YARN (A Personal Essay About Writing)

“The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.” –Harlan Ellison

Back in college, I met this woman in line at the Walmart photo center. I was there getting some pictures from my friend’s birthday party developed and she started chatting with me. This happened a lot when I was younger. I think I was just born with a face that invites people to empty their brains into my ear holes. I’m not really at the grocery store for milk, it seemed to say. I’m actually here to act as a receptacle for strangers’ problems! Sometimes that was okay, but other times it was annoying or icky. Like once when this random old man on the treadmill next to me at the gym launched into a story about an affair he’d had in the 60s. Eventually, I had to start making an effort to appear less approachable. I hate that we live in a world that requires this. But, for every one genuinely nice interaction with a stranger, maybe four were super uncomfortable. I’d feel unsafe or trapped, or end up late for something or accidentally agreeing to purchase a membership to a sandwich club.

This fellow Walmart photo center customer seemed alright, though. She asked if I was in school and what I was studying. 

“Creative Writing,” I answered with nineteen-year-old confidence. “I’m going to be a writer.” In second grade, my teacher had sent home a progress report predicting that I might be a writer one day. Her stories always have a beginning, middle, and end, the note had boasted. I felt as if my fate had been sealed, which sounds pretty silly to me now. I loved books and writing, but how good could I really have been at seven? Maybe it was just something teachers say to kids who are bad at math. 

The woman’s face brightened. “You know, when I was in college, I took a Creative Writing class. I told everyone that I was going to write a book. Now I’m fifty and I’ve finally done it! That’s why I’m here. For a photo of myself to send to the publisher.”

“Wow, congratulations! What’s your book about?” I asked, wondering if this lady might be my gateway to the literary world. 

“My book is about knitting.”

I nodded my head with interest. “Oh. Like, the history of knitting?”

“No, it’s just about knitting. How to knit.”

“Did you, like, study fiber arts somewhere?”

“No,” she said, starting to look a bit irritated. “My grandmother taught me.”

“Did you have to find a publisher that specializes in knitting?”

“No. I just found a company to print the book for me. My friend is going to sell it in her yarn shop.”

I said congratulations again, hoping my smile wouldn’t betray how underwhelmed I was by her accomplishment. 

“Well, it’s a good lesson, isn’t it?” she pressed, determined to have left this Walmart an inspiration to someone. “Maybe you won’t end up becoming a writer now. Maybe you’ll have a different career or kids first. But you could always still do it at fifty!”

Okay, honestly, now I was offended. Unlike this lady, I was going to be a REAL WRITER, and certainly WAY BEFORE I turned FIFTY! Obviously, that meant having an actual publishing company buy my book. Not printing it myself like some weirdo wanting to share the joys of ear candling with the word, or a health inspector who thinks they have a bunch of really good rat stories. Being a real writer meant literary agents, bestseller lists, and students discussing your work in their classes. It meant toiling away all day, every day in your little author’s grotto because THAT’S HOW DEDICATED YOU WERE TO YOUR CRAFT. Not becoming a dental hygienist and working on a manuscript every so often. Not popping out a couple of kids and focusing on that until they’re eighteen. If you had a life outside of writing, were you really even a writer?

“Good luck with your knitting book,” I said crisply, and set off to begin my life as a REAL WRITER. 

Well, guess what? I didn’t end up doing that. And THANK GOD, right?! Doesn’t most of it sound awful? It’s interesting that someone getting a degree in being creative had such a narrow view of success. Currently, I’m reading Stephen King’s scariest book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. (Okay, to be totally honest, this is the only Stephen King book I’ve ever really read. But I heard Patton Oswalt recommend it on a podcast and thought I’d give it a try!) He says to remember that art is a support system for life, not the other way around. I took this to mean that creating is about making connections and enriching our relationships with the people we love. It’s supposed to provide the catharsis we need to be better versions of ourselves. If your life only exists as a source of inspiration for art, you’re going to be miserable and not make much worth sharing. How much can a person really have to say if the only thing they’ve ever loved is the sound of their own voice?

I probably spent a lot of years treating life as a means to art. I almost kind of got off on misery a little bit, thinking it would be great material for a book, and didn’t devote much time at all to pursuing happiness. Not until until my 29th birthday, anyway, when I found myself in the process of getting divorced and moving back in with my parents. Well, I said to myself, at least I’ve still got my novel. Yeah, my life was kind of a mess, but this magnum opus would redeem it all!

I finished the rough draft of my book a few months later and asked a friend to read it. “I liked it…” she said. “But I wasn’t really that bad, was I?”

“What do you mean?”

“Mandy, the character who leaves their hometown to go live in Los Angeles. That’s supposed to be me, right? She’s really kind of a bitch about everything.”

I’d been reading another book on writing fiction then, which I promptly got rid of. The people you know will almost never recognize themselves in your writing, it had promised. Because they don’t see themselves the way that you do. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe this isn’t giving the people you know enough credit. Or the author of the book was giving me, his reader, too much credit. Maybe he meant if you were smart and creative and went about it the right way, no one would be the wiser. But I just assumed that I could gank whatever I wanted from real life and nobody would know. Because of the extra special way I, a writer, viewed the world. Is that a typical rookie mistake? I hope so. 

I hate to admit it, but I probably also believed that art took precedence over people’s feelings. Because feelings were temporary but art was forever, man! I imagined that I was making something for the other, the world, when I should have been making something for my friends. They might be the only ones who ever care about what I do. I should have been celebrating those people instead of exploiting them. 

Mandy was based on my friend. One of my very oldest and best friends. The only friend who actually took the time to read the hundreds of pages of stuff (crap?) I wrote. I used her as a template but then made the character way less awesome than she actually is in real life. In my mind, I was just spicing up the plot a little, but now I see it as incredibly inconsiderate. It might have even been fun to ask for permission and then collaborate on what her character might do. (How would you feel about Mandy picking a fight with Jill? How do you think that would play out?) That’s probably what I should have done. Even though my friend seemed pretty accepting when I tried to explain myself, for years I’d cringe and secretly wonder if this had hurt our relationship. 

Really, my whole book was basically a Frankenstein’s Monster of friends, family members, and stories from my life spliced together with a bunch of random shit I made up. Maybe that’s all writing really is, but I assume that most authors would do this way more carefully than I had. Also, the whole thing was just an enormous bummer. A little girl basically grows up to learn that life is sad and meaningless. Oh God, did I really want to believe that? Did I want that to be my legacy?

Lying in my childhood twin bed, I realized two things. One, a grown adult sleeping all scrunched up in a twin bed is just asking for nighttime leg cramps. And two, I’d written a coming of age story when I knew nothing about life. Not like in a cool, self-aware “Both Sides Now” Joni Mitchell kind of way. Just a straight-up dumb one. 

I don’t know, maybe I could have salvaged my novel somehow. Instead I shelved it and mostly focused on working in an office for the next seven years. Granted, I am not fifty. But, so far, the lady at Walmart with the knitting book has actually accomplished way more than I have. At least when it comes to writing. Or maybe in other ways too; I only knew her for like five minutes. I couldn’t remember her name or what her book was called, and a quick Google search didn’t seem to bring anything up. Still, she  created a thing and put it out in the world for her friends to enjoy. And if I ever manage to do that, I’ll be proud of myself.