How Not to Get Lost

As a young writer just starting out, you don’t really get a lot of playing time.

Let me define that a little bit more coherently—you don’t get your name in lights, or pep rallies, or people holding up posters, or pasta parties, or hats, or confetti, or champagne explosions, or trophies, or state championship titles, or spirit days, or galleries, or big games. At least, not at first. There may be book signings and fancy events and pats on the back down the road, if you’re lucky. Office parties, black sharpies, movie adaptations, pay raises. If you're lucky. But, for now, you’re stuck.

Writing is a quiet life, and any writer will admit this to you. There isn’t a lot of honor that accompanies having your name splashed across some paperback cover. In all honesty, to most people, an author’s name means nothing. And consider a journalist, slaving for hours before a huge deadline to perfect that one tiny article that only a handful (give or take) will take the time to pour over. Sure, you get credit, but where’s the applause? Where’s the fanfare? Oh, right.

People may say that I didn’t try hard enough. Maybe I didn’t invest enough time into my blog, maybe I didn’t share enough of my work. And yeah, maybe some of this is true. But think about what it means to be a (slightly) better-than-average writer (and I don't mean, in any way, to put myself on a pedestal--writing is probably one of the sole things that I do relatively well, one of the only things that has ever made any sense to me. That's all I'm saying). Essays usually aren't a problem. With a solid foundation, you can bang one out in maybe an hour. Reading is both pleasurable and absolutely horrible--either you're getting lost in a story or you're overwhelmingly jealous of someone else's recognized talent (“why didn’t I think to phrase it like that?”). You start inadvertently familiarize yourself with a lot of words that people don't use that often in normal conversation—short term, this can inhibit you, but it will ultimately (hopefully) benefit you in the long-run. And you think of things in different ways. You may even notice things that other people usually don't, or at least put words to these things in your mind. The weather isn't just sunny--sunlight is spreading itself sluttily over tight downtown shops, jading all that lurks in the shadows. His eyes aren't just blue--his eyes are a deep, hapless hue that refurses to pledge its allegiance to either the hopes and dreams of his deterring past or his capacious future. These are the things your ninth grade English teacher tried to teach you. This is how your mind works. This is what happens when you grow up on a diet of Harry Potter novels and an early interest in the cynicism of alternative rock, prematurely divulging into YA lit and watching too many movies that may have been above your maturity level. Honestly, I don't know why I love to write. I can't really explain it. We'll just live in blissful ignorance. Of course, on top of this all-consuming desire to create, there are about a thousand other day-to-day responsibilities of a normal teenaged kid, like studying for actual classes so you can get the grades that will matter if you want to go to that one specific college and major in that one specific thing. So you can’t really take much time out of your day to write a short story, format a poem, type up a blog post, or, even, god forbid, journal. There were nights during my second semester of junior year when I was absolutely itching to just write one tiny line down and exhaustion from all of my other academic responsibilities crept up on me and the thought was lost forever. Gone.

Strategically, they don't tell you about the burdens of being a decent writer. How many young people can name the best-selling authors of today? How many people read all of the copy in a yearbook? How many people read all of the text in magazines instead of just skimming the photos? How many people get excited about the releases of new novels? How many people get excited about poetry? How many people can actually recognize good writing? And here's what's worse--besides youth readings and poorly publicized competitions, there isn't much opportunity for young writers to make names for themselves. Student publications might pave some stepping stones, but that's about it. If you're not on your school newspaper or yearbook staff, you're not technically doing much. And other kids don't really care. It's all about the athletes; the kids that can punt a ball, run fast, do things that can probably be easily learned. I'm not trying to discredit the virtues of physical activity, or even the glorification of school spirit in regards to football (Ok, maybe I am a little bit), but why isn't there spirit for us quiet crusaders? The ones who can't really do anything all that fancy with our bodies. The kids who are weirdly good at math, or drawing, or writing poetry. Even theater has become an easy thing to praise. I mean, you're literally on stage in front of hundreds of people, flowers are thrown at your feet. People can name dozens and dozens of actors, actresses, comedians, and TV personalities off of their heads. Your English teacher might draw a smiley face on your essay, and then what? They’ve read hundreds of other papers. That penned emoticon means absolutely nothing. It’s not like they’re chasing you down, begging you to wield your pen and take off, charging into the night, flanked by all the other brave students who can kind of write an essay. So how do I know if I’m any good?

There was a really wonderful book I read this year that touched me in a way that no other book has been able to in an extremely long time for several reasons. It was The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan. It's this collection of essays and stories that Keegan's friends and family compiled from her high school and college years, and each and every word is incredible. She writes of the bliss and accompanying ignorance of youth, the importance of believing in oneself and the world around us and the people we let into our lives, and the joys of being appreciative of the small things in life. Even in her fiction you can feel this desperation she has to move forward, to hold onto a sense of opportunity, excitement, and adventure. She was a graduate of Yale, an award-winning author, journalist, poet, actress, and activist, and she was twenty-two years old when she died in a car accident, five days after her graduation. And that terrifies me. Because people die. People actually die--they can just be going about their day to day lives and they can just die, at any random moment. And death isn't picky at all--he'll take anyone, no matter how promising their life is. "There's a really good chance I'll never do anything," Keegan wrote in her essay, Song for the Special. She was twenty-two. But, you see, she was able to do something--she had this entire reservoir of prose that she left behind and enough people who cared about her legacy to turn it all into a book that immortalized her in a sufficient two hundred and eight pages. But here's my dilemma—I don't have two hundred and eight pages. I’m five years shy of twenty-two and I don’t have anywhere close to two hundred and eight pages. I don't have anything worth sharing with the world. So, what if I die and I leave nothing behind and I'm lost? Because that's entirely possible. And that's so scary to me. While other kids my age can boast scholarships and trophies and colorful portfolios, I'm sitting in my room trying to figure out how I can even start doing what I want to do. That's literally terrifying.

I want to write something beautiful. I want to write something beautiful for you (you know who you are) and I want to write something beautiful for everybody else in this world. I want to be prolific and imaginative and smart. Because these late nights spent with a laptop and a pen have to mean something, someday.