A Kernel on Assigning Our Worth
and accepting our processes
I’ve noticed a trend with my essays for this newsletter. Most of them are about the feelings that surface as I write, as I comprehend feedback, as I create routines and structures to optimize my time—including this essay. While I don’t necessarily feel qualified to wax on about characterization or points of view or story structures, I do feel qualified to investigate the emotions and tendencies I experience while working on various projects. Maybe I gravitate toward these excavations because I love reading about other writers’ processes and how their emotional landscapes change throughout their careers. Maybe it’s because there’s solace in a connection that revolves around the hardships of the craft. Or maybe it’s because I’m an introspective person by nature. Probably, it’s a combination of all three.
As I consume newsletters and articles and social media glimpses into other writers’ lives, I naturally compare myself to them—but not in a way that devalues my own systems. It has taken many years to understand my ideal writing circumstances and what I can do to set myself up for creative flow, and now that I have that understanding, I am grounded in my writing identity. It doesn’t mean that I’ll be stuck forever in the same ways, working through the same ideas (though, most of my stories do revolve around neurodivergent women experiencing mental health problems and I wouldn’t have it any other way); it just means that when I read about a writer who has a completely different approach from my own I can think, Hmm, that’s nice, and move on with my life. Or if another is doing something similar, I might examine if making slight alterations to my own process might enhance it.
What I’m trying to say is that our worth shouldn’t be derived from external input. We get to assign our value, not anyone else.
I’ve written about this before, but I’m a slow writer. Sometimes it feels painfully slow to me. Though I’ve accepted this as the type of writer I am. It comes with advantages: clean copy in earlier drafts, care for each word, etc. Still, I understand I’m in the minority, the majority being those who can whip out 500 words in a half-hour sitting, knowing they’ll have to trash half of them, but being able to go with the flow to advance. When I sit down to write, I am daydreaming about the scene at hand. I am there with my protagonist, trying to understand how to describe the setting or her emotions or how someone is responding to her. I am thinking about how each sentence is building off the next, why the action or dialogue or scene as a whole is important in moving the story forward. A lot of my designated writing time is spent thinking, which is why my sloth-like pace is more noticeable.
However, a friend showed me a different reframe to that: she told me that she spends most of her days thinking about her novel as she’s moving through work, school, other life activities. So when she gets to the page, she knows exactly what to type. I don’t think about my novel when I’m at work or watching TV or completing some other activity. I don’t know what will happen in my story until I sit down to work on my novel. When retold in this perspective, maybe my approach isn’t slower, rather, how I allocate my time is spent differently than other writers.
I think we all have something about our process that we can reframe, that we can assign value to simply for the sake of being effective for our individual brains. We don’t need the external validation to know what works for us. So if you’re someone who needs a permission slip to stop devaluing your methodologies, this is it: What you are doing is right because it’s right for you. Keep at it, and you’ll see your progress fly.
My kernel of advice: Express gratitude for all the ways your processes are benefiting your writing.
Inspiration, Information, & Insight
Shelby read an advance reader copy of Life’s Short, Talk Fast, a collection of essays on Gilmore Girls edited by Ann Hood. As Gilmore Girls is Shelby’s all-time favorite show (she once wrote a college essay comparing Rory Gilmore to John McClane of Die Hard—and got an A!), Shelby is always ready to read think pieces and commentary about it. This collection did not disappoint. Authors from Nina de Gramont to Yassmin Abdel-Magied contributed essays that dissected socio-economic issues as well as familial relationships in regards to their lives and the show. She recommends this read to any GG fan!
Neidy is continuing to chip away at her novel manuscript.
Last week, Sarah finished the first draft of a new short story for workshop and put the final polish on an old short story she is sending out on submission. MFA life means she has way too much on the go. She is co-editor of the program’s literary magazine (please submit!), and she’s one of the organizers of her MFA program’s reading series, which has her staying out way too late every Monday night this month. Please send snacks.
Natalia is out of office.