YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Am I still here for these forums? I guess I am. Better than nothing.

Currently trying to apply for a creative writing MFA for the second time, my third attempt at grad school (first time I tried to get into a library science program, then realized that I'm not self-funding more education just to do the "practical" thing again and be even more miserable over my choices). I hate my writing and I hate myself. I should be writing this very second, but can't bring myself to do it. Looking over the short stories that I submitted last year, I cringe. It looks like a cynical twelve-year-old too clever by half wrote this shit. It's twee, it's amateur, it tries to hard and doesn't get even close to where I need to be.

It's my own fault for not practicing enough. Haven't I been saying for years that I wanted to be a writer? I haven't been acting like it. Writers write. I putz around online and dream about accepting writing awards without ever putting any work in. There are plenty of people out there who A) are naturally more talented than me and B) put a hell of a lot more work in. Sometimes I can't believe that I was naive enough to think that this drivel could have gotten me into the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Only the best program in the world! Of course I deserve it even though I haven't put the work in and frankly may not be talented enough to make it as a writer at all!

I'm not enthusiastic about the application process at all. I applied to eight schools last year and got admitted to two, both of them in the UK where they accept American students much more easily because we have to pay higher tuition. And can I even afford to go live in the UK as a broke graduate student? I can barely afford living in my own mother's home. I turned them both down over money issues.

So after being rejected from every US school last year, it only now hits me that the acceptance rate for these programs hovers somewhere between 2-15%. Why am I bothering to apply again when I'll probably just get rejected? I could try the UK schools again if I want to pay through the nose for programs that I'm not sure are even that good. I'm stressed out because I need three recommendation letters and one of my usual go-to professors has retired and isn't getting back to me. I don't know who else I could even ask for a recommendation. They only accept them from professors, and I haven't maintained a relationship with any of my teachers (not that they would know about my writing anyway, since I didn't fucking major in English because I was doing the fucking practical thing and now look at me).

What if I don't get in to any programs? What if I'm just not good enough to be a writer, period? What if I sabotage myself because hard work is unappealing? What if I do get published, but I can never make any money off it or nobody cares about what I wrote? What if this doesn't work out? What will I do with my life? What other goals do I have that would make it worth living?

And I can't stop obsessing over people younger than me who have accomplished more. There are other 23 year olds right now wrapping up their novels and sending out the manuscript to agents. They're light years ahead of me. I don't have any time. I'm only getting older and nothing is changing. I live my life every day like the walking dead, just sad and tired and bored all the time. Wasting my youth, same as always.

I don't know if it helps you any, but I absolutely identify with every word of your post.

Every. Single. Word.

Maybe you'll identify with this. Someone once asked me why I never submitted anything I wrote to anyone. I said, "Well, either they'll reject me and I'll be crushed, or they'll accept me and then they'll expect me to do something that good again. So I just throw it in a drawer."

Welcome to the neighborhood.

The Moral Right to be Identified

Writing can behave as a form of anorexia. Writing can be defined as a controlled substance.

A lot of your questions are questions about consent; do you consent to write under conditions you don’t fully control? Do you consent to the first step and only then decide about the next one after that or, do you consent to the whole process up front from the first day of school to the first royalty? Do you consent to continue as the writer you’ve been up until now?

What benefit above your simple attendance could you provide, just as a person, to any or all of those programs? Picture yourself in the room talking to your fellow students, “Writing this, writing that etc.” Is that plausible? Would you begrudge any of them for sharing your trepidation? Do you even have to decide who you will become there, beforehand? Would you deny yourself the terrible adventure?

The less willing you are to fail, the less likely you are to succeed. That’s glib I know, but something I have to take seriously myself in order to keep stepping forward; at all. Change can be excruciating while it unfolds.

To borrow loosely from Oscar Wilde, the act of writing exposes you to your own shame; to a collective shame. It is a natural part of writing to hate that exposure and the ‘you’ that is complicit. Finding your voice, your narrative devices, your precious topics in the midst of that exposed self, is a life well spent.

There’s a statement they used to put in the front of novels; I don’t know if they do it anymore; amongst the publishing details: The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this Work. I think if you can make that assertion at any moment in your life as a writer, then you are safe to proceed.

Good evening! Thanks for posting.

I am exhausted, so I hope you don't mind if I offer some thoughts in bullet form. Also, it sounds like this isn't your first rodeo, so I'll be a bit direct (but kind, I hope!).

1. You say you hate to write, which might be true, but you wrote quite a bit in your post. It was well written: clear and expressed a viewpoint.

2. Yeah, graduate school is pretty much a scam. Especially now. If it isn't a scam, it is certainly a game. We have to be careful that we don't play games we can't win.

3. FWIW, I earned a fraction of a pound, several yen, and about a dollar selling books I wrote on Amazon. And these were not great books. What I am getting at: nowadays we don't need the permission or blessing of Iowa or some grad school to write: we can get a wordpress blog for free and just go go go.

4. Explore the area between vocation and avocation. The question is not "will I sell out?" (spoiler: we all do), but rather "Am I being properly compensated for my selling out?" If you are being properly compensated for whatever scam (ie job) society hands you, then you should have plenty of time for writing.

Such is my two cents!

(If there's a way to directly reply to people on here, somebody please let me know, but for now this is the best way I can think to communicate)

HowDidIGetHere: I'm glad there's someone out there who feels the same way I do. Hopefully I can get over those paralyzing fears of both being accepted and being rejected and actually get my work out there.

Beany Boo: There are a lot of interesting ideas you've put down here. Part of my problem is that I don't "consent" to fail, I think. Or to have anyone be better than me. In my mind, the only acceptable way for me to be a writer is if I literally never fail and am universally adored, which is impossible. Hence my problem.

oak: Thank you for sharing despite being tired! You're right, this is far from my first rodeo. A lot of people have noted, as you have, that I have a strong writing ability, but I think that comes out most in writing like this where I'm "talking" directly, and doesn't come out so well in my fiction where I have to make things up. That's my frustration.

I think that I already know that grad school is a scam, but I don't want it to be true. Hope springs eternal, so I'm always thinking that maybe I can be the one exception, or maybe this will be worth it for me, despite all evidence to the contrary and any rational thought. I think the problem with writing online is that there's so much of it, and I have a hard time seeing how I can turn it into a real respectable writing career. I deeply, deeply want an "in" to the respectable high-brow literary world which is probably hurting me more than helping me right now. I already have an anonymous Wordpress blog and connected Twitter account where I play at being a writer, but I can never think of what to say and am secretly terrified that someone will find out who I am in real life and punish me somehow, though I've never expressed any real controversial opinions on there or done anything too embarrassing.

I've been living at home and working a day job for the last year and a half, and should theoretically have had plenty of time to finish a book by now. I think that somebody else in my position would have. But I would much rather slack off and mope around than write. It's a big problem that I have to work on right now before it's really too late for me.

Sorry for your troubles littleraincloud.

Thank you, hobojungle.

Today I accomplished something. I began applications to almost all of the graduate programs I'm going for this year (two of them aren't opening the application process for another few days), that's nine applications! I'm not even close to finishing any of them, but it was a boost to at least get them all started.

Sometime later today, I'm going shopping with my sister. Maybe I can finally stop cycling between five different outfits and actually have a few more clothes to wear. My sister likes fashion and shopping much more than I do, so I'm hoping to pick up some of her energy to make it through this.

Still stressed out about my one professor retiring and not getting in contact with me, but maybe I'll re-send that email. If she doesn't come through for me, I won't be able to finish any of these applications. Really need to get that cleared up.

I'm being slightly more productive this weekend than usual. Still in my pajamas, though.

I've been living at home and working a day job for the last year and a half, and should theoretically have had plenty of time to finish a book by now. I think that somebody else in my position would have.

That is definitely the harsh voice of self-judgement talking. These are all made up numbers, but I think of all the people who "want to write," only half of them actually get their butts in the chair and start. Maybe 10% will persevere long enough to finish what they start. Of that 10%, only fraction of them will continue to revise and refine and polish their work. A smaller fraction still will actually try to get it published. I don't know what the math all works out to, but a fraction of a fraction of 10% doesn't seem like it would be a very big number.

Have you ever tried National Novel Writing Month (http://nanowrimo.org/)? It's coming up in November. I've done it a couple of years and even reached the 50,000 word target once or twice. Granted, there were probably only 5,000 or 10,000 decent words out of the bunch, but it was a really invigorating experience.

As far as the value of graduate school, I offer this based on my experience studying painting as an undergrad. The teachers may or may not be helpful. The other students may or may not be smart. But having uninterrupted time to practice something—as well as the motivation provided by deadlines and the amount of money you've sunk into the effort—is DEFINITELY valuable. If you can provide those things for yourself without graduate school, I'd say go for it.

Heck, just get a writing buddy and promise to give him or her 10,000 words of something by Halloween.

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Writing can be a hard thing to do and to succeed is even harder. It sounds like others have given you some good suggestions. So I don't think I can really add anything. Just remember if you don't use it you'll lose it, so keep at it (even if at times it's shit)