For the next several Sundays, I’d like to introduce you to writers new and seasoned as they share what inspires them to put #PenToPaper. This week, meet Amy McNeil, who writes about being a transient writer and letting go.
Every writer has struggles, but what does a writer do if finding their place in the writers’ world closely resembles the dance of a floundering fish out of water. I know what I write matters, but I also know only a few will read it. Of those few, maybe one or two will read and interpret without criticism, critique, and curb the natural inclination to colorfully strike a word or phrase. They simply let the work stand alone, flawed as it be, and not expecting it to be the next great piece in literature to be read by students in two hundreds years claiming to have made an impact in the literary world. If those students are lucky, the teachers will pass down their cliff notes of what the writer meant through the choice of words and use of literary techniques. But, I ask, after the multitude of literature classes I have attended, “Did someone ever ask the writer those exact questions?”
I have my writing faults and I wouldn’t wish my worst enemy any time in my head. When I write I assume the reader has the knowledge I do and they can see what I see. My grammar is an animal with an injured foot. I am an artist lacking the training to create a masterpiece but keep trying. My writing is a manic depressive state swinging high and low, forged in clarity and forgetfulness, and created between cramping hands and an empty page. I am a transient writer. Maybe a couple readers might remember me in a passing thought.
Recently after I read a review of a recent piece of mine, the reader covered my words in different colors of ‘suggestions.’ I felt pushed back further into the writer’s cave. More loose stones crumbled down from the ceiling and walls blocking what little light remained in my world. My first thought was maybe I should stick with abstract painting and magnetic poetry. In attempts to regain my writing self, I wrote a poem for my poetry group. In the last stanza I state I am the black and white text, never to be seen among the highlights and colors of the edited world.
This was my moment of letting go. Poetic venting in the hopes to push through a feeling of the final step of my grieving process of releasing a writing dream sucked into a literary blackhole. A writers’ block for the universe. I may have the words, but if no one reads them, do they exist? So many stars to give hopes and dreams for tiny minds on a planet. I am however a star so far away. Maybe in a hundred years and by chance, someone might see my pulsing glow.
I always wrote for me, but rarely did I share me with the world. I had to let go of not just the dream, but the fear attached to it. The world may never know me as the next great American author, but I can write and share myself with the world without fear. I try for myself now. Either no one will read it or the edits would be so many, I would remain invisible. For the first time, I am able to write without limits.
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Amy McNeil is a mother of three and shares her life with her best friend/partner. She has been a writer since childhood. Her credits include school literary magazines, small community newspapers, and newsletters for fun and non-profits.
She continues to work on her novella and poetry solely for the magic of telling the stories in her imagination and moments in her life.
There were the windows, the solitude, the pride in calling that space Mine. There was the feeling that having a writing studio somehow makes me an official writer. And in many cases, that has been true. I did a lot of work in that space: wrote plenty of blog posts, revised several essays, peeked at my novel time and again. In the end though, getting there became a challenge (there’s the day job, time with family, trips out of town…things I couldn’t or wouldn’t give up for a few hours in the studio). So I wrote the email to my landlord, let it sit in my draft folder for the day, sent it the next morning. Got a little weepy when packing up books and sweeping the floor.
