I Write, Therefore I Am

My mom taught me arithmetic and multiplication, but my dad took me to the library almost every afternoon after his night shift as a postal clerk.  He would sit in a big dark wooden table surrounded by newspapers and magazines.  I was on the other side of the building--in the children's area--sitting in a teeny tiny bright yellow chair, devouring picture books.  Years later, it didn't matter that I studied hours into the night if I was in a library surrounded by others who were head-down, scribbling, memorizing.  

Ever since I was a little kid, my life's passion has been reading and writing.  I turned bright red one morning over breakfast when my mom told me she found a story I'd been working on.  It was a love story about a girl named Elizabeth who nicknamed herself Zoey.  She said she really liked it.  I was relieved.  My mom was really strict and I thought she'd frown at the story's romance.  I love everything about the written word on the page whether I wrote it or someone else did.

When I'm asked what my biggest regret is, I always tell people it's that I never lived in New York.  But that's wrong.  My biggest regret is that I didn't believe in myself enough to do exactly what I wanted to do: write.  

I took great pride in the fact that I wasn't 'just' an English major.  It made me feel like I was smarter than the other liberal arts majors.  I mean, really, what do you do with an English degree?  Now, I feel like the dumb one.  While I was muddying up my education with the sciences, those other liberal arts majors were focused, honing their craft.  Who's the dumb one now, eh?

Now as I attend Litquake events, listening to Jane Smiley, Terry McMillan, Phil Bronstein, I wish I could go back in time.  Writing was what I really wanted to do, but I didn't listen to my heart.  I wanted to make a living.  I wanted to make a lot of money.  

One of the events I attended tonight was a competition with the winner awarded one-on-one time with a publishing agent.  Five people read their pieces ranging from fiction to poetry.  I thought a couple of them were good.  I thought the rest were mediocre.  In fact, I was surprised some of them had been selected to read.  "I can write better than that," I thought.

But more surprising was the person who won.  I didn't think he would.  He wrote a fairy-tale from the perspective of a child.  The judges unanimously agreed.  The publishing agent who was also one of the judges commented at the end that he had such a unique, different voice.  He read something that was completely different from all the rest.

My writing isn't unique.  My voice is not unique.  But the lessons I learned from Litquake are food for thought as I think of ways to branch out.