To be filed under "C" for cringe

It's not easy going back and revisiting old writing. But it's worth it.

First, a quick hello and welcome to the new subscribers who found their way here via The 7 a.m. Novelist. Thanks for signing on for what I’m pretty sure is the world’s most eclectic Substack! In your honor, this post has to do with writing—specifically, sucking at it and getting better at it. But it’s also a metaphor for something, probably. If you figure it out, let me know.

So. We just finished doing a big renovation on the third floor of our house, and in the process I got something I’ve been dreaming of for ages: My own office, that doesn’t also serve as guest room / clutter dumping ground / place for the kids to watch movies with friends and leave popcorn and candy wrappers all over the floor.

It’s pretty sweet, and I feel damned lucky. (Never mind that we’ll be paying off the home equity loan forever…)

The early morning view from my office.

In getting ready for the build, we went through and got rid of a whooooole lot of stuff we had in storage. (So satisfying! Like blowing your nose on a cold winter’s day!) As part of this process, I culled my huge collection of old photos, and sorted through copious files: letters and emails, artifacts from various jobs and trips, materials from writing classes I’ve taught, etc.

Sometimes deciding what to chuck or keep was easy: Do I still need EVERY SINGLE REPORT CARD from middle school and high school, on vintage 80s/90s green and white dot-matrix printer paper? No, no I do not.

Do I want the business cards from the various ad agencies I worked at between 1997-2009? Of course!

Do I want to keep the rejection notes I received during the brief few years that I submitted short stories to literary magazines? Yeah, definitely. Not just because they’re quaint (printed rejection notes, sent to me in self-addressed stamped envelopes!) but because they are a reminder of those heady, hopeful days when I first fell in love with this thing called writing. Some of them had words of encouragement, which I desperately clung to.

Just a sampling…

But one chunk of papers presented a condunrum: In a fat file labeled “Feedback” I found a whooooole bunch of the critiques I received on the stories I put up for workshop when I was getting my MFA, along with some of the stories themselves.

Ugh.

Reader, the two years I spent at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop were not good ones for me in the ole self esteem category. I liked my classmates, and made some good friends, but there was definitely a “that which does not kill you will make you a better writer—or, better yet, deter you from being one altogether” ethos among the faculty.

There was also competitive undercurrent to the place: when I was there, financial aid was awarded based on merit, and re-allocated after the first year. (I was at the bottom of the funding totem pole, and stayed there.) Meanwhile, agents and editors regularly scouted the program, sometimes tapping a promising student on the head with their magical New York publishing wand. If you weren’t among those who received high praise from faculty and peers, generous funding, or a contract, it was hard not to feel second rate. At least, it was for me.

So, when I came across the “Feedback” folder a few months ago, I approached it with trepidation. Did I really want to revisit a period of my life when I was so insecure? Did I want to read the detailed dissections of my work that left me feeling incompetent and drove me to drink way too much PBR at Iowa City bars?

OF COURSE I DID!

Just…so much feedback.

And you know what? The feedback wasn’t quite bad as I remembered.

I mean, yes, there were some real gems of faint praise in there that still make me fume. This one from a classmate, for example:

“[Story Title] has some good stuff in it. The premise is compelling. You’ve cleaned up your sentences, too.”

(Gee, thanks!)

And I vividly remember how deflated I felt by the critique from a professor that contained this assessement of a story I submitted.

“You have ostensibly given us four different points of view here, Jane; but in reality, you haven’t given us any. That is, you haven’t gone deeply enough into these characters.”

oof.

But most of the comments, while not exactly raves, weren’t so cutting in and of themselves that they should have made me feel as lousy as I did. Mostly they were constructive and kind. Maybe it was just the sheer volume of them that was so dispiriting. Maybe two years of constant, detailed feedback on one’s writing is just too much for any person to handle. Or maybe I was just unaccustomed to undertaking something academic-ish that didn’t come easily to me. I think that was probably a big part of it. I was used to being a star student.

What I found interesting was that things my Iowa classmates pointed out as strengths of my work—dialogue, pacing, making secondary characters feel three-dimensional—are the things I still consider strengths today. The weaknesses—overexplaining instead of trusting the reader, not making the stakes high enough—are the same too, as are some of the quirks. As one classmate wrote:

“What’s the deal with the parentheses? It’s like you’re trying to subordinate your own voice. I found the writing in the parentheses quite interesting, and I think you should uncage your words from the parentheses and let them breathe free! If you have something good to say, don’t hide behind it with weird punctuation.”

(I do like my parentheses.)

But the most striking part of going through everything was seeing HOW BAD MY WRITING WAS!!

Ok, fine, not terrible. But man, it has come a long way.

My characters smiled and nodded and laughed and shrugged far too much, and I included sensory details where they just weren’t needed. I also used to used WAY too many similes and metaphors. It was like I was so excited when I thought of a good one that I just couldn’t help showing it off. I was like a first grader with a loose tooth. A cat with a dead chipmunk in its mouth. A ceaselessly tolling bell.

(Fun simile anecdote, here in the parentheses: in one story I compared the thickness of a woman’s braid to a baby’s arm. A classmate kindly pointed out that this comparison is frequently used when talking about penis size. Who knew?)

But most of all, I clearly just wasn’t having fun. I was trying so hard to write these earnest, meaningful stories like the ones I admired, where people had small epiphanies or changed in subtle yet profound ways. But there was precious little humor or playfulness or passion in what I wrote. When I tried to convey big, messy emotions they felt more like the telenovela version of big, messy emotions. I was swinging for something that I thought was the definition of a good story, sometimes making contact, but ultimately striking out. (Forced sportsball metaphor.)

So, looking back at that old work was pretty cringe, as my kids might say. But it also made me feel a lot of tenderness toward my old self. For the gazillionth time in my life, I wished that current-day me could go back and whisper in the ear of younger me. I’d say Hang in there. Keep going. Trust that you will get better. And for god’s sake, stop with all the similes.

Although, ha, I guess I did all that anyway, didn’t I.

It’s a gift—albeit a slightly uncomfortable one—to be able to revisit your earlier work, and see what has and hasn’t changed; to see the seeds of good things to come, and the husks you’ve rightly cast off along the way. (Perhaps justified botanical metaphor.) And it feels really good to see concrete evidence of your growth and improvement, doesn’t it? In writing or in anything.

So, I’m not going to throw away the feedback folder. Just like I’m not going to track down and destroy every copy of my first two books, even though I know I’m a much better writer now than I was when I wrote them. I’m not going to toss the bad spec ads I wrote early in my advertising career either. All the clumsy attempts and middling results and painful failures—they’re all part of the story. (Cringe!)

Perhaps my most well-received creative outing at Iowa: my 2003 “Overboard Halloween Mom” costume

(Chock full of parentheses, and probably too many metaphors.)