I didn’t start calling myself a writer until maybe 5 years ago.
Sure, I dabbled in it: entering a contest every now and then, taking writing workshops in undergrad (s/o to Bilal Tanweer for pioneering that at LUMS), moodily spending rainy afternoons in coffee shops with my laptop. But prior to joining an MFA program in 2016, writing felt like a compelling hobby.
Being a writer just didn’t feel real to me. I convinced myself that writing was just something I indulged in. It became such a persuasive story, to believe that the thing I’m called to do was just a trifling pastime, that for several years, I talked myself out of applying to any MFA programs.
It was Taimur who called BS, who saw that I was faking it. On a nighttime drive from the Grand Canyon to Tempe, AZ he listened to me ramble about all the reasons why I didn’t need to pursue an MFA in Writing:
· I can’t afford it
· It won’t make me any money, the degree investment won’t bring a lucrative return
· All the good programs are full-time so we’d have a long-distance engagement
Our 5-hour discussion got heated. Taimur couldn’t understand how I could flake out on a dream desire, and I wasn’t used to anyone seeing through my lies. That’s what they were, those list of reasons, just lies I fed myself to avoid the work, the effort, the scary uncertainty of putting my words out there and seeing if anyone else thought they were worth something. I’m thankful for his firm encouragement - it pushed me to apply to several programs.
I was dumbfounded when I got accepted at VCFA. This must be some mistake, I thought, I don’t deserve to be here. And even though it took me nearly 4 years to get through the 4-semester program, it took being there, surrounded by brilliant prose and poetry writers, to make me realize writing was a completely valid and worthy thing to be devoted to. It helped me understand the value of the written word – and not value in a monetary, ROI sense, but value as it related to life enrichment, to delighting in dialogue and fretting over awkward line breaks and basking in sinuous sentences.
VCFA’s low residency structure suited my life, but I struggled during the breaks. In residencies, and all semester long, my motivation would be sky-high – to produce, to publish, to improve, to unlearn and relearn and read and revise. It was feverish, the pace at which I wrote to stay aligned with deadlines, all while working my full-time ad agency job.
I took semesters off in between to accumulate more savings for tuition, and that’s when all the momentum halted. I would try but fail adhering to a writing schedule. I avoided opening old Word files, not even looking at any of the stories I wrote last semester. It was as if, as soon as I got the chance to stop creating meaning, to stop doing the hard self-actualizing, emotionally-draining disciplined work of producing art, I went all in. I resorted to a different type of faking it - faking being a writer without doing much writing at all in these semester breaks. There was no messy middle.
And I’ve lived in these extremes, always.
I graduated 2 years ago with an MFA and I’m disappointed with my lack of progress. Sure, there have been other life things going on like a pandemic, a pregnancy, a promotion and now a 9-month-old baby girl. But shouldn’t I be able to do all of that while maintaining my fidelity to my calling?
I’ve gotten so good at faking it – faking being a writer, faking being anything other than a writer – that it’s hard to remember what I really want in my life sometimes. What I want to create and put out there.
Writing these Substack posts is a small, but necessary way for me to recognize my own bullshit and break that cycle of self-sabotage.
So, thanks for bearing with me. And, like, say hi if you want.
I love this and YOU!