For as long as I can remember, I never felt like I completely fit in. I was never a total outcast, mind you. I even had popular friends. On occasion, I got invited to the “cool kid” parties. I had friends who were jocks, cheerleaders, academics, drama geeks, and honestly, even teachers.
But I rarely felt like I belonged.
When I was younger I wanted everyone to like me. EVERYONE. My parents, teachers, peers, complete strangers; it is entirely possible that I appeared to have multiple personalities at the time. You like hockey? Federov is the man! You find pop music detestable? Let me burn my Boyz II Men CD*.
It was an exhausting existence.
Not that it was all bad. I learned that I did in fact enjoy hockey. I exposed myself to new things I wouldn’t have otherwise and came to love them. Some things faded, like using lots of hair product and makeup, but others became parts of who I am.
Now, as an adult, there are very few people with whom I am truly at ease and completely myself. I say “as an adult”, as if adulthood changes things, but honestly people still behave very much like they did in high school. There are still cliques. There are still the people who think they are the “cool kids”. There are still people that make me feel like an outsider, no matter how much of an effort I make to be a friend.
The difference is I don’t try nearly as hard to be a person they want to accept.
Don’t get me wrong. I still try new things and try to be accommodating to others tastes and preferences as I get to know them. I’m a people pleaser and was raised to think of the needs of others. But I now know that street shouldn’t be one way. If I am the only one making an effort, than it may be best to move on.
Since I started writing (well, since I started writing publicly, not just in my own little cave) I’ve been able to enjoy meeting others who enjoy the things that I do, who “get” me. I’ve even met those who may be very different than me, but supportive and caring nonetheless. But I’ve also met the same cliquey folks who may as well still be in high school.
The good thing is that I don’t feel like I have to please the high school folk anymore.
This lesson is one that I try to apply specifically to my writing as I put more of myself out there. For a long time, I didn’t do anything more than write stories for myself (or the occasional email exchange with a coworker composed entirely of haiku). I’ve done a solid job of amusing myself, friends, and even a colleague or two (or more).
Every time I hit the publish button, every time I send another page of my novel to my writing partners, I get a knot in my stomach. Will they like it? Will I be accepted? Will I be one of the cool kids?
In the end, no matter how much my stomach knots, acceptance doesn’t matter. In the writing world there are still cliques. There are still people that befriend you that have no real interest in being your friend. There are people that will give their opinion who don’t actually care about you or your work. Somebody is going to roll their eyes and ignore my work.
But someone else will like it. And someone else will even love my work.
And that work is me. It’s not me trying to fit some image of what someone else thinks my writing should be.
Don’t get me wrong. Critique is fine. That’s why I have writing partners. They tell me when something absolutely doesn’t work. They tell me when something raises an eyebrow (not in a good way), and occasionally they tell me when I’ve made a choice they wouldn’t have made. But then they let it lie in my hands. I take everything they say to heart, but I make the decision in the end, not to please them, but to make the work better.
And to make the work who I am.
Amidst the endless (really, have you seen all the links on Twitter? Endless) advice on what you must and never do when you write, it can be easy to change our writing to fit what we think is expected of us. It is easy to force ourselves to fit in.
Some changes can benefit us. (Seriously, hockey is pretty awesome.) But if we change everything, our writing ceases to be our art. It just becomes a copy of everything else out there.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want every book I read to be from the same author, even the ones I adore.
In the end, you have to learn to make it work. For your writing. For you.
*Burn, like with fire, not make a copy. Also, I did not destroy the sweet harmonies of Boyz II Men. To the end of the road, indeed.
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Here are a couple links I loved this week. Go. Read ‘em. Then Sunday, get your butt out of the house and watch the solar eclipse.
From Yuri Baranovsky, my hands down favorite post this week, 9 Problems of Being an Artist. If you only click one link in this post, make that the one. (And if you haven’t checked out Leap Year yet, go get familiar with Yuri’s work. Talent, he has it.)
Serial fiction has become a recent interest, one in which I delved with no actual research, so I found this post really interesting, and oddly encouraging: Why Your Serial Fiction Is Likely To Fail And What You Can Do About It
On the whole TIME magazine, breastfeeding/parenting debate/debacle hullabaloo, an amusing male perspective on breastfeeding: From Breasts to Boobs and Back Again
Summertime is “up ons” us. Here is my plan for looking good when it gets here. An oldie, but a goodie.
For your general amusement, have any of you been watching The Daly Show? (That is not a typo.) Check out this one, guest starring Nathan Fillion. And if you were a Wings fan, you must view this and this.
Annnnd…if you are going to heed my advice on checking out the eclipse, check out this article to find out where and when to see it. Sadly, being in Stinktown, USA (a.k.a. Florida) means I won’t get to see it, so I expect pictures, people.
