dreaming big and starting small

“Oh, I’m going to try being a full-time writer.”

I’m realizing 

I need to muster more faith in myself–despite actually, and weirdly, having felt pretty content with my writing lately. Thanks to being a Baltimore Banner Creative-in-Residence, my essays and vignettes have been published regularly since last year. Beyond the publication high each time, readers–including Dan Rather!–have sent me feedback that’s thoughtful, thankful. 

I’ve felt content even when my pitches are rejected. My offers to read at local venues unacknowledged. My drafts too stubborn to take the shape I envision for them. These experiences still (will always?) sting; they also don’t rattle my confidence anymore. I’ve finally internalized: “failure” is an inevitable part of the writing process.

But this contentedness was only temporary. After over a decade of teaching high school English, I’ve pivoted to writing and book coaching full-time. Hopeful and curious, I’ve made the choice to honor my lifelong love of the written word. I say it calmly–“Oh, I’m going to try being a full-time writer”–even as I’m already mid-air.

While I disassemble one professional life and construct another, it’s not enough to be content. This transition requires taking calculated risks, trying and seeing, dreaming big and starting small. I don’t know where I’m going or how I’ll get there, but I know that without faith in myself and my writing, I might as well not even bother. I need to have faith that the money I invest into writing courses will find its way back to me in bylines and book deals. I need to have faith that learning marketing strategies will lead to a satisfying quality of life. I need to have faith that overcoming my social anxiety so I can introduce myself to strangers will bring me new readers. 

I need to have faith that my writing warrants this expense, effort, energy.  

Thanks to therapy, I trust in my ability to summon this faith, audacious as it may be. Also thanks to therapy, I’m at peace with the possibility of meeting defeat, of maybe needing to regroup, try again later. I’m relieved to have these nets: the knowledge that if I fall, I’ll be okay. But mostly, I’m eager to see how long, how far, I can fly.

 

I’m writing

an essay on spec. It’s about my shift between professions–how I got here and the lessons I’m learning. This editor has published my essays more than once, and rejected over double that. He cautioned me they’re accepting “very few” right now, but faith tells me to write it. Try. That it’ll be worth it to see what happens. 

I’m reading

Above Ground. After finishing Buki Papillon’s An Ordinary Wonder last week, I felt bad for the book(s) I’d read next; I couldn’t fathom how they’d compare. But the power of Clint Smith’s poetry makes me wish I was still an English teacher. I keep daydreaming about my lovelies embracing, exploring these poems together as I, off to the side, listen. 

I’m recommending 

• Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life by Dani Shapiro. I’d initially read this in 2019, which was, once upon a time, my best writing year. Recently listening to this episode of Writers on Writing inspired me to re-read Still Writing, and the timing was perfect. “So what is it about writing that makes it–for some of us–as necessary as breathing?” Dani Shapiro writes. “It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive.” It is because of this necessity to write as I breathe, because of the thousands of days behind me and the thousands I hope remain, that I must maintain my faith.

• #1000wordsofsummer, the annual, two-week writing challenge created by Jami Attenberg, which starts in two weeks. I’ve participated with varying success over the years, and am looking forward to being especially productive this time. Faith is nothing without follow-through. 

• Shut Up & Write! because it’s easier to keep faith when I keep good habits, and it’s easier to keep good habits when I keep myself in the company of like-minded others.