Accomplished?
Accomplished. An adjective that feels entirely subjective. What have I accomplished today? I brushed my teeth and hair, got dressed, fed the pets, poured my coffee, wrote in my journal, went to school, taught English, ran and attended meetings, read and answered a million emails, watched the first graders do a mermaid dance, walked home, noticed that I need to weed the garden and didn’t, unloaded the dishwasher, fed and walked the three dogs, read, corrected a set of papers. Most days, what I accomplish feels small. There is a parallel list always of what I did not accomplish. In the 19th century, an accomplished woman could navigate an elaborate table setting, speak in French, manage a household. Today, while my French once was passable and I generally know what fork to use, it often feels that my household manages me or that we are orbiting into chaos together—pets, books, laundry, self.
As a writer, I have published essays and a few chapters in anthologies. I’ve been working on a memoir for some years. But “big publications” have thus far eluded me. I submit in a flurry, then wait and wait. My approach feels a little scattershot, not a lot of strategy, more like whimsy.
Seven years ago, I went to a writer’s workshop at Kenyon with Dinty Moore and Allison Williams, and that was exciting. I wanted to write. About five years ago, I began to take online classes through Creative Nonfiction and then through 24 Pearl Street to learn more about craft and am now a year into an MFA. Does that render me accomplished? In whose eyes? My own? Writing courses have helped me be more aware of style and structure, more interested in being intentional, rather than just writing spontaneously. In Mel’s class, I worked on being concise; with Sister Karol, I tried to mind my muses. Jenn helped me be sure not to gloss over the hard stuff. I have read much more non-fiction, particularly essays, than I had ever read before. Does this equate with accomplished? I don’t think so. I think, in a corner of my heart and brain, accomplished means publishing a book.
What would lead me to feel “accomplished” as a writer? Perhaps external confirmation matters more than I wish it did: publishing a book, winning a prize? I’m not sure. At 60, I am conscious of the fact that writing is a refuge for me. I write for pleasure, not for work. I try to be patient with the fact that I am not publishing much right now because of the demands and pleasure of coursework, of leading a school, of life. When someone tells me—in person or on Facebook—that something I wrote touched them, I feel a little spark of joy, as if a candle sputters to life inside me. But I write mostly for me, I think, to make sense of the world, to understand what I think, to record a memory. And yet, there is an ember of ambition I struggle with. Would I want to write full-time? I fear I would miss school, miss being with people. But I think it might be fun to try—even for a month—to be a “real writer” instead of a person who writes in the spaces in between. It annoys me as a feminist and as a teacher of girls that, this late in my life, I still feel some version of the impostor complex as a writer, as if I am claiming an identity that I may not have a “right” to claim. But who gets to decide? I’m a writer. I write. And I am determined to claim that identity more regularly with fewer justifications or qualifiers. Maybe then, I will feel and be accomplished.
