Fake It, Baby! The Power of a F.I.B.

This morning, one of my dear friends shared with our writing community a (true) story about her daughter.  The little girl woke in tears from the middle of a dream.  In this disturbing nightmare, a horde of mischievous faeries threatened to take away her mother, the writer of their destiny, if she didn't complete a (perfectly positive) story about them.  The little girl would not be consoled.  Even though one of the faeries got gobbled up by their Great Dane.  She absolutely insisted her mother write the story, lest she be carted away by a horde of faeries. 

What strikes me about this amusing little anecdote is not so much its humor (though there is plenty to be found), but its earnestness.  This little girl sees her mother as a writer, a writer with the power to create her own salvation, or to doom herself with her own negligence.  What a wonderful gift, to be seen as such a powerful woman by someone who loves you!

Writing is at the heart of my friend's identity.  It is what she loves, who she is, and that simple "being" reflects in her daughter's attitudes and opinions.

But what about the rest of us? I am but one of a flood of unpublished amateurs out in murky waters wondering whether I will ever be comfortable enough to call myself a writer. I work an ordinary day job, where I push papers and manage administrative "emergencies" on a day-to-day basis.  Those tasks pay my bills, but they do not define who I am.  When meeting new people, I introduce myself by name and job title. Their primary understanding of my identity comes from my place of employment.  And usually, I allow the misconception.

When I was teaching high school band, we had a saying we would tell our students when performance anxiety took over:  "F.I.B. - Fake It, Baby!"  We didn't need their confidence.  We just needed them to act like they had it.  Funny how that works.  As many of them learned to fib, to fake their way through the paces, they actually got better.  What had been holding them back was neither talent nor lack of discipline, but fear.  They just needed to push through, to put on an air of confidence until some magical day when they actually had it.

For a long time I considered writing a hobby.  It was this task I did in my spare time that brought me pleasure, but it was not something to be proud of, to tell my family about, to post about in blogs or chat rooms.  It was just something that I did under the cover of darkness, when I was too emotionally wrought to express myself in any other way.

But what happens when hobby becomes vocation?  When you begin waking each morning planning your writing day, or going to bed each night hoping your dreams will bring you new ideas for the next day?  What happens then?  How do you burst from the closet with fountain pen in hand and say "Guess what?  I'm a writer!"?

Maybe fibbing is the key to making that transition, to going from a hobbyist to someone proud of a chosen vocation (whether or not it ever pays us a dime).

Bryan Hutchinson argues that, as writers, fear is not our enemy:

 "On the contrary, courage, confidence and even so called fearlessness are the results of facing, embracing and finally, dancing with your fears."
~Bryan Hutchinson, PositiveWriter.com

His point is that we need not be fearless.  We only must keep writing anyway.  I believe we have to take it a step further.  We have to share that writing with others, even through the fear.  When we meet someone at a party, we can't limit ourselves to saying "I am a sales associate" or "I am a homemaker" or "I'm a contractor."  For many of us our day jobs are only a way to pay the bills.  Let's act like it, ignore the fear, and tell it like it really is--even if we don't believe it yet.

I'm Amalie Cantor, and I'm a writer.  Who are you?

The Power of Words, The Power of Doubt

I wrote today's post in response to the contest over at Positive Writer - Overcoming Writer's Doubt.  In the week or so since I've found it, Bryan Hutchinson's work has become a much needed source of inspiration for me.  Thanks for running such a great contest and such an inspirational site!  :)

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Neither faith nor doubt are instinctual.  Each is cultivated from the gradual outpouring of words.  A single word, sentence, or phrase may float past us with little notice.  But over time, each shouted taunt or whispered praise blasts over us like grains of sand.  From both within and without we are eroded, sculpted; the people we might have been are molded into the people we become.

I learned to read fairly young.  By three, I was mispronouncing words in my mother's nursing textbooks. I mimicked the curves of letters as words blossomed on the margins of my Barbie coloring books.  I read voraciously, usually without much concern for pictures on the page.  They could not match the images that drew themselves in my mind's eye. 

By third or fourth grade, I had learned that to be smart was to be different.  That being different made you a target for ridicule and shame.  My bullies were but scared kids themselves, but their words had power, the power to destroy, to ruin.  I chose to stick to myself, to keep company only with others who hid among the shadows. Words sculpted me into an elementary school hermit.

Of course, words also allowed me to explore myself and the world around me in relative safety.  I devoured the words of my favorite authors and wanted nothing more than to emulate them.  I began my first novel in 7th grade.  I wanted to create something as dark and beautiful as my favorite Christopher Pike stories.  I showed it to my mother.  She sent those first chapters to a friend at a local university.  I never read her response.  I couldn't handle the assured heartbreak.  I knew quite well I "couldn't do it."  Why invite criticism?

Still, I loved to write, to twist those 26 characters into strange and unusual combinations.  I wrote some poetry.  Toyed with fiction.  Posted on deadjournal, xanga, whatever "blogging" site was popular at the time.  I never really expected anyone to read anything.  Looking back, I'm pretty sure I didn't want them to.

Years passed.  I stopped writing creatively and started writing academically.  The university embraced me.  I could put the right words in the right places, could easily meet and often exceed my instructors' standards.  I knew how to give them exactly what they wanted.  I thought, "I could do this for a living."  Praise for my work became a drug for me.  I had no high so euphoric as receiving a paper back from a professor full of praise, light correction, and even thoughtful consideration.  For the first time, I believed I'd found a place where I belonged.

Then grad school happened. I'd spent a few years out of my element, teaching full-time, but I'd needed more than anything to be back home in academia.  If only my professors had felt the same way.  They challenged me in ways I couldn't imagine.  Was I acceptable?  Yes.  But I felt as if I was just barely reaching the bar.

Then came my master's thesis.  My adviser became more irritated with me which each draft.  "Amalie," she once said, "you have a talent for putting together pretty words that don't mean anything."  On that day, my dream of becoming a professor shattered all over her office's dirty grey linoleum.

I hated how her words broke me, how they continued to break me, until the day I finally finished.  I walked away from grad school with my GPA, if not my ambition, intact.  All confidence I'd gained in five years as an undergraduate vanished in six months as I tried to finish one goddamned paper that no one would ever read.

I wrote nothing--fiction, essays, poetry, prose--for almost a year, one of the harshest of my life.  I was a woman in crisis, employed, but at just above minimum wage.  I had three degrees but used none of them.  Worst of all, I didn't believe I deserved anything more.

Slowly, I climbed out of my depression.  I realized, in retrospect, what my adviser had been trying to accomplish. She'd wanted to craft me into the kind of thinker, the kind of writer, that she knew I could be.  But her words held power, and rather than build me up, they'd eroded all my confidence away.  It would be up to me to get it back.

I turned once again to prose.  I hoped to express the doubts that followed me like a cluster of vipers snapping at my heels. In writing, I expelled the venom of a life I didn't know I hadn't wanted.  I wrangled myself a new job and a brilliant fiancee.  I thought maybe, just maybe, I could take my writing seriously again.

The day the doubt lifted, I'd been writing feverishly for hours.  My partner and I were at one of our favorite coffee shops, sipping meltaway lattes, when I handed her my laptop.  "I've been toying with this short story all day.  Read it and give me your opinion?"  She put her own sketchpad away and nodded.  I headed toward the ladies' room.  I couldn't watch her face as she read.

When I came back, she had tears in her eyes.  I looked at her in concern, but she lifted her face to me and said, "Baby, it's beautiful."  In those three words, the rip in my soul--the one that had torn me apart since that day in my adviser's office--began to heal.  I'd given a professor's words the power to destroy me.  I'd never thought to let my partner heal me with hers.

Words are powerful.  There are still days when I fear the power intrinsic in my voice, in my hands, on the tips of my fingers.  Each and every word I say, whether shining and brilliant or dull, dank, and dark, has the power to erode away who another person might be.  But it also has the power to sculpt them into the kind of person they want to become.

I only hope it's the latter.

Writing for Myself: Fiction, Fear, and the LGBTQ Community

A few months ago I was participating in an online novel writing workshop, working on the outline for what would become my novel-in-progress, Choosing Her Chains.  One of my well-meaning classmates (a cisgender, white, affluent male) asked, as we were discussing the implications of my outline, why I had selected what he considered a possibly controversial theme for the work.  He was concerned for me, that though I might complete an excellent novel, my readership would remain low, that it would continually fight to stay afloat in what he considered a relatively niche market.  "Why would you risk failure before you've even begun?"

He had the best of intentions in his comments, but he didn't understand.  I couldn't have selected another theme even if I wanted to find one.  The story had been bubbling for months, developing in the darkest recesses of my mind.  The protagonist refused to let me ignore her for even a day.  Even now, as I type away on this post, she's poking me in the back of my head and asking why I haven't worked on her story more today.  And the sun is just now cresting the horizon!

At the end of the day, though, even her persistence is not always enough to keep me working.  Tapping into that mysterious subconscious realm where our characters exist is exhausting. Sometimes the fear of getting a detail wrong (and your characters will definitely alert you when that happens) prevents me from wanting to write at all.  What keeps me writing from from day-to-day is the desire to write the story I wish I could read.

As a member of the LGBTQ community, I often find that the selection of stories that portray "characters like us" are limited, if not in scope (thank you independent publishing!) then in quality.  My deepest desire drives me to produce work that meets my own standards in both quality and readership while maintaining the integrity of exactly the kind of characters and scenarios and I would want to read in my own spare time.

I am far from alone. Writers of all genres of LGBTQ fiction are even now actively striving to create high-quality fiction in greater numbers than ever before.  Mainstream literary agents and publishers are gradually picking us up, giving us writing contracts, and publishing our books.  But publishers can never accurately predict their readership.  Unfortunately, for right now, the fan base of such books is more or less confined to the same readers who have been following independent writers in the community for years.

How often are we discouraged from writing what it is we really want to write ("controversial" or not) because of fear of how others might respond? And how do we overcome that fear?

A few days ago I picked up Bryan Hutchinson's book Writer's Doubt through Amazon's new Kindle Unlimited program.  I'm only a couple of chapters into the book, but already I've found excerpts with which I can commiserate.

The moment will come when you realize exactly what you want to write about because you absolutely love writing about it and you can't stop.  You'll find yourself driving down the highway when an idea suddenly comes to you and you'll desperately search for a place to pull over just so you can jot down a quick note so you won't forget.  That's when you'll know you've found your niche.¹

When I write something that's intensely personal to me, whether it be fiction, poetry, or blog post, I cannot set the keyboard aside.  I'm driven to complete it.  But completing the work is only half the battle.  Sometimes I write purely for myself, and I have no desire to share it elsewhere.  But sometimes I feel the need to share it with others.  Whether that desire to share comes from some drive to enlighten someone, from the hopes of conversing with other like-minded individuals, from an instinct to provide entertainment to others like myself, or even just to stroke my own narcissistic ego, the reason eventually proves wholly irrelevant. So long as I enjoy reading what I write, I've accomplished my goal.

But then the doubt creeps in.  What if potential mainstream readers are driven away by expressly LGBTQ themes and scenarios?  What if they refuse to even consider the book if they suggest it supports a lifestyle with which they are still uncomfortable?  Or even worse!  What if my family in the LGBTQ community somehow feels I have done them a grave injustice?  Have I portrayed them in the light I hope to promote?  Have I become just another hackneyed independent author trying to get my $5 out of those people desperate to read genre-specific titles?

Then I remember: there's really no way to know how an audience will receive your work.  Your 500 beta readers and editors might love a piece of work (or hate it).  Once you've released that work of soul into the world, the reception of your readers will be determined by a tangled web of perseverance, marketing, and luck.

So to myself, and to any writers out there in the LGBTQ community, ride the fear.  Embrace it for the exhilarating experience it can be.  And when you've got that story written, send it to me.  You might be writing just for you now.  But perhaps you're also writing for me.

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P.S. -- Everyone should be sure to check-out Bryan's website at http://positivewriter.com/.   If you need a pick-me-up on the dark days, you'll be sure to find some inspiration.

¹Hutchinson, Bryan (2014). Writer's Doubt: How You Can Overcome Doubt and Create Work That Matters [Kindle version]. Available from http://www.amazon.com/Writers-Doubt-Overcome-Create-Matters-ebook/dp/B00J9959GI/