What I Mean
I've been using words like "humility" over the past several days. This is something that threatens to turn into an insincere affectation if one talks about it too much, but because I'm insecure enough to be concerned with how I'm perceived by other people, I'm going to talk about it a little more.
Here are the facts. I've been told, since the fourth grade, that I'm a good writer. I've heard this from my teachers and professors, my friends and family. I've heard it enough to think that it's probably true. That doesn't mean I don't know that there's a bevy of writers with vastly superior skills, or that I haven't produced mountains of crap. It just means that I have a set of skills that I can use to create work of a certain level of quality if I make the required effort. I have a degree of confidence in those skills that it seems silly to deny.
I don't think that acknowledging this confidence is arrogant, or even close to it. I know what arrogance looks like. Arrogance is what got me an "F" in freshman English because I didn't want to produce all those stupid little 3x5 outline cards to write a paper when I'd already been told by my 10th grade history professor that I was producing undergraduate-level work in his class. Arrogance is what led me to send out dozens of pieces that weren't ready for market in my early twenties because I was, after all, a good writer, and didn't need to bother with things like revision and rewriting.
I spent the bulk of my early writing years in isolation. I didn't know other writers, I didn't have a writer's group, I didn't go to conferences. I had several poems published in various small 'zines (including the epic "Ode to Rubber," which found a home in Bad Haircut). In 1995 I had my first and, to date, only short story success when Home Planet News published "Where We Met." They were producing an AIDS-themed issue, which was the subject of the story, so it was partially just good timing. They invited me up to the issue release party in New York, and asked me to read. When the editor introduced me to folks, she mentioned that this was my first publication, in a "Can you believe it?" sort of way. I read selections from Two Accounts of the Creation of a Pornographic Film, my self-published chapbook of bad shock poetry. They went over well, largely because I was a good enough reader that I could sell the angry little obscene monologues to a live audience.
And then...nothing. It's been a dozen years since I've been in print. I've been telling people that I quit writing for a decade or so, which isn't entirely accurate. I've been writing here, for example, and there are a few abortive attempts at novels or short stories in my computer's /Writings/ directory. But I didn't submit anything, I didn't get published, and I wasn't giving my writing the kind of attention that someone who is actually a writer should. I'm not really sure why that was so, but I suspect that it had much to do with being almost entirely unaware of who I was or what I wanted to be doing with my life. It's tough to find your voice when you're in that state.
The very first thing I did when I decided to start being less of an absolute basket case at the end of 2006 was produce a new short story called "Wreckage," which I read late last week at the conference (it was the weakest of the five I read, I think, but not beyond help). The next thing I did was start a writer's group, in late December. The writer's conference is the latest, and most significant, effort I've made to move myself into the life I want.
The work that I have produced over the past six months was well received by the members of my first writer's group, people whose opinions I value and respect. It was a safe and intimate environment, just four writers total. The conference was another matter altogether, as I was reading stories aloud to rooms full of people I didn't know, some of whom were multiply-published authors and screenwriters or well known editors in literary circles. Each time I sat down in the hot seat, I was sure that I was about to read an absolute clunker, and was more than ready to take the copious notes necessary to turn it into a work which, someday, might vaguely resemble something that didn't suck.
That didn't happen.
Nothing I read was perfect. I got notes. But damned if the pieces didn't work. They're functioning stories that had an impact. I know this because people told me so, people I respect. These are my peers: creative, mad, all seeking to improve their execution of a craft that holds no real promise of reward other than the simple satisfaction of doing it well.
This is the bit where I talk about humility.
At one point during Shelly's pirate workshop I mentioned that I felt humbled by the response of the group, which got me an odd look from another pirate. I can understand that. Positive feedback, it seems, ought to puff one up, at least a little bit. I won't deny the satisfaction of it. However, for me the greater part of it is this: it is humbling to realize that the words I string together can create an effect in someone's mind and heart. It is an honor to reach someone in that way, because that person has to let my creation inside and, in a sense, this means that they have given me a kind of trust. I've heard people claim variations on the "I write only for myself" theme, and perhaps that works for some people...but if they're at a conference, or in a writer's group, or anywhere at all where other people are supposed to hear their work, they're lying. Perhaps unconsciously. But the people who truly write for themselves are never heard from, not while they're alive.
Without a reader, my work is nothing. So when readers approach me and tell me that they appreciate what I have done, I recognize my interdependence with them, and I am grateful that they have chosen to participate in my creative process through their willingness to listen, to be affected, and, yes, to judge. Forthright criticism from a reader is incredibly valuable. It is an intimacy, a partner telling me, Here is what will enable you to reach me. I want to be worthy of that.
So, when Shelly tells me that I need to turn a short story into a novel, I listen. When L. tells me I should make a few changes and send out what I thought was part one of a planned 5,000-word short story as it is, I listen. And when someone tells me I have produced the greatest ball of reeking tripe since Fester MacGee's Horse Colons I Have Known, I'll listen to that, too.
Because the work isn't about me.
It's about you.
