The Road to 100: A Thank-You

When I had been on Prose for a month, I wrote a thank-you note. Having now written 100 posts (which, admittedly, included a one-liner about Pinky and the Brain), I find I have more to be thankful for. (Be forewarned; there is much navel-gazing ahead).

My seven months and counting on Prose represent my most sustained effort to write. I wrote requisite bad poetry as an adolescent, and I tried my hand at some short stories as a college freshman. But I concluded that they were bad and stopped; I filled my schedule with as many lit classes as I could cram, but I never took a creative writing course after that freshman year. A few years after I finished my masters, I took it into my head to write a novel, which I worked on off-and-on for two years, based upon the dates displayed in Windows Explorer. I pulled up that file now and am surprised to see that I wrote nearly 38,000 words of it before I decided it, too, was bad. One day I reread a chapter I had felt good about; I saw only flaws, and I stopped.

Somewhere in there, I also wrote an essay that was my love letter to community theatre and Shakespeare. That one I spent a lot of time polishing, and I actually tried submitting it to a few publications, but it didn’t go anywhere. I didn’t really expect it to, but I had worked hard on it and had hoped it would get read somewhere by the wider world. There was something symbolic about making “Rude Mechanicals” my hundredth post on Prose, though I couldn’t quite tell you what it was.

And I went through a period where I wrote short plays and sent them to various contests, though they also went nowhere. And again, one day I reread something I created and thought, “Why did you ever like this? What quality did you see?”

And that’s pretty much where I was before Prose.

But I learned something on those steps of the road. The aborted novel taught me how to plot out a narrative and develop a character indirectly. The essay taught me what it looks like to work on a piece for real, and with the aid of a trusted friend and skilled editor. The plays taught me how to write dialogue and adapt voice. And since I’ve been writing for Prose – and real people! – I’ve gotten better at giving scenes a sense of place, and at least a little better at finding the sweet spot between obscure hints and beating my reader over the head. And I have learned the value of a community of writers, whose work can inspire me when my efforts feel lifeless and who can help me to feel my words are worthwhile.

For the first time in a long time, I feel a level of confidence in my writing. In times past, and when I first started on Prose, I’d read the work of a writer who had been chosen for publication or a contest victory, and I’d feel hopelessly outclassed. I’d think, “I could never approach that.” Commenters on Prose are kind, though – sometimes (often?) more kind than my work merits – and supportive in a way that prevented me from throwing in the towel and walking away for months or years, like I had always done before.

By the time I finished editing and posted “Rideshare,” I felt pretty good about the story, but the response genuinely overwhelmed me. I did not expect to win the challenge, but more importantly, I did not expect the sort of comments that some of you left. And the unexpected result of this unexpected response is that I feel… competent. I can read some of those works that before left me feeling hopeless and small, and I can think, “maybe.” Those past pieces of mine no longer seem “bad”; they seem immature.

I don’t know that my writing is “mature” yet, but I know I’m going to try again for publication. I’ll submit some short fiction to some publications; there will likely be a self-published short story collection on Amazon some distant day in the future. I’ve got at least one yet-unstarted story idea that I’m excited about like I was “Rideshare.” I don’t expect anything grand to come of it. I don’t know that I belong in the big leagues; I’m definitely not all-star caliber. But thanks to my time and friends on Prose, I feel like I could be a slap-hitting glove-first bench player who might collect a base hit or two with a little luck and a lot more work. It’s a new feeling. And I wanted to thank you all for that.

When I wrote that one-month thank-you I tagged literally everyone who had ever Liked a post I wrote. Not gonna try that now, but I want to tag those who commented on “Rideshare” and a couple others. No omission intentional