Getting Out of My Comfort Zone
I haven’t written anything creative in several months, and I started to feel like I was failing my resolution. What good is it to reignite a passion in January that fizzles by April? Now, I know I’m being overly hard on myself. I have found so much joy because of my goal of getting back into creative writing. By association, I also reignited my love of reading, and I started a whole damn YouTube channel about it. That’s success times three!
But as much as I wanted to write more, I just wasn’t devoting any time to it. I looked into maybe taking a creative writing class at the university, but all the classes offered this semester were smack in the middle of the work day, so that was a no-go. A friend of mine sent me a link to a sci-fi & fantasy writing class at the Carnegie Center, a local nonprofit that encourages people to engage in “literary arts”. I got excited about that and signed up, only to have the class canceled before it began because not enough students signed up. But I went back to the Carnegie Center’s website, and found something similar: A Fantasy & Sci-Fi Writer’s Group. The description said to bring some of our writing to share on the very first day. It will meet once a week from mid-September to early November.
Without allowing myself to hem and haw about it, I signed up and held my breath, thinking this one will probably be canceled too. It wasn’t.
As the first session grew closer, my anxiety grew. When the day of the first class arrived, I was so nervous. A part of my brain was screaming “Bail, abort mission, evasive maneuvers!”
Other than publishing some blog posts, I’ve never really shared my creative writing with anyone, outside of writing assignments back in grade school. Of course none of my friends and family who read my writing are going to say, “Yikes, that’s terrible.” But what if that’s what strangers thought? Reading my writing out loud to strangers…it loomed large in my mind. Even though I knew it was irrational (I want to be a published author, after all), I didn’t want to do it.
What if…
The instructor isn’t nice?
It’s all men in the class?
The other writers don’t “get” my story?
The other writers all suck and can’t tell me anything constructive?
They think my writing sucks?
No one engages and opens up to make this experience worth it?
But despite my fears, I biked over to the Carnegie Center and showed up to the first session. It was a small group, eight writers and one instructor. When the time came to read our writing, I raised my hand to go first, so I could rip off the experience like a band-aid. It was both as horrible as I expected and not nearly as bad as I thought. The constructive criticism came round-robin style, with everyone having a turn to give me feedback.
We were only allowed to share the first 500 words. And I started with the first 500 words of the novel I’m writing. 500 words is hardly anything. It’s one page. But the instructor told us that editors and agents often decide whether to accept or reject a work based on a single page alone. And I thought mine was good. Strong, exciting, well-written.
The instructor said he’d reject it.
It was a huge blow to hear that. He said nice things too, about how my writing was beautiful, and he could tell it was going somewhere cool, the setting was neat, etc. But he didn’t have a reason to care enough to turn the page. The other writers in the group said positive things, but also said things like: I don’t know what your main character is thinking while this is happening, you spend too long describing what she feels physically but not emotionally, nothing really happens until the last few sentences… Aside from one or two wayward comments, I saw exactly what everyone was saying. It was tough, but at the same time, I was excited to realize they were completely right.
This is exactly why I signed up for this group. Because I want to learn and grow as a writer. And right off the bat, I was getting feedback I could use to make my story better, stronger, and more exciting. And I left that session feeling energized to try again and make the changes.
So now I’m writing again. It might only be because it’s homework, but my motivations don’t matter as long as I do the work.
You don’t know if you don’t try.
“Do one thing that scares you every day.” -Eleanor Roosevelt
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