Writing class is hard. Not the writing part – I mean, well, yes the writing part, but also, you have to read out your work. To others. Publicly.
This is tremendously difficult for the best of us. I have social anxiety, and being the centre of attention like that is particularly hard. On the other hand, it’s quite a bit easier to read a poem to people and repress the anxiety to be dealt with later than it would theoretically be to have a mental breakdown in front of everyone in class. I think part of my brain acknowledges that, and responds accordingly. I manage to feel exceedingly unpleasant, but still get through the thing. And of course, it gets easier.
I do have an advantage. I know when something of mine is good. Now, other people may not think it’s good, and that’s fine, we all have our own tastes. Plenty of people seem to like Harry Potter, after all. It is the greatest mystery of our time. But someone might not like my stuff, and their opinion is pretty easy to look at and say, well, that’s their view, and I can respect it, and disagree. They can give feedback on something they like or dislike and you can consider it – this can be helpful even if you end up discounting their ideas, and I actually really like this aspect of the class. But all other things being equal, I know when something of mine is good. I know that it is not shit. And a lot of these young people aren’t at that point yet, where they’ve got the writing experience to look at their work and think, “this may not be popular, but it is not shit”. It’s not an advantage that really gets me anywhere, but it’s still interesting to be in a different place in my work.
I’ve shared my stuff before, and I have to imagine that many of these students haven’t. I share it here, with you good people. (You’re so lucky. Gosh.) I share it knowing some people will like it and some people will hate it, and that’s OK. Now, I’m 30. It took me a while to get to this point. I went through a long period of being petrified of anyone reading my stuff, in case it was awful. I still feel nervous about sharing things, but that’s mostly the social anxiety. It’s not rational. It’s often not even something I can put into words.
Of course, when the “it’s just not to their taste” or “it’s just not what they’re looking for” reasonable headthoughts of ego preservation aren’t working, the writer can always fall back on the old faithful, “they just don’t understand my genius”. It’s a classic.
I want very, very much to get into the Writing Poetry class next year. Apparently, it involves doing poetry readings. I think I’ll need a stiff drink to get myself through those. Also there’s a class called Theory and the Gothic, holy shit, sign me the fuck up.
If you’ve wondered where I was last week: basically, I ran out of pills, didn’t sleep, and as a result, got caught up in writing fanfiction and missed a doctor’s appointment which I needed to get more of those pills. So I spent the week without pills. It was not my finest hour. Remember kids, when you’re writing, look at a clock occasionally!