writer, editor, maker of stuff
Today I was writing a scene about doing home renovations and I really wished I could ask my dad questions about how to describe a particular process. Then I remembered a book he gave me for Christmas the year before he died, a slightly cheesy Reader’s Digest book of DIY tips, “The Family Handyman’s Helpful Hints.” It was perfect. It even sounded just like the way he’d have described things. The gift that keeps on giving, I suppose.
Today I also hit 40,000 words — not bad for 20 days of writing.
Today I begin my new job, and it’s the one I’ve wanted all my life. With both kids now in school full time and my copy editing gig only taking up morning hours, I’m finally going to officially make writing a job.
In the last eight years I’ve gotten by on late-night writing sessions hours after my sleep-deprived brain has stopped working and on half-hour scraps before school pick-ups. I’ve brainstormed while jogging between appointments, while cuddling kids who are refusing to sleep, while washing dishes. I’ve resorted to dictating verses of picture books into my phone at playgrounds and grocery stores lines, probably convincing passersby that I’m a lunatic with some sort of rhyme-related disorder.
That’s no way to actually produce creative work. It shows, too, in both my output and its quality. I end up feeling frustrated because I have stories to tell and no time to tell them, and I know I can do better than what I see on the page. I just need time when there’s peace and I’m wide awake and I know I don’t have to run out the door in 15 minutes. Now I have that.
But I have to make it official to justify it. This isn’t a hobby, it’s not some little project I’m working on or something fun to play with in my free time. This is what I want to be when I grow up. It’s ridiculous that I have to justify it to myself, but I feel a nagging sense of guilt at the prospect of spending time selfishly doing something I love when I could (should) be doing a “real” (paying) job. I’m not going to psychoanalyze myself here, but I know I’m not the only one with this complex. I’m fighting it as well as I can.
Today I have three hours before I need to pick up the kids. There’s laundry to do, but it can wait. I could attempt to wrestle the book/game/craft/storage room into some semblance of order, but I’m just going to close my eyes when I walk past it. I need to deal with filing and bills, but not right now. Today I am going to write.
It was one of those days where every minor thing is stressful and annoying. Nothing dramatic, just the little things that add up. Rude people on the street, inconsiderate drivers, litter everywhere. And then a bunch of obnoxious teenagers were jerks to my daughter and her friends at the pool (and in a totally legal but mean-spirited way, so I couldn’t even unleash my temper on them). I was done. We stopped on the walk home to order pizza because I just didn’t have the energy left to be a responsible dinner-making parent.
So we’re standing on the sidewalk and I’m ordering online with my phone (breaking at least three of my own personal rules for acceptable behavior) when out of the blue one of the teachers from the children’s lit class I took last year — the one that kind of killed my self-esteem for the better part of a year — approached me. She asked if I was still writing and what I was working on. I admitted that I’d taken a break because I lost confidence after the class. She apologized if she or the other teacher had made me feel that way — and obviously it wasn’t their fault, it was a combination of things aligning at a moment of insecurity and basically my own damn fault for being too sensitive — but it was really nice of her to say it, anyway. She encouraged me to keep working, especially on the middle-grade mystery I’d shown the class, and she was just generally really nice. Because of course she was — she’s a nice person and a good teacher and not some malicious confidence-devouring hellbeast.
I’d already been on an upswing, getting back into writing again and having a good long vent about the process of rebuilding self-esteem, but this random encounter gave me another boost. I’m happy to have reversed some lingering negative emotions from the class, and I’m really thankful for the reminder that even a rather solitary practice like writing needs communities. I’m going to try a little harder to be part of mine.
I can’t believe it’s been a year since I posted here… only… well, no, that’s not really true. I’m not surprised, actually. In the last year, other than being busy with the usual things like family, work, and all of the standard daily-life stuff that always gets in the way of creativity, I’ve been facing a crisis of confidence.
I’ve been reluctant to talk about it. Who wants to admit defeat? Who wants to express wavering self-confidence, especially in an industry that values self-promotion, perseverance and flawless self-certainty above nearly everything else? I’ve almost written this post so many times, but held myself back. Am I dooming myself by admitting I’ve felt discouraged? Am I closing future doors by confessing to periods of low self-esteem? Perhaps.
But I don’t think I’m exactly alone. Creative work is an irrational manic roller coaster of I-will-conquer-the-world! enthusiasm and why-did-I-ever-think-I-could-do-this? doubts. You spend so much time and energy alone in your head, with only your characters and ideas for company. You’re hard on yourself, doubting and revising and improving and doubting again, until you finally whittle down the doubts enough that you can see past them. You psych yourself up, actually get excited because you’ve finally created something that you really genuinely like — and maybe someone else will like it, too. In a delirious rush you go for it. You hit Send. You let someone look over your shoulder at the screen. You hand the pages to test readers. Your creation is officially out of your head and into the world, even if only one other person sees it, because creative work only exists in the binary states of Your Head or The Whole World.
And that’s where it gets scary, because now someone else is looking at your baby, this weird and flawed beast that, unlike a real baby, you can’t even blame on previous generations’ bad genes. You can only blame the content of your own head and the abilities of your own hands. Now it’s out there and it’s too late to take it back and now you’re being judged — not just your creation, but your whole self being judged — on what you’ve willed into form.
Oh hell.
You wait. Holding your breath. Twitchy with adrenaline. And sometimes you get what you need: Approval, acceptance, the relief that you did actually make something worthwhile. Sometimes you get disappointing-but-useful constructive criticism, which might sting, but shows that someone cared enough to try to help, that they saw enough potential to be worth improving.
And sometimes… oh, this one’s the killer. Sometimes you get “Nice” or “Yeah, it’s pretty good,” and a quick change of subject. Ouch. So it’s not nice, not good, it’s unfixable or uninteresting or just so terribly, terribly useless that we can’t even talk about it. Let’s move on.
Only you can’t, of course, especially when the damning indifference comes from someone who cares about you or someone who’s usually supportive or someone who’s more experienced and knowledgeable than you are. Then you really can’t move on, because the only movement you can imagine is crawling into a cave, possibly carrying everything you’ve ever created to burn for warmth while you hibernate away from everyone you’ve just humiliated yourself in front of… which obviously is now The Whole World.
And of course it’s unfair — it’s unfair to that kind, supportive person who usually has time for constructive critique/ego-stroking, who may have just been busy or having a bad day or needed some time to get their thoughts together. It’s unfair to that critique partner or teacher or agent who is, in reality, considering a piece of creative work and not actually judging your value as a human being. None of those people are actually The Whole World and they never claimed to be. It’s unfair to hang the full weight of your creative self-worth on someone else.
But it’s also impossible to stop yourself feeling that blow that knocks your legs right out from under you.
So (obviously) I had one of those experiences last year. A small series of them: A curt reaction to a half-finished story that I thought was going well, a form-letter rejection of a picture book I actually believed was pretty good, and a short-but-not-sweet no-constructive-criticism judgment (of the same book) from the teachers of a class that I’d previously thought I was doing well in. Strike three. I was humiliated. I felt like I’d probably been embarrassing myself all along, every time I’d ever shared anything that I’d created. The Whole World knew it sucked, but I was only just figuring it out. Yikes.
The roller coaster careened downward. I tried to take a break from writing. It didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it just depressed me more. Finally I resumed writing, only because I wanted needed to, just for myself, and not with any idea of ever showing it to anyone ever again. Ever. Ever ever ever.
I wrote more. I felt better. I feel better. The train is click-click-clicking back up the hill.
I hope to post more soon. I will post more soon.
I don’t like commemorating sad anniversaries or dwelling on lost loved ones’ deaths. I want to – I try to — remember them for their lives instead, to focus on happier memories. But some anniversaries are too big to ignore, and all I can think about today is that the world has been a little dimmer in the last year without my dad in it.
A year ago today we were just sitting down to a jet-lagged breakfast after a red-eye back to London from a week-long visit in Ohio. We’d spent lots of time with Al, and though he wasn’t feeling great he had a good time watching the kids. Mischief (that’s the codename for the 5-year-old supervillain-in-training) was running around like a wild thing, and Mayhem (the gleeful 1.5-year-old agent of chaos) gave his grandpa some cuddles and lots of smiles. It was a sad goodbye, knowing we wouldn’t be home for Christmas, but we promised we’d see him in February and we’d call when we got home. Instead Uncle Ralph called us as we sat down to a breakfast that we’d never eat.
Twelve years ago when Rachel died – Rachel, my best friend since we were 12, the other half of my brain, the person I’d most shaped and been most shaped by during the years when it matters most, like two trees growing entwined in each other’s roots – it was Al who held me up. He literally held me up, in a fierce bear-hug, while he told me the news in a shaky voice into my ear, “Rachel’s dead,” and the world went out from under my feet.
No one held me up when Uncle Ralph broke the news about Al, though I know he wished he had me in a bear-hug when he called me that morning. My husband would have, of course, but he was keeping the kids from harassing me, because he could tell by my voice from the other room that it was something serious. When I dropped down to the floor, pressed between a radiator and a bookshelf, all I wanted was to feel my dad’s big, strong bear-hug again. I want it now. Every time I’m sad.
I want to squeeze him and tell him he’s going to be okay. I want to nag him to take better care of himself, to call me instead of always waiting for me to call him, to go visit his dad and his sister and brothers. I want to talk about baseball. I want to tell him stories about what his grandkids are doing, and translate for him when Mischief tries to tell him stories on the phone, but she’s hard to understand because of the accent and the distance. I want to make him peanut butter cookies for his birthday. I want him to give us tours of his garden, even in the shaky, wheezy, old-man way of his last few years while he was sick.
Most of all I want him to be not just alive, but younger and stronger and happier than he’d been since he got sick – the real Al. The Al I grew up with. The one who outran guys 20 years younger than him on the softball field. The one who taught me to climb trees and use power tools and ride a bike and build sand castles. The Room Dad in elementary school, the softball and Odyssey of the Mind coach, the substitute dad to all my friends and the neighborhood kids. The guy who could spend the whole day walking his mail route, often in terrible weather, and still have the energy to have snowball fights or help me practice pitching. I want that Al back, because I’ve got a couple kids here with boundless energy who don’t even know about all the good Grandpa Al stuff they’re missing out on. And that breaks my heart all over again.
I’m sorry to be such a downer today. Tomorrow I’ll cobble together some semblance of cheer, but today isn’t the day for that. Today I’ll look at family photo albums, wear Al’s Browns shirt, drink some crappy beer in his honor, and have a good weep. I miss you, Daddy.
michelle heimburger 