The Scary Things

I’ve been a writer for about twenty years. Not counting the occasional story or poem I may have written as a child, I started writing in earnest, with an eye toward becoming a writer, when I was eighteen. Then I sort of stopped. The personal essays I had written in college and grad school were abandoned after graduation even though some of them were pretty good. Despite all the “new media” outlets for non-fiction popping up at the time, I let that trend slip by me out of a lack of confidence, maybe, or more likely, a feeling that publishing was meant for people who weren’t me.

I didn’t stop having ideas for new essays, or stop thinking about old ones, though. Usually inspiration came to me at a book reading or after seeing my favorite authors on a panel at a conference. In my mid-twenties, I was living my best literary life. Post-MFA and pre-career, I was an underpaid assistant at a literary agency that allowed me to become immersed in the New York literary scene without having any responsibilities to it. Through my burgeoning professional life, surrounded by real writers, I decided the essays I wrote in my late teens and early twenties needed more time to gestate, that my perspective was not yet mature enough to produce anything of value. Or so I convinced myself. 

My “pause” ended up lasting over a decade. Balancing my own writing with the career in publishing I was trying to build felt impossible. I was also working two or three jobs at the time (see: “underpaid” above), or I was traveling to writing conferences every month, so I was more or less constantly exhausted. A guy I briefly dated once told me, after a second weekend in a row of me needing to work, that I must work more than anyone on the planet. To be fair, I did not feel strongly enough about him to fall behind on manuscripts, and he was right to be annoyed with me, but his point was taken. I was working too much. This is what young people entering publishing are told life will be like, so the fact that somewhere along the way I ignored my own creative pursuits did not even register as strange or sad. (That realization wouldn’t happen for another few years.)

My career is still devoted to other people’s writing because that's what I’m good at and what I love doing. But, as an independent editor, my schedule is mine to make. I’m no longer trying to prove myself in the same way. I’m not an assistant trying to move up, or a “young professional” eager to become established. I worked hard (sometimes too hard, even) to get to this point. My own writing, and all of the quarter-finished projects and half-baked ideas I’ve put aside over the years, finally have room to grow again. And now that my brain is allowing itself to return to its roots, it’s all I can think about. I want to write everything. 

A common piece of writing advice is to write what scares you. It’s advice I whole-heartedly agree with. Those feelings you have yet to process, that story you’re terrified your parents will read, or the idea you think no one will let you get away with are all signs that you need to put pen to paper and see what happens. The best writing can happen this way. Even if you are not a writer, I recommend giving this a try. Not to post or share or try to publish, but just to feel. 

For me, coming back to writing after so long, it’s harder to differentiate between what scares me and what doesn’t. It’s all pretty equally scary right now. Is any of this worth pursuing? Did I put those older, sort of good essays aside for too long? Am I terrible at writing fiction? Why am I even writing fiction? This will never get published anyway; I know too much about how that sausage is made; why bother? Who do I think I am? I’m a better editor than writer anyway, probably. What if my writing is bad? What if my ideas are derivative? Can I afford to take on fewer clients so I have more time to write? Do I deserve to let myself do that? 

Scary stuff, my mind. 

But I want to take my own advice. I don’t want to make the same mistake I made in my early twenties and talk myself out of my ambitions. I want to write the things that scare me, even if, for now, that means everything. 

Lately, I’ve been taking that literally. I’m past the halfway point on a horror novel that I’ve been writing on and off for two years. At close to 40,000 words, it’s officially the longest thing I’ve written to date, and I’m trying to get the final 25K-30K finished by the end of the year, which… uh, we’ll see. I’ve also been working on a YA horror-comedy that’s taken on a few different forms since about 2015. And then there’s the scariest project of all - one I’ve been writing in my head for over a decade, but have not even come close to starting - a memoir about growing up where and when I did, and the Italian-American identity. (Even admitting to having this idea scares me. Please don’t ask me any follow-ups about it!) 

The thing is, writing is scary. Writing this newsletter is even scary to me sometimes. There are always going to be a million reasons to convince myself not to do this, but the older I get, the more terrified I become of who I’ll be if I continue to ignore what scares me, or give up on what makes me me just because I chose a scarier path. So, I write.

And, OK, maybe I also just really love horror and hope I get to scare you with mine someday.

FUN STUFF

What I'm Reading: Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg

What I'm Watching: The Big Brunch (HBO) 

What I'm Listening To: Supernatural: Then & Now podcast (it's a delight; don't judge me)

What I'm Eating: A modified-for-less-dairy version of this soup

Sarah Writes Too is a monthly newsletter of short, personal essay-style anecdotes written by me (Sarah LaPolla). If you want to send me questions or comments about any of my posts, you can reply to this email or find me on Twitter at @sarahlapolla. This is a free newsletter. The best way to show support is to subscribe to have future editions sent directly to your inbox (never more than one a month!), or share on social media.