Poorly Read
The deepest shame I carry is that compared to the imagined ocean of other writers I compare myself to, I am poorly read. And I say poorly read to illustrate the opposite of being well-read. I am not well-read.
As a writer, I have been far more consumed with my own writing than reading. That is when I have made the time to write, which hasn’t been much compared to the many decades I’ve been capable of wielding an implement. Yet, it is much more time than I have ever made to read. This makes this cliche I keep running into all the more vexing: The writer is nothing more than the avid, voracious reader.
Am I a fraud?
Most names of authors and works of fiction make me go deer-in-the-headlights. Literary categories are by far my worst on Jeopardy. Delving into #writingcommunity and BookTok has only made the complex worse——
1
Prune…
I am writing the thoughts above from The House, a standpoint that runs solely on the ‘best-selling author’ motive. I am scared, unsure of myself. I am clinging yet again to a foreign identity to get me out of here, away from the present.
Deep…. Deep... I must go deep. Penetrate the here and now. What I wrote above is stagnant, old.
I am experiencing death. I am dying as the version of myself that cannot be loved as she currently is- that puts on airs and waits for God to deliver something more…. Always more. Never enough. But this- this is the new me. I am letting it all go. I am content. As an act of radicalism, I am content.
The House is where we go to escape the moment as it is. It is the room we enter when our thoughts transport us to another reality, the somewhere-someday part of our minds; It comforts us. The plotting, scheming Golem of lustful fantasy. It'll be better when; The promise. It is time to exit the room, step outside The House, and be in the world as it is. To breathe fresh air. To bask in the sun.
In reference to Allison Funk’s Poem On Pruning. Issue no. 152 (Fall 1999) of The Paris Review