It Doesn’t Get Any Easier

lizshine74by lizshine74

In Persist, Writing Community.

Circle of trees

Yesterday afternoon, I was seated at an upstairs table by myself at our local bookshop, submitting poetry while snacking on the pretzels and chocolate I brought to share. This was the last in a four-month test run of an idea I had early one morning last fall. I was on my couch, trying to navigate the submissions process and not think about the fact that I wasn’t one hundred percent ready with lesson plans for the week ahead. I thought: this would be so much more fun with snacks and other people. In a moment of bravery or impulsivity, I typed out an email to the owner of Browsers’ Bookshop, which proposed an event for writers to share food and submit in community. Graciously, she agreed to give in a test run. We settled on the last Sunday of the month for a four-month stretch.

For the first two meetings, I thought maybe I’d hit on something. People showed up. We grazed and shared resources, and the thing I feared would happen did not come to pass: that I would be sitting upstairs at an open bookshop at an event with no attendees snacking alone. Of course, this is exactly what happened in months three and four. It wasn’t just the lack of attendance that rattled me. I’d already been feeling vulnerable, questioning everything. I ate a third brownie bite while asking myself: what are you even doing here? I added the gut punch: This poetry sucks. Why are you still banging on about being a writer? Don’t you think if you were really a writer someone else would have agreed by now?

I’m trying to hold some gratitude for this nasty part of the creative process because, unfortunately, I do think it’s necessary. I do think that we have to face all that self-doubt and fear, get vulnerable, and share our best efforts anyway. Yesterday was a new moon, the illuminated face of the moon turned away from us, leaving us with the shadow side. And it’s what you find in the shadow side that can lead you to the transformation you are seeking.

Always lurking in the shadows for me is the sense that I am a fraud. I can keep practicing and practicing all I want, but I am never going to get past amateur status. Also, that nerdy shy girl whose body ballooned in the fifth grade and who doesn’t feel like she fits anywhere and dreads having to change into her swimsuit at the YMCA lives in this body too. Always lurking for me is girl who was so afraid of her own words that she passed someone else’s poetry off as her own; the girl who lied so that people would like her; the girl who sat at the lunch table feeling like an alien. Always lurking is the girl who said yes when she should have said no, or worse, threw herself at a boy who despised her. If I dig deeper, there is still more.

I’m thinking of this Brené Brown quote: “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.” And yet this all presents a real conundrum, because as humans it is instinctual to avoid pain. So, to be an artist, you must pursue your work against your own instinct to protect yourself.

Why do this?

For the possibility that someone else out there who maybe dreaded changing into their swimsuit at the YMCA will see your work and see themselves. Then both you and they might feel less alone.

I also work as a writing coach and love helping writers gain confidence, set goals, and develop their work. For more information on coaching, email me at eatyourwords.lizshine@gmail.com.

lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.