Writers Unbound

I’ve loved literature since I could read. Then I learned how to write, and there was no stopping me. I produced a prodigious amount of sappy poems through my adolescence, then moved on with all the maturity of age to college papers.

And I got stuck there.

Oh, I wrote some great papers. And I took as many creative writing courses as I could fit in and I loved them. I sweated words out, terrified that I was somehow immature, still sappy, unable to recognize the abysmal quality of my own poetry and prose. Then I erased and sweated new words out, even more terrified that I was being untrue to myself, fawning to a teacher whose style I could easily imitate, letting myself be molded into some kind of writer I would hate being.

I survived, I got good grades, I got compliments, I graduated. My Mom got sick, and I stayed home with her and Dad for that year after my college graduation. I debated going for my Masters, going for a job, going for success as an amazingly young and mature writer, or going for the man I had wanted to marry for 8 years. (We met when we were 14.)

Dear Reader, I married him, and I have never been sorry. But a funny thing happened; actually, it had been happening that whole year in between college and marriage. I didn’t write. I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I produced nothing…

I was in a strange haze. I had accustomed myself for the last four years to writing for my teachers: producing poetry, short stories, essays, research papers with the goal of getting a good grade. Sure, I tried to be true to myself, too, but I know if it came to a choice of getting an A and compromising my voice a little, or getting a C and saying what I wanted, how I wanted, I would choose the A.

It’s not all bad to write in order to please someone else. I needed to learn a certain control over my expression. The difficult part comes when the control is removed and the freedom replaced. Having been trained to please and appease for those years, it was impossible to immediately produce stuff that was challenging, true, individual, and open.

In fact, I am still learning to produce what I feel and know from my gut and not what I feel from that fearful, placating part of my mind. I love approval. I love a pat on the head, and that’s what every good grade felt like to me. Now I look for things to replace the big red A on my papers: a comment, a place to fit in, a positive response. And I look for ways to get those marks of approval, even if the methods don’t suit my real, long-term goals.

This is a battle for every writer. I am starting to win mine more than lose. But I still wish I could get an A for every post I put up…