier with my best friend. We worked on it a little but we took an almost year-long hiatus from it [I’m just now working on it bit by bit – my goal is to finish that before I start anymore huge writing projects/classes/endeavors. Ok, I’m also writing a “children’s book.”]

While I worked as a marketing coordinator that year, I realized how much I missed writing. At this point it didn’t matter if I was good enough or not. All that mattered was that I loved to do it and I hadn’t done much in a year. The last time I wrote was for my Shakespeare class my last semester in school. I had lost all ability to write…or so I thought.

That’s when I contacted a couple teachers of mine: Chet and LZH. I asked for their advice on how to make writing my career. They both gave great and similar advice, but Chet’s was more in-depth. Yes, this was the same Chet that tortured me throughout college by teasing me with A’s in class and then slamming me with a B- at semester. It’s funny now because Chet really is my go-to guy for everything career/writing related. He even made a joke in a recent email about giving me an A- for the start of my children’s book I asked him to read. And it didn’t even upset me one little bit. I laughed aloud when I read that. [I’ve matured!]

I didn’t really start listening to Chet’s advice until recently. The most important thing he said was just to write. He gave me advice about how to get peer critique, he said he’d read anything he could for me and give me feedback, he suggested books, classes, etc. I still want to follow as much of that advice as possible. But the most important thing is: I’m writing again. I write just about every day. I write random stuff in a million notebooks I carry around with me. I’ve started a blog (what you’re reading) about anything that comes to mind. I write down what people talk about on the metro, I write quotes, etc. I try to add to my script as often as possible, I started my “children’s book” [this is in quotes because while it will be in the style of a children’s book, the subject matter is a little inappropriate for children...maybe.]

Something else that’s helped me is that I’ve started reading heavily again. When I was in college a girl I’d had some communication classes with came back and said that having the ability to read anything she wanted again improved her vocabulary and her writing ability. I believed her. But my first year after college I didn’t really read much. I was so mentally worn out from my production job [because it didn’t use any of my best skills so it was a daily challenge and drain for me] that I just vegged when I wasn’t at work [or hung out with local friends, watched movies, etc.]. Then my job ended in the middle of this summer and I found myself unemployed. I slowly started reading a little bit more, but I felt bad reading when I should be looking for jobs and applying everywhere. Then I got a job and moved to a different state where I don’t have a working personal computer or a DVD player. No electronic distraction of any kind. I do have a borrowed iPod that I plug into my computer speakers and jam to music – one playlist over and over. But I read all the time! I’ve gone through tons of books in the last month and a half and I can already feel my vocabulary growing and I can see that my writing is getting back to where it once was. I work as a bank teller so my job takes absolutely no brain power at all. And we’re at a very slow branch so I have tons of time to read [I read an entire book at work one day], write, draw, color [yes, I colored a couple pictures during my first week for a friend], anything. This means my brain is free from all ties. I have unrestrained or unclouded creative freedom and space! I’m trying to take advantage of this as much as I can.

So who did I blame? My mom and my high school English teacher for not telling me I could write letting me enter college believing I was supposed to be a veterinarian; I blamed Chet for discouraging me in the only major skill I have in life; I blamed Mr. Vincent for being a horrible meany during my fake interview with him and taking away the tiny bit of confidence and self-worth I had left. In reality, my mom knew I had to make up my own mind in my own time; my English teacher probably new about my independent stubbornness, too. Chet probably was just keeping me from being disappointed in real life, trying to be hard on me so that I would fail in safe college rather than in scary real life. Mr. Vincent just wanted to help give us great practice for real interviews and he had no idea that of the three students he interviewed, the one he chose to bring to tears [almost. I held them back] was the least confident and most self-doubting. [The other two students he interviewed are not only my best friends, but they’re the top students in Communications; straight-A types who have all their shiznit together. Much better choices to be mean to than me. I have seen Mr. Vincent many times since that horrible day and he doesn’t recognize me but I feel sick to my stomach whenever I see him…or his name is even mentioned.]

I think I’ve wandered onto a major tangent. I started out talking about how I don’t want a normal life and switched to my relationship with writing. Anyway, I will probably never be famous. And I like to think that it’s because no one encouraged me. But that’s a total lie. My mom has always known about my dream to be an actress [I was majorly obsessed in middle school and researched how to get an agent, where to audition, EVERYTHING.] and she was always very supportive. If I’d ever actually found something to audition for, she would have been behind me 100%.

Now my only get-famous idea is to finish my script, give it to the family contact I have connected with Hollywood, hope they make it a movie and pray they give me either a cameo or the starring role. It could happen. I still can’t do normal writing things. Sure I’d like to write for a magazine, but do I freelance doing that or apply to all the magazine jobs I can find? Nope. Instead I plan a blog to start with my best friend that we hope to someday turn into our own magazine. Instead of writing simple essays to submit places I jump straight into books I hope to get published. I have big plans and schemes because I can’t be normal. I want to be bigger than life. Yet the only person I know making his way toward fame is one of my best friends. He went straight to grad school after graduation and it seems like it was the best choice ever. It also seems like he’s always known exactly what he wants. He’s moving up in the world and getting all this great experience. He’s already a mini celebrity in the small towns of his home state. And he’s not even 25. Why am I so behind? How do I catch up? I have no idea. But I know I’m to blame for any hindrances, my insecurities and my inability to choose a focus.

My goal right now is to find a dream and to work toward that dream. At least I will have [hopefully] had an interesting life and met many wonderful/interesting people trying to get there.

PS: You know what another dream of mine is? To be a traveling gypsy. Travel, work when I need more food/gas/supplies and see the country at my own leisure with my man.