Rewriting the Narrative of My Writing Self

Harnessing the wisdom of other writers

Photo by Fausto García on Unsplash

One of my favorite things about Medium is the inspiration I find to keep writing no matter how stuck I feel. These three articles prompted me to consider what my writing self looks like and whether I’m on track to get there.

Moving Beyond Inferiority

Why You’re Attached to Being an Inferior Version of Yourself

Brianna Wiest maintains most of us are short-changing ourselves by placing our validation in the hands of others. So what’s to be done? If we’re to push ourselves beyond the self we’ve settled for, we have to rewrite our story.

“Every day of your life, you must wake up and completely embody the person you want to be. That is the only way you will become them.”

It is a “process of self-validation,” Wiest writes, that helps us break down “the tension, the resistance, the unhappiness.” Like the resistance I feel with finishing my memoir, the tension of reliving painful times until it’s finished.

Who is the person I want to be? Since being a writer is part of my identity, then being the kind of person I want to be means being the kind of writer I want to be, which is one who puts herself out there and isn’t afraid of what people might think, who doesn’t run from the possibility of criticism and rejection.

I want to be the kind of writer who doesn’t doubt every word, who doesn’t succumb to her inner critic, to its incessant question of what I could possibly have to offer. This is the kind of person who’s confident in her thoughts and opinions, who believes she’s worthy of contributing to the larger story of humanity.

Finishing What I Start

How to Become a Person Who Finishes What You Start

It’s a miracle I ever finished a dissertation. I wouldn’t have without my advisor urging me along but not without pointing out my biggest challenge: “You have a lot of good ideas, just no follow-through.”

In her piece on the importance of finishing what we start, Shaunta Grimes reminds us that successful people are finishers. Among the tips she shares for becoming a finisher —

“Muzzle your inner editor.”

Grimes has named her inner editor, which I imagine gives her some control over it. Mine has no name but takes the form of a monster lurking over my bed. No physical appearance beyond a shadow on the walls, on the ceiling, hovering over my face. Something out of the movie The Babadook. Perhaps I need to name it.

Killing My Perfectionism

It’s Better to Do Something Imperfectly

Finishing what I start means returning to my memoir, which means doing the work required to see it through to the end. Joe Pregadio reminds us how the quest for perfection can lead to paralysis, to doing nothing. My inner critic, my Babadook, is mired in perfection. It’s drilled into my brain, growing up with a mother who cleaned obsessively, running the vacuum at midnight because we’d left footprints on the carpet.

My quest for perfection is an excuse like the false narrative of myself I’ve created. In that story, I’m not good enough to “make it” as a writer, although I haven’t considered what making it as a writer means to me.

Shaping My Course

In response to my piece about struggling with “writer’s block,” Christina Ward 🍁🌲 encouraged me to submit to the process of writing. Not writing isn’t an option for me, but to fully release the tension and submit to the process, I have to rewrite my narrative.

It’s time to be a higher version of my writing self, one strong enough to defeat my Babadook — the Boogie Man standing over me — and his sidekick, Perfection. It’s time to be the version brave enough to finish what I start no matter how painful. And bold enough to share it with the world.

Originally published in Indelible Ink on Medium on October 23, 2019.

It Might Be a Myth, but the Boogie Man Is Standing Over Me

My latest battle with “writer’s block”

Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash

I’ve struggled with writing this past month. Every day the same thought: I need to write something for Medium. But no matter how much I wrote in my journal, I couldn’t get anything to gel. As the hours ticked off into days and days rolled into weeks, my writing angst deepened.

Like many on Medium, I dislike the term “writer’s block.” What does it even mean? Christina Ward calls it “a big fat myth…the writer’s Boogie Man.”

But what if I’m scared of the Boogie Man? When he comes to visit, he terrorizes not just my creative writing but my ability to compose even the simplest of emails. It takes minutes to draft something I should have dashed off in a few seconds. The doubt over every word is paralyzing.

It’s not the first time I’ve been here. Being paralyzed by my own self-doubts is a routine I know well. Every time it strikes, I tell myself I’m not aiming for perfection. But my subconscious doesn’t care; it will find a way to open the door to the Boogie Man.

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In the music video for Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in The Wall, Part Two, an animated scene shows a tiny human figure huddled next to a wall of white bricks stretching up to the night sky. The wall wraps around the figure and forms an impenetrable tower; the figure merely a speck on the ground with no way out.

I feel like that speck. And spray painted inside the tower, as if some cruel joke, is the question repeating ad nauseam throughout my journals going back to my early twenties —

“What holds me back?”

I thought I had moved past this question in 2015 when I finished my Ph.D. Surely, that achievement would silence the question once and for all. It might have lowered the volume, but it didn’t mute it altogether.

In January 2017, I wrote in my journal, “Every year I commit to writing throughout the year, and every year I fail.” My wall would become a tower, and I’d be trapped inside with my self-doubts and insecurities — the bricks in my wall.

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Maybe I struggle because I’m drawn to memoir writing, baring my soul for the world to see and judge. When I was 10, I hand-copied words from a novel about a dog to practice my penmanship, but truthfully, I did it because I loved seeing the words come to life beneath my fingers. I was telling a story. But the idea of telling my own story terrifies me. My calling in writing seems like some ironic twist of fate.

I’ve felt compelled to write for most of my life, and my well-being depends on it. When I don’t write, not even in my journal, my mood sinks. By denying my writing, I’m denying a part of myself. It’s as if I was given this need to write for a reason, to examine my past and come to terms with it.

When I started writing a memoir about a painful experience as a teen, I discovered what made me abruptly stop writing in my journal and ignore it for long stretches. The more I wrote, the more I felt I was inching closer to the shadowy corners of my mind where part of my childhood exists in hidden memories.

The mind, especially one of a child, has an amazing ability to protect us from things we never should have seen or experienced.

Is it possible that my brain became so accustomed to blocking out memories of bad experiences that the switch got stuck, creating a block to my creative side? Is it this switch that makes writing feel like I’m slogging through thick mud, the slurp-slurp sound of my shoes peeling away from the slop marking my slow progress to nowhere?

Perhaps that’s the answer I’ve been looking for. What holds me back is not fear of rejection or fear that I’ll look stupid. Rather, the more I write, the closer I get to myself, to the truth of my life.

And I’m scared of what I may find there.

It might be more than I bargained for.

Originally published in Indelible Ink on Medium on October 10, 2019.