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Posts Tagged ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’

  1. Feeling a Bookstore

    January 3, 2012 by katemeadows

    It’s happened before, more than once. I find myself standing in the middle of Barnes & Noble, overcome with a deep and inescapable sense of fear. I am surrounded by books, words, thousands upon thousands of other people’s masterpieces.

    I am a writer.

    I am seeking publication: for my first book, for a slew of articles, for a good handful of essays.

    And there I am, in a place where words – many of them artful and beautiful – outnumber people. Words that other people have penned, words with which other people have found success.

    I stand there and look around and think, I expect my own 50,000-word manuscript to compete with this?

    Inevitably, I shake off what little fear I can get to let go of me – enough, at least, to start moving again – and tell myself to get over it. It’s a futile attempt at rising above that fear, that self-doubt that is every writer’s nemesis, that voice that taunts, Who do you think you are and what do you have to offer to anyone?

    Turns out I am not alone in this experience with a big bookstore. In the Nov/Dec issue of Poets & Writers magazine, writer David Malki! (sic) speaks of a similar experience. His article, “9 Ways to Feel a Bookstore,” refers to the bookstore as “an ecosystem that we really don’t understand.”

    Until I read this article, I had never discussed with anyone except my husband the fear that bookstores produced in me, the power they had to belittle. Did I think I was the only writer to ever have experienced this phenomenon in the middle of B & N? Maybe not. I just don’t know that I thought outside myself at all.

    So as you can imagine, reading about another writer’s perplexities over a bookstore washed some sort of comfort over me, producing that “Aha” moment when I realized I was not alone.

    Malki!, though, goes further. He insists “that a person who wishes to be [of] the bookstore – a part of its innards, a piece of meat wending through its guts – must see the place differently, as a chessboard or as a forward battlefield encampment or as more than just a place to get lost.”

    In other words, as writers we have to look at a bookstore and take charge. Eat it up. Seek out those words that surround us and find out why they matter. And where our own fit.

    You can find my name in a Barnes and Noble, if you look really hard. Pick up a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Thanks Mom, and turn to page 86. Or seek out the preteen book No Body’s Perfect: Stories by Teens About Body Image, Self-Acceptance, and the Search for Identity and turn to page 159 to read a rhyming poem I might blush over now.

    I have more words to share, though, than this. And I hope, in the coming months and years, that I will find myself standing in the middle of a Barnes & Noble, not shuddering in fear over the seemingly insurmountable challenge of making my name be among the others, but excitedly pointing out to someone where in this place I have made my words fit and why they matter.

    Category Books, Bookstores, Self-doubt | Tags: ,,,, | 11 Comments

  2. Getting Past “I am a Writer”

    November 25, 2011 by katemeadows

    Not long ago, I was talking to my pastor about what I do. You know, my vocation. I am a writer. It’s easy enough to say that now (although, boy, did it take a lot of work to get to that point, to feel legitimate enough to confidently state, “I am a writer”). I told him I write, and he nodded, seeming impressed. Then the next question came: “What do you write?”

    It seems I have cleared one hurdle only to encounter another. That second inevitable question, “What do you write,” has threatened to throw me into a tizzy numerous times. How often am I tempted to say, “I don’t know,” or “a hodgepodge of stuff,” when the ever-exuberant cheerleader in me knows it is so much more. Here was a wide open chance, with my pastor, to assert myself and get serious about the way I promote myself.

    Except I blew it.

    I write essays. I write nonfiction. I wear the hats of both journalist and essayist, and I would like to say I wear them proudly, putting each on as the need or calling dictates. Successes? I’ve had them. National magazines. Chicken Soup for the Soul. A signed contract for a major magazine, where one of my newest essays will appear soon. (More on that in another post.) A publisher knocking at my door with an offer to publish my first book. (More on that later, as well.)

    I could have said all of those things. But I didn’t. I think my answer to his question, “What do you write,” came out something like this: “Um, well, I write nonfiction. Essays and stuff.”

    “Oh?” he says. “Have you been published?”

    “Yes.” I nod meekly, then look down.

    This is where I wait for my husband to come to bat for me, to talk me up and say yes, I’ve been published in X, Y, and Z places. And that I am quite awesome.

    Except he is off chasing our two-year-old son around the backyard, not present in this conversation.

    Why can’t I say these things myself? The answer, in the moment, at least, is my painful attempt to draw the line between modesty and self-depreciation, between assuming confidence and flat-out bragging. That means, I don’t want to ever come across as having a big head about myself. At the same time, I can’t afford to talk myself down – and I know I don’t deserve to be talked down. Yet -my fault seems to lie in leaning a little too far toward the self-depreciating side of the spectrum. So fearful am I of coming across as egotistically proud that I run the other direction, threatening to stomp myself into the mud.

    That’s what I felt happened that night as my pastor and I talked about my vocation. I hardly gave myself a chance; but at least he can’t say I have a big head.

    I left that conversation that night with an icky taste in my mouth. I wanted a second chance, a do-over at that exchange. It didn’t come, of course, but a strong lesson did.

    My second chance will come in the forthcoming times I am asked, “What do you write?” I promise myself that I will respond confidently, that I will answer with assertiveness. It might feel risky at first, claiming success or listing specific accomplishments. But I know a fear of egotism – a fear of becoming a bragger – is a skin I must shed if I want to fully prosper in what I do. That’s not to say being aware isn’t important; of course I never aim to be egotistical. But for myself, I know I deserve better than that head-hanging mumble, “I am a writer.”

     

    *How do you respond when others show interest in your vocation?

    Category Writing Life | Tags: , | 2 Comments