Boot Camp

Here is a letter to my writing coach:

I felt bad about wanting to cry the whole seminar I went to. There were a lot of reasons I was upset...some merely circumstantial (that time of the month, the time commitment of the whole ordeal coinciding with a much too busy week). Others were more fundamental. I see myself as "gifted" (intelligent, talented). However, I am not gifted at anything in particular. I am pretty good at a lot of things. I am in a mediocre job and living a mediocre life that I am mediocre at. In a room full of people who seem to be really good at one thing, I felt freaked out. (I don't have 10,000 journals in my closet, or 5,000 characters in my head). I will do your Febuary boot camp. However, I want you to be brutally honest about where you see writing fitting into my life. You seem "too nice." It seems like part of your nature to be. In addition, people pay you to help them get better at something they may or may not be good at--and many are not asking you to tell them they have no talent. Also, you are not omnicient; there is no sense telling someone how crappy they are, just in case there is something you don't see. Plus, losing a client because of your brutal honesty is bad business. Etc. Its just that I am so new to the writing thing. I am undisciplined and uneducated. I need a dose of reality from you. I don't want you to let me win at a foot race just to protect my fragile ego. I don't want to be that kid who takes swimming lessons at the YMCA and thinks she can go to the olympics when she grows up. The level of investment/sacrifice/commitment it would take to "catch up" is large enough that I don't want to come into it ignorant. Well....thanks for the therapy session...ha. Do you ever get the feeling you are doing double duty as a therapist? j.

My Writing Coaches response:

Hey,

Thanks so much for your email. First of all, please don’t feel bad for being upset at the last Writer’s Craft class, I think it may have felt bigger to you than it did to your classmates, everyone there seemed really glad to meet you. The real key to not suffering in ANY writing class is to lay down Comparing Mind. We can all get pretty freaked when we get in rooms where it feels like the other writers are cranking out the text, or have 14 different literary projects and apparently endless time to do them all. So we have to come back, again and again, to clear sight and compassion for self. Not in some touchy-feely-kumbaya-kind of way, but in a serious way. No one can do your work and you cannot do theirs. You are right, you are gifted and creative, and if you decide you are “mediocre”, then that’s what you will carry. I am glad you will be doing the Bootcamp, it will honestly be a pleasure for me to read your work every day and to talk to you at the end of the class about what you got and how it went. When it comes to being “too nice” I believe that the issue is not what anyone says or does not say about your work, but what you are willing to believe. If you have decided that your work is mediocre, then it doesn’t matter who you ask or how honest they are. You will simply believe the people who tell you it sucks and disbelieve the people who tell you its good. If you decide that you are “undisciplined” or “uneducated” then those value judgments may keep you from hearing any other opinions. In everything I do, I am called to be both utterly honest and utterly skillful, one is useless without the other. I find it fascinating how the word “brutal” is so often paired with “honesty”. I do not believe that any form of brutality is useful to writers, but honesty is mandatory. As a teacher, and especially as an editor, I don’t give “reality doses”. I don’t try to convince anyone to believe me. I don’t let people pay me and then tell them what they want to hear, good or bad. I don’t let anyone win a footrace or tell anyone they are ready for the Olympics. I simply give detailed, substantial, honest, skillful feedback on the text I read, based on my long career as a working writer. The stakes are too high to tell anyone anything but the truth, but brutality and cruelty are not interesting to me. Writing and self-expression are obviously important to you. All that really matters is this: What do you want to achieve as a writer? How clearly are you willing to see? What are you willing to try? How hard are you willing to work? Great successful writers are not touched on the head at birth and ordained by god, they are self-made, over long periods of time. Folks who indulge in the heights of over-inflated egos or the depths of low self-esteem simply don’t survive as working writers, because both of those conditions render you blind to the truth of your text, the truth of your practice and the truth of your own worth. And we need all those things to succeed. Hope my long soap-box was a bit helpful.just let me know what you need, I'm always willing to help.