The Evil-Writer: A Confession

Writers think they know everything.
Whether it's about the craft of writing, or how a story, or book, or poem impacts the world, or how someone else's writing should be. They know it all.


I say "they," even though I should say, "we," or more specifically, "I."
I'm a writer. I've been a writer since I could write, and I've wanted to be a writer since I knew what a story was. (I wrote and illustrated a book, The Golden Pony, when I was five. Should have been a best-seller, but I'm sure one of our cats ate it or used it as a mini-litter box.) I love writing. I love being a writer. I love words, and what they can do, and mean, and how they can impact or interact with the world.

And yet...

We writers are pompous.

We are pretentious.

We know everything there is to know about writing,

specifically, other people's writing.

Today I was marking-up my last two nonfiction manuscripts of my graduate career. After this class, I have a two week residency (during which I will hopefully be studying poetry), and I'm done...As I was marking things on these two manuscripts, I found myself sitting at the very tippity-top of my high-horse, looking down, and saying, "Oh, no no no. You can't use an adjective there. It needs to go here." Let me say that I really enjoyed both manuscripts I read today. They were interesting, and had great voice. I could hear their authors talking to me. And yet, the evil-writer in me was ready to tell those writers, via those essays, that I knew freaking best. 

"Don't use adverbs."

"Is this supposed to be funny?"

"This doesn't make any sense. Cut!"

"I don't get it."

"...Huh?"

Along with numerous deletions, 

double strike throughs, 

and questions that are meant to make the writer

question that sentence so much that they cut it

Why do I think my opinion about their work is more valid than their own? 

Do I think we all need constructive criticism, advice, guidance, opinions, etc, to become better artists? Of course. I love when someone reads my work and says, "This part is working, but this part needs work, and here's how I think you could do that." In those instances, I see my writing skills improving. Even if I choose to go against their advice, my work is growing, alive, changing. What I hate is when I give my work to someone, and they give it back, essentially rewritten, because their ideas are "better" than mine. Their voice is "better" than mine. Their words are "better" than mine.

This is incorrect.

As I was editing today, I found myself slipping into evil-writer mode. Self-righteous writer. Pompous-writer. Pretentious-writer. Know-it-All-writer. 

I hate that writer in other people. It makes me feel bad, makes me not want to write as much, and here I am, dishing that out to other people, instead of giving the criticism (which is only my opinion) that I think needs to be given, and also giving the encouragement that I think needs to be given. 

When did I turn into the writer that I hate?

Let's backpedal a few (or seven or eight) years...In my first creative writing class ever (at the University of Louisville), I walked into a class with high hopes, and then summarily blown into a trillion bloody bits. 

I had never been workshopped before. My parents were the only people who had ever read my work. They encouraged me to read, even when it was genre sci-fi and fantasy (my favorites forever and ever), and would fix my grammar and spelling, but they encouraged me to write whatever. 

So, when I, an ambitious baby eighteen-year-old with all my hopes and dreams riding on this class, went to the teacher (a graduate student who shall remain nameless) and asked, "Is it okay if I write sci-fi?"and she said, "Of course! Whatever you want. Be creative." I assumed that meant I could write whatever I wanted, and that I could be creative. Makes sense to me, anyway. I was so excited that I volunteered to go first. I was shaking. I remember I used a purple Uni-ball liquid pen, and I couldn't wait to start writing down everyone's ideas for my work.

And the teachers begins class by saying... 

"Well, I don't think of science fiction as literature, 

so I got nothing from this piece. 

But, if the class wants to talk about it, you guys can go ahead."

Needless to say, I was crushed. I spent the next 45 minutes trying to hold in tears, while my face turned red and my shaking grew worse. I stared at the page, took notes, and bolted as soon as class ended.

Why do I tell this story of pathetic self-woe? So you'll all pity me and understand and forgive my faults? No...Rather, to show that despite how badly that hurt me, despite how strongly it effected me (in a bad, bad way), despite my best efforts to lift people up... I have become just like her. The evil-grad-student-who-feels-justified-in-making-others-feel-bad-because-she-knows-best-writer. Ew.

This blog is my attempt at realigning myself with the values I want to have. It is a written confession of my evil-writer ways, and a promise to work hard to become the good-writer, the true-writer, the honest-writer, the I-know-I-don't-know-everything-but-here's-my-opinion-writer that I want to be. Give me your work to read, and I'll give my opinion, but I'll also value the heart you put into it, and the good, good stuff that's undoubtedly in there. I want to be the kind of person who can help other writers be better (because we can all always be better), while also encouraging them. I want to teach in a way that pushes students to stretch themselves, without pushing them over a cliff. 

Writing is beautiful. No one should be discouraged from that, especially not by the evil-writer that pops its ugly little head up when that head gets too swollen for the brain to fit alongside the ego.