I’ve spent the last few days choosing a purpose for what I’m doing. I’ve been writing–kinda. Writing other things and not at all focusing on my novel, except to submit it to a workshop I would like to attend. I read my novel, and it feels separate from me. It doesn’t feel like *I* wrote it, rather it feels like something I am reading and just trying to enjoy.
But I am hesitant and anxious to see if I am accepted to this workshop. My rational mind says, “Workshops are unnecessary. What matters is the work of writing. There are no shortcuts to that.”
My less-evolved emotional mind says, “Your entire potential career rests on if you get accepted or not.” And I know that is unclear thinking. I know that no one determines my life, except me.
My entire life I’ve lived waiting on approval. I think I was a student for eons because in that role, I was always told “You are good.” I’ve never suffered failure.
I took a modern poetry class with a professor from Harvard once. I was terrified, because 1.) it was modern poetry, and 2.) the dude was from Harvard. For our final paper, we had to write a 12 page thesis about some poet and their poems and make a logical, cogent argument. My feedback on that paper was “You took a difficult stance and for the most part you’ve done a decent job defending it. Much better than I expected.” I got an A. I remember that comment because it was as if both the professor and I knew that I was, in fact, a sham (I was the only non-English major or MFA student).
That comment meant something to me. It meant a great deal. It meant that I had exceeded this professor’s, FROM HARVARD, expectations. Maybe he had very low expectations, but my paper wasn’t entirely marked up and vilified. I felt like I had really passed. I felt like I could stand my ground.
Now, again, I wait to see if I pass. This is a shitty way to live life. I wonder if I can make a career of this? Writing something, letting my fingers bleed, and wait on feedback?
I tell my students that life is not either/or, life is not this versus that. There are different perspectives but they are not “bad” nor are any “evil”.
Philosophically, I do not believe in yin and yang. What I believe in is a continuum–the further you get from goodness and light, the easier it is for the darkness to creep in and take over, but the darkness will not win. The darkness will not rule. The darkness is just distance from what is bright and true.
Life is not pass/fail.
Life is “how close do you choose to stand to Truth?”
This is how I should approach any writing endeavor.
