June 2, 2009

I want to thank the Academy

Filed under: Uncategorized — jenny @ 7:14 am

Actually, I want to thank my family, friends, and the many amazingly talented writers I’ve met lo these many years, which I’ve spent trying to learn the craft myself. I know that a short story pub is one small step in the writing world, but it’s a significant one for me. So thank you very much to everyone who went to the site, read so fast, and took time to send me your thoughts.

At the same time, I sort of feel like a fraud. Actually, I feel a little like I used to when I was nineteen or twenty and pretending that so and so was a Real True Boyfriend just because he asked if I’d mind dropping off my study notes in his dorm room. This wasn’t a relationship by any stretch, but by sort of tweaking things in my mind, I could pretend–even to myself–that I was on my way to something.

So now I’ve had people in my circle kind enough to take time out and read my work, and I’m fortunate to have a wide-ish circle. But it’s not anything like those writers I admire who get complete and utter strangers from Outer Mongolia writing to say, I read your novel and loved it! Telling people to come read my work and having them do it isn’t the same as having someone find you and say, This really spoke to me for such and such reason.

It’s like wrenching the dude from the dorm into some mental place he didn’t ask to hold in my life.

Or is it?

Maybe you have to start here to get there. Maybe all those writers whose names appear in my mind on movie marquis surrounded by glowing bulbs–Jacquelyn Mitchard, Craig Holden, Lisa Tucker, Maryann McFadden, Jennifer Egan, Debbie Galant, Harlan Coben, Lisa Unger, Cornelia Read, Jodi Picoult, Cammie McGovern, Laura Lippman, Tana French, John Searles, Jean Hegland, Lee Child, Stephen King, Kate Morgenroth, Linwood Barclay, Joy Fielding, Greg Iles, Thomas H. Cook, Peter Abrahams–all began a long way from Outer Mongolia.

Maybe it always takes some wrenching to get there.






1 Comment »

  1. I feel like I started way the hell down in Inner Mongolia–and am just seeing the first border station on the edge of my little village of huts. Or yurts. Or whatever. But I’m very familiar with the sense of being a fraud. Not sure that EVER goes away! Thank you so much for mentioning me here with all these huge people–I am so flattered!

    Comment by Cornelia Read — June 2, 2009 @ 12:13 pm

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