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I have edits on my next book due soon. So naturally I redesigned and relaunched my author website. I also organized the linen closet and for some reason (lots of reasons, mainly this is who I am) wrote a new book proposal. I’ll get to it.
My next appearances will be October 21 at LIT Youngstown. I’m excited to be one of the headliners along with Ross Gay and Jill Christman. I’ll be reading, doing a craft talk, and speaking on a panel. I’ll also be doing a reading with the Ohio Center for the Book at the Cleveland Public Library on November 3, and this event is virtual.
Don’t lose your confidence
I saw a dermatologist recently for a medical issue (all is fine), and to be honest, she didn’t have the best bedside manner. But at the end of the visit as she was leaving the exam room, she turned back to me and said, seemingly spontaneously: You look really great. Don’t lose your confidence.
I’ve been thinking about that last phrase a lot. I told it to my son when I picked him up from school and we walked the twenty minutes to the Italian deli to get overpriced sandwiches. He said middle school is not like that. It’s hard to hang onto yourself in middle school, especially when you don’t know who you are yet, who you’re going to be.
In life and in graduate school, not everyone has done the reading.
But what if you do know who you are?
The world is still often trying to pin you to the ground and pull you from yourself like lunch money. It denies you, rejects you, tells you who you are is weird and what you want is wrong.
Sometimes that’s just a part of an artistic life. Early in my career, an agent told me there should be a love interest for a 12-year-old girl in one of my manuscripts. Another said the queerness of Wil, the narrator of Road Out of Winter, was too much.
You are going to be too much for a lot of people. I was and still am.
I visited home this month, for the first time in nearly a year—which is too long for me to go between filling the well of myself, I realize—and admitted to a friend, I feel like the people where I live now think I’m this old, dark Appalachian witch. And she laughed and said, Well you are. But we love you for it.
And we are old, dark Appalachian witches too.
Your job is to be yourself relentlessly.
It’s easy to be yourself at home, if you love it there. But even if who you are isn’t reflected in the culture around you that doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It doesn’t mean you should stop.
I’ve had a couple artistic crises of confidence. One when I was 14, just a little older than my son is now and at an age when one is highly impressionable to insecurity, the cruel thoughts of others. The other was at 24, right after I obtained my MFA. It was hard for me to write then without hearing the voices of “the workshop” in my head. That was back when I assumed everyone had good intentions, that we had all done the reading.
In life and in graduate school, not everyone has done the reading. Not everyone has taken the time to understand, and not everyone will. But a lot of people will act as if they have. Your job is to filter out the critical voices that don’t count. Your job is to be yourself relentlessly.
I make the best art when I lie to myself, when I tell myself no one is ever going to see what I’m working on. No one will know it or me. And weirdly, that’s kind of the life I have at the moment, living where there is no artistic community. I used to struggle to make enough money to pay rent, to buy food for myself and my son. That’s not the struggle anymore, thankfully.
But there is still struggle. It’s a different fight, one of isolation and yes, of confidence. Maybe being invisible will allow me to grow. Maybe the work made in this place will be extra strong; it’s had to work to be born.
The fight is to hang onto yourself in the face of great resistance. Whether it’s agents saying no, classmates not understanding, bills coming due, middle school—or the middle school of your town, remember who you are. Remember what kind of artist you are. Remember that you are an artist, even or especially if the world around you doesn’t support that or even know. You’ll know.
I want to cry. There are tears clouding my vision and yet they won't fall. They are not quite allowed to accumulate to do more than mist my eyes for a second. And yet I feel so much of what you write here. I've been a background fan of your writing for more than a handful of years. You consistently tell the truth and I am usually prepared to listen.
I'm thinking especially about this: "The world is still often trying to pin you to the ground and pull you from yourself like lunch money. It denies you, rejects you, tells you who you are is weird and what you want is wrong."
The world pulling me from myself like lunch money. The way I walk through the world trying to not be noticed while also quietly, softly begging to be noticed. Knowing myself means knowing that those two sides are the same coin are me most days of the year. You've broken something loose in me just this moment. Thank you, I think.