It feels like the night before Christmas, only better.
In addition to seeing some of my favorite people, the event follows my first weekly writing workshop in seventeen years. Seventeen. I will not dwell on that number or feel embarrassed about it. Instead, I am leaning into a humble brag moment.
When I earned my MFA in Creative Writing at Lesley University, I was a baby. Only three years out of my BA. I knew I had stories swirling in my head. The internal monologue was always running, always loud. And I was twenty-three.
Twenty-three.
When I think of my parents at twenty-three, they already had a baby. It would be seven more years before that happened for me. So yes, twenty-three can hold a lifetime. But looking back now at forty-four, I can lovingly call her a baby.
And oh my God, did I want to be impressive.
So impressive.
I wanted my teachers and every other student to love my writing equally. Which is absurd and nearly impossible in a room full of writers. Most of us live so much in our own heads that it can be hard to hear anyone else, including ourselves. At least, it was for me.
My expectations for myself were impossible. I am not saying no one can have a fully formed voice and style by twenty-three. I am saying there was no way I could have. I had barely figured out where I wanted to live.
Voice. Style. Confidence. Perspective. These things have taken decades. And while I believe they will always be a work in progress, there are a few things I know now, and I am proud of them.
I write the way I speak. If you do not like conversation, if you do not want to feel as though we are sitting together in real life, I am not your jam.
I am not everyone’s jam. Which is wonderful, because it means I really am the jelly for some people.
Being wrong and regretful is more interesting than being right and assured.
Truth depends on who is telling the story.
Any narrator can be reliable and unreliable at the same time.
Being a late bloomer, even one who is a mom and a Cancer Shark, means people think you are younger until you start to tell a story.
Often, I digress.
Like this post, which is a long introduction to something simple and important.
Last Tuesday, at the first meeting of this writer’s workshop with authors I once desperately wanted to impress, we wrote for fifteen minutes on a prompt. When it came time to share, I waited until the end and went last.
Then I read.
When I finished, an author I have admired and followed since my MFA days looked up and said, in front of everyone:
“How did you write that in fifteen minutes?”
I told her the truth. I write every day now, so that muscle is in shape.
I have been floating on that high ever since. Which is good, because I had an immunotherapy infusion on Wednesday.
About twenty minutes ago, as I was walking upstairs to grab a blanket, I caught myself thinking: What a waste, going to graduate school in my twenties. I was so focused on being good that I couldn't just be myself.
Then, without hesitation, I heard myself answer: No, lovey. You had to go in your twenties so you could do this in your forties. You are ahead of the game. And you are a shark. Look at you.
Keep swimming. These waters are wild.
PS: Ben Hatton, thank you so much for becoming my friend during those MFA wild times and staying right on through to my Shark era. You are among the kindest people I have ever known.
See, what I'm saying? There I am right up front, red shirt, brown hair…BABY! Ben, you are one person over to my right. :)