I attended a community college immediately after High School. At just a taxi or bus ride away from home, it was conveniently located to tether me there while acquiring a higher education. It didn’t bother me much because I was still close enough to Mamá and could go to her appointments and translate.
https://play.ht/articles/8f251da3b8
Mami did not approve of my major in Journalism. She found writing to be more of a side gig than a profession. Seeing my talent in the hospital while caring for Mamá after her cancer diagnosis, gave her the idea I would be a good nurse. The nurses there thought the same, but they never asked me to change my major. Mami did.
The counselor told me it was too late in the semester to change classes, but I could change the major and adjust courses next semester. She told me not to worry too much, since all the classes I was taking were necessary for any of the majors. I was not worried; I was happy. Mainly because I really liked the writing class I was taking.
One day I sat in the middle of the class facing the professor straight on. I always loved being close to the instructor. I never enjoyed being in the back. It was hard to see and listen, and I love to do both in class. It was cold outside, but it always was in Massachusetts in the fall. The professor gave us a prompt: To write a paragraph about where we wish to be at that moment.
As soon as she said that, the room swirled, squeezed down a black hole, and was replaced by paradise. My paradise; the beach. My boots poofed into thin air. Jeans and the layers underneath disappeared, and I was wearing shorts and a tank top, and the sun hit my skin in a way that was not torture but pleasure. Each vibrant ray touched it like fingers trailing, on my shoulders, neck, and legs. Sand crept in between my toes, particularly under the nail bed of my big one. A breeze drifted by, and I stood up. I brushed the sand off my butt and felt the trickle of it on my calves. I walked over to the part where the water barely splashes and let it grace my feet. It was divine. It was water on my feet and then foam at my ankles. It was sand colliding with the saltwater and rushing back to be with the ocean. It was my feet submerged in sand and indenting my footprint right there for anyone who dreams this dream to see me. Or, at the very least, see my size five footprint.
I turned it in. She loved it and read it aloud to the class. The temporary joy was enough to give my collapsing ego a boost right then, but it will be something I will forget, till last night. I changed my major, but never finished it. I did something entirely different for so many reasons. Talent or not, my mother was right, journalism would not have paid the bills, and I couldn’t be another dot on the graph for low social-economic status Latinos, and I also didn’t believe in myself.
You see, at that moment in my life, I wasn’t strong enough. I hadn’t been broken as many times and pieced back together with a stronger glue than what God gave me. I was not there yet.
As I’ve gotten older and lived a life of many ups and downs, I can see that talent was not enough then. It is not enough now. Although my words evoke emotions in others, and me, it is the practice of writing awful sentences and editing them into beautiful ones that have led me into the path of learning. Reading others’ finished works and demystifying their process has helped me to create my own.
I am talented, but I still have not published a book. I have lots to learn.
One of my most humbling experiences was when someone read one of my pieces and looked at me blankly and said: “I don’t get it.” I didn’t either. The picture was bright as day in my head, but on the page, it was a chaotic mess only I could understand. I hadn’t rearranged my beautiful words into a format others could comprehend.
Although talent is there, it is the practice of arranging words into a coherent story that has given me confidence in my writing ability.
Reading has been my passion for as far back as I can remember and continues to be so. What I didn’t understand then, and I’m just grasping now from the professors in the MFA program, is how essential reading is for writers. But not flying through the pages, falling into a world to never come back until you read the end, reading. It is reading with purpose. To unearth the skeleton that makes the story.
How did s/he arranged these pretty words?
Reading. Slowly. Underlying. Writing in the margins. Asking questions and discovering the answers in the story. This meticulous process has helped me uncover the person behind the book cover — the writer.
Every word in a book fought to be there. Edit after edit. They are there for a reason. As a reader who is also a writer, finding out the reason and applying it to my writing has helped me hone my craft and I’m certain it will lead me to the birth of my book baby.
I am talented, and I am working on mastery.
Leave a Reply