Ink and Vein

I’m on day 3 of Jami Attenberg’s 1000 Words of Summer challenge. 1000 words a day for 14 days. So far, I’ve written 3815 words.

I’m not much of a word-count girly these days, as I am not focused so much on producing new text as I am on revising existing text… though there are many new sections of the book I still need to write.

I’ve also not been much of a consistent writer these days, so when I saw Katherine Standefer post about getting started a day early, I thought “Oh! I caught it in time this year!” I’ve seen other friends post about it a couple years in a row, now, and usually don’t notice it until they’re already in it. I’ve thought about joining, but then feel like I’ve too much going.

But this year, I knew I needed to do it. My writing has taken a back seat – or maybe is just in another car completely – to all the other things I have going in my life and I just need to get back to it. My writing should be in the passenger seat, or possibly the driver’s seat.

Each day of the challenge, if you’ve subscribed to the Craft Talk Substack (you can find it here), you get a letter from a guest writer. Today’s really set me thinking. It’s from Torrey Peters, and she writes that reminding herself that she “came here to be insulted” is the antidote to all unwanted, hurtful, insulting feedback we receive as writers – even as people.

And it set me thinking about a persona I used to inhabit, a persona I’ve come to refer to as Tank Girl, after the comic book character. A person who doesn’t give a fuck about what other people think, who is herself and speaks her mind, who knows no one likes her and is fine with it.

This girl seemed tough but really she was just preparing for rejection. She was just getting ready for the time when she proved, again, that she was unlovable and that, even if she did everything she was asked, it wouldn’t be enough.

So this tough tank girl skin was just hiding pain.

And I’m sitting with this idea that I came here to be insulted, because, in a way, it fits: this idea that I’m putting my ideas out there, my authentic self, my experiences as I remember them – I’m putting them out there for people to see, for people to see me as I was as a child, a teen, as a woman, as a person who was 100% sure I would never be accepted or loved, and who has felt that way for most of my life.

All I’ve ever really wanted is to be loved, yet I made myself difficult to love to keep it from happening, to shield myself from the pain of inevitable rejection.

I’ve been working to exist in a way that doesn’t assume dislike and rejection is the best I’ll ever get, and still be my authentic self. I’ve been working to soften my skin a bit, to let people see more of who I am, to allow the possibility of pain, because, honestly, I haven’t protected myself from pain anyway. I’ve just made it easier to blame myself when it happens, because I knew it would anyway.

And now I’m writing this damn book that is basically offering up all the parts of myself I wish didn’t exist, and I’m inviting people to dislike me again, to insult me, reject me.

But I’m not lying to myself, this time. I actually do care what people think. I do care how they receive the work. I do care.

Maybe that’s the most authentic, realist part: I do care what some people think of me.

I came here to be insulted. I also came here to be loved. That feels so cringey to say, so embarrassing, so shameful, yet it’s true .

I came here to be loved.