This Modern Writer: Youth Is All
[Kirsty Logan / January 29th, 2011 / This Modern Writer ]Like many writers, I was deeply affected by Amber Sparks’ recent post at Big Other. It made me realise that I am anxious, seriously fucking anxious, and I was so scared to admit it that I didn’t even realise that admitting it was an option.
But Amber is not afraid to say these things, and so I will not be afraid either. Here is why I am anxious.
I have to do everything now now now while I am young and shiny because that is all I have. I have my youth, I have my shininess, and that’s it. When I am older I will be just like everyone else, except not quite as good. And that makes me anxious, not only because I have to do everything now now now but also because I’m almost 27 and that’s not even that young. It’s not old, obviously, but it’s not young enough to be newsworthy.
If I were a willowy, elfin 17 year-old my age would be marketable. I’d be on the cover of Poets & Writers no matter how mediocre my book was, just because holy shit, a 17-year old novelist. But I am not willowy and I am not a teenager. A 27 year-old is not marketable unless the book is amazing, and I am scared that it is not amazing and I am not young and so it’s just not quite enough, in terms of book or in terms of me.
I should be concentrating on writing the lushest, cleanest, densest, truthfulest, bad-assiest stories I can possibly write. But I am scared of taking years to do that and then discovering that the stories are shit. I am scared of being old and just okay, because it’s easier to be young and just okay. For a young writer, it’s enough to have potential because you’ve got plenty of time to get better until it’s not only potential but an actual solid finished thing. Sometimes it feels like having people say ‘she’s done so much, and so young!’ is all I have. All I can have, so I’d better make the most of it and write MORE NOW FASTER.
I am impatient.
I don’t want to be left behind.
I don’t want to waste this relative youth, this sole thing I have.
I thought I would publish a novel by 20 but that didn’t happen, and then I thought 25 but that didn’t happen either, and then I think, well, 30 is okay. I’ll still be young if I publish at 30. Even 35, that’s still young. In the writing world, anyone under 40 is young.
I am focusing on the wrong thing.
So here it is. I am saying it. I am anxious that youth and shine is all I have. And that, let me tell you, is fucking terrifying.
I’m not writing this for reassurances. I’m writing it because Amber’s honesty inspired me and made me want to be honest too. I’m writing it because I know some writers fear they’re too old, they’re running out of time, they’re not shiny and lithe enough. I’m writing it in the hope that other people are anxious about their own youth too, that they fear it’s all they have. I’m writing it because we’re all anxious, and I think it’s important to admit it.
I’m. 46, I wrote my first story five years ago, and I feel exactly the same way. Get used to it, I guess.
I’m starting to think that writers are just neurotic, as a species. I suppose if we were extroverts we’d all be events organisers or PR people.
I think that’s it, we’re neurotic, and the shape that today’s neurosis takes will mold itself to fit your current circumstance. Your age, your health, your financial situation, your satisfaction or lack thereof with your day job, your broken heart, that other person’s heart you just broke, your aspirations, your lack of aspiration, the last great thing that happened with your writing, the last shitty thing that happened with your writing…
I’m 46 and I want to get an MFA, but my oldest kid starts college in a year, my youngest in three more years, I’m a single dad, and it panics me that I might be into my 50′s before I start writing applications.
Sometimes I’m reading a book that’s taking a long time and I see my remaining years ticking away, my want-to-read pile takes up half the room, and I get so stressed that I’m wasting a valuable month slogging through one book when I could devour four other really good ones, and the anxiety makes the words seize up and I go back to Twitter.
Earlier this week I read three different reviews of an anthology I’m in, and all three reviews called out my piece as one of the best ones, and I thought that I fucking ruled the universe. And then yesterday The Rumpus passed on my overly-confessional Impossible Love piece, and I looked at my notes from this week’s workshopping of my screenplay, I thought about how much work it will take to blow the whole thing up and start putting it together again, just the fucking first act even, and I thought that I really am just a mediocre hack, this is a waste of time, who am I kidding that I can actually write when I can’t do one tenth of what the writers I admire can do? I’m trying to remember how great I felt on Wednesday reading those reviews and it’s like it happened to a different person. A person who could write, who no longer exists.
Yeah, neurotic, kinda.
I know Ray’s comment isn’t *all* about age – however, I suddenly feel that I’d like to put over a ’40 over 40′ literary collection. Who’s in?
(It’ll have to wait 6 months until I’m 40 though, natch)
Also, I can’t type. “together” not “over”. I won’t be proofing this collection.
I’d like to read that, please. You know that quote from Rebecca, where she wishes she was wise and wore black satin and pearls? I read that at 18, and I believe it as much now and I did then.
This sounds familiar. Like yourself and Amber this anxiety bothered me for a long while as well. I remember it was my goal to be published before I was 21, and I read all those stories of teenage authors having books published when they were 17, back when I was 15 and writing my first novel, and I thought “yeah, that will be me”, and I was determined I would achieve that too. But it didn’t happen. I wrote 4 novels between the ages of 14 and 19, they went to publishers and literary agents and nothing was picked up. It seems ridiculous to me now that I could ever of thought they could be since they’re terrible, but it was what I wanted more than anything in the world.
I’m nearly 33 now, and that anxiety doesn’t bother me so much any more. The realisation slowly dawned on me that I was nothing special, I wasn’t the next “Big Thing” in writing, that I wouldn’t stun people with my literary skill at such a delicate age. But what does still cause me anxiety, and you and Amber both mention it, is the feeling that you need to be published, your output has to be increasing. I feel like I need to be published to be recognised and that recognition in the eyes of my peers has now replaced the need to be published before my youth ceases to be factor. So my youth (such as it is) is no longer an issue, but recognition is. I feel like a child jumping up and down in a room full of other screaming children all seeking attention. Is that what we writers are? I would hate to think so.
I admire your calmness. Calm is my goal.
I feel like a child jumping up and down in a room full of other screaming children all seeking attention.
This is a thought I have also had. I have felt that writing stories and wanting people to read them is the same drive that made 5-year-old me tug on my mother’s sleeve so she’d pay me attention.
I wouldn’t necessarily say I was calm. Not panicking, but…not exactly calm either. I worry, mostly about whether I’m good enough etc, or if all those people who told me what I good writer I was were lying or just being polite.
I don’t really want to think too much about the psychology of it – whose approval am I really seeking blah blah…that wouldn’t help things, I suspect!
I also attach to that pedigree. Not only am I almost 28 and not shiny, but I’m also not from a shiny place. I am woefully uneducated about the British equivalents, but I get very anxious here about people who went to Artsy schools in New England and knew All the Right People and did All the Right Things. Or come from family money and Traipse. Lots of Traipsing for shiny writers. Lots of anxiety for me.
What is Traipse?
I’m not sure there are the same class anxieties here (or not in Glasgow, anyway) – in some ways it’s the opposite, a glamourising of that non-middle-class, non-white experience. Which leads to other worries, of course – I’m just an everyday, not-rich, not-poor twentysomething; do I really have anything to say?; should I just get out of the way to make room for the voice of someone who really understands struggle?
This is such a lovely, honest post. Thanks so much for it. I’m so glad I wrote what I did, because of the conversation that!’s ensued and produced posts like this one.
Thanks, Amber! Your courage really inspired me. Not just to be honest, but to actually do something to confront these anxieties.
Yes, it’s important to admit we’re anxious about age and about our chances “passing us by,” but as I said in the comments on Amber’s post, the next part is trying to stop that behaviour, to educate ourselves out of it. I have this suspicion, as cynical and jaded as it’ll sound, that this huge reaction will end up being a flurry and then things will return to how they were, and it’ll be all “hurry hurry hurry, must publish X number of chapbooks before I’m aged Y.”
(I’m not being superior and saying that I’m any better in this, by the way: I can barely stop thinking about the fact that I’m 6 months away from turning 40 and have done precisely nothing. So you can imagine how the pressure of seeing people do so much gets to me …)
I agree. The first step is confession; the next is change. I’m getting a bit self-help-y now, I know, but I think that now I’ve accepted that this is the root of my panicked drive to DO MORE NOW, I can start to get a fucking grip on it.
I highly doubt that you’ve managed to go almost 40 years without doing a single thing. Writing is important, but so is living.
I fully expect that things will go back to how they were, but hopefully with me being a lesser part of it. And that won’t matter to anyone else, but it will matter to me.
you are fucking 27 and even when you are 37 you will still be young and shiny. writing has no age. i do not read words and know the age of the author. i only see the words. if the words are good when you are old, like me, they will find their proper place. i wanted to have thin thighs and loads of sex partners when i was 27, when i was still shiny. that did not pan out. there is an age limit on being desirable maybe, but not on things you can do with your imagination. One can even do that when they are a quadraplegic. have goals of accomplishment, sure, but know that this is a long race and as long as you are willing to run it, that is all that matters. i started running it late, tons of runners before me, tons after. discouraging? yes. but what can i do but just do. So i am. Despite my lack of shinyness. I have no other choice.
Moments after reading this post and commenting, I then saw xtx’s comment and nodded vigorously (and hopefully) at the “writing has no age” line. Yes!
Then I saw that a commotion is starting to build about a certain new volume called “30 Under 30: An Anthology of Innovative Fiction by Younger Writers.” Ahem. Oh dear.
*gets shotgun*
I’m hoping there’ll be a backlash soon against this obsession with young writers. I like to read writers older than me because they know things I don’t. There are things I know I can’t write about yet because I don’t have that depth of knowledge or breadth of experience. I will be a different writer when I’m older – not necessarily better or worse, but different.
I am anxious too, Kirsty. And similar to you and Amber, I feel as though I have to get my name out there. But, I think you have to find that balance, you know? Sure, have those really solid short pieces to send out. (Because I know your writing, and it’s fantastic). But also! Keep working on that novel that will take years to complete. Because that in the end, will make it all worthwhile.
Hannah, I like these words. They are wise.
I’ve been feeling too quiet lately because I’ve been working on my novel instead of short stories, and I was getting used to that regular thrill of having a story accepted/published. I’m learning to appreciate the slower build of a novel, though I am an impatient person so it’s not always easy.
ray,
i hear you man. fuck. we are our own worst enemies. I wish i could just call a truce.
-me
There is certainly a cult of age in the London literary scene. It’s looks as much as age. I guess I notice it most with male writers, but it’s there across the board. Coverage and contracts are commensurate with cheekbones. Books are OK but coverage is stellar because they look the part (it’s not celeb bios that are the problem – it’s literary fiction – almost impossible to break into as a debut writer – unless you’ve been a male model). I’ve had the occasional backhanded remark from the scenesters about my appearance, but it’s more the relentless way that the literary scene is promoted “come and hang out with beautiful people listening to beautiful writers” – no, seriously, that’s how it is, and it makes me sick. It’s something I find particularly painful because my writing is more suited to live performance than being read on the page.
It’s a double-edged sword, though. I work with writers of all ages and, especially if I count myself, every place on the looks spectrum, and the cult of youth/looks is as detrimental across the board. Cody James, one of the best writers of her generation, was criticised for starring in a video trailer for her own book. A commenter noted “you’re a beautiful woman, you mention suicide, and that glamourises it”. How ****ing ridiculous can you get?
I’d kind of thought that about the London literary scene too – what I’d seen of it from the outside, with events always held in the most fashionable of locations – which is why I’d just tossed aside the idea of ever trying to get involved. (Though social anxiety helps too, of course.) But I can’t believe that you’ve had remarks about your appearance – well, when I say I can’t believe it, I mean that I *can*, but I don’t want to and it makes me sick to think that happens.
Well, I guess I’ll be sitting out the London literary scene entirely then …
I’m big enough and ugly enough (:p) to take the comments on the chin though I shouldn’t have to. I’ve cultivated the just barge through it like it doesn’t bother me thing, and I keep banging at the door to get involved (like I say, my stuff is more performance-oriented than written-friendly so I rely on getting the chance to perform). I wouldn’t say don’t get involved. There *are* some great events if you avoid the hipster postcodes. Go along as a spectator first.
I can really relate to what you say here, Kirsty. I’ve often felt, I will never be anything because I’m 36 and I’m still working on my first novel. I don’t have any chapbooks. I don’t have any books. I watch everyone around me publishing book after book after book and then there I am without much to show for being a writer. That’s not really a rational way to feel but that’s how I feel. You are so young. I am young. Honestly, we’re all young. You know who’s old? My grandmother, who is 85. The cult of youth can be very destructive. Writing is the great equalizer, at least for me. You don’t have to be young. You don’t have to be beautiful. You don’t have to be thin. You don’t have to be perfect or normal. You just have to write. The other day I saw something about an anthology featuring 30 writers under 30 and my heart just fell. I thought, “Jesus, I will never amount to anything, and here these young kids are getting into fancy anthologies,” and then I thought, Jesus, Roxane, pull your fucking shit together. It’s just a book. It’s nice for those folks but it’s just a book. It has no bearing on my existence. That book is not making some kind of judgment on where I am in my writing career.
I’ll never be in a 30 writers under 30 anthology but increasingly, I am totally okay with that. I’m writing the best words of my life. I wouldn’t trade what I’m writing now for any kind of success in my twenties when I was even more obscure than I am now. You have to hold on to the writing itself rather than what might come of the writing. I have the faith that if you write, the rest will come. And for me, where I’m at right now, yes, I want some of those fancy things like a book and whatnot, but even if I never had any of that, it would ultimately be okay because writing makes me that happy and helps me hold it together and I’m never going to find that on a shelf.
Great post, Kirsty, and thank you for pointing me towards Amber’s too. It’s so wonderful when people are honest, I do feel less and less that I can talk honestly about anxieties on my own blog, it’s seen as a call for praise and support, which is always welcome, but that’s not necessarily what we need sometimes. Sometimes it’s good just to get it out. Anyway, I was 38 when my book came out and I too had wanted to be the “world’s youngest writer”, but as the years passed and I hadn’t actually written anything, I realised I’d missed that boat! And then not being 17 never crossed my mind. All I wanted was a book, and I have my book and it’s amazing. And I am really happy to not be worrying now about Book 2, to not feel in a rush. The one thing that makes me anxious is when I’m not writing. It took 2.5 years of promoting the book, much of it enormously stressful, with very little writing time, to see how important the actual writing is, for my mental health, frankly. I know I can say this from the position of having a book out, and I can’t tell you that I don’t see articles about 25-year-old wunderkinds and gnash my teeth. But mostly, at the age of 40.5 (the half is very important) I am not worried at all about being too old. I do get excited whenever I read articles about anyone over 40 who is doing something interesting – and there are so many! I think maybe once you get over 30 it might get a bit easier, it did for me. Anyway, you will always be shiny, in case that helps… and the more you write what you want to write, the brighter you will shine. (Ok, yes, I sound like Oprah. Sorry.)
Huge thanks for writing, Kirsty. There’s so much I’d want to say here, agreements and additions. But I think Lewis Hyde says it better:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ghq7X_YPvewC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+gift+lewis+hyde&source=bl&ots=dF0rVPzGy3&sig=-ABpVRTK2wu-W8CgIiL7rb182Pg&hl=en&ei=nd1FTen2IsP-8Abm-tW5AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CEcQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=celebrity&f=false
Great post, Kirsty. I identify with a lot of the sentiment. Sometimes I get so anxious about my writing progress that I could puke.
[...] me sane. It makes me happy. But maybe I say that because my time is up. I don’t know. If “youth is all” then I may as well kill myself now. I’m past my prime. I will not be the young, [...]
Shine. / Whine. / In whine, I find shine. / In shine, shall I whine.
My, my this is fine.
For now, I shall shine. / Later, I’ll pine.
You, sir, are a swine.
Hi all,
Just to add–every time I feel down about not being fresh out of Iowa’s MFA program with some rich or accomplished mentor handing my work off to TNY or Tin House or whatever, with no connections and no cliques, I remind myself of one thing: I do it because I love it. I could die poor, in the gutter. I could write the best freaking book ever written and it could never be published and die with me. I am not shiny but was feeling 27 was YOUNG YOUNG YOUNG–*wide grins*–because I stopped writing and submitting through nearly 7 years of childbirthing and caretaking during my would have been shiny period. But you know what? I love stories. I love poems. I am gratified to read of those I love who struggled for fame or notice and maybe received it only after their lifetimes. When I think these things, I feel calm. Hey, it’s not so bad. Maybe after I’m dead, the glory will come. If not, I’m dead–no vested interest. If so, good money for my kids.
I LOVE stories about people who have been busting their ass for years and suddenly hit big, but it’s like I tell my kids, if you want it bad enough, your calling, your success, it’s not always instant; look at Olympic athletes. They practice hundreds of hours for every minute in the spotlight. That’s what makes me lose my nerves about it. Hey, I’m putting in my time. I’m doing what I love. 
Cheers all!