During my sophomore year of college, after declaring a major in political science, it hit me: I had to return to writing. I wasn’t doing very well in the literature classes I’d signed up for, but I thought if I pursued a minor in creative writing, I just might save something of my essential self.
If you’re reading this essay, you understand. You’re also a writer, and you know that is part of your identity, possibly from a young age. I’ve been interviewing published authors for nearly a quarter of a century and can tell you that at least three-quarters of them identified as writers before they started school.
I, too, always knew I was a writer. But along the way, that identity got stretched and pulled like taffy. I was a promising violinist, then vocalist, who might attend conservatory. Maybe I’d find my vocation in teaching; my mother wanted nothing more fervently—the stability! The benefits! What if I pursued management, like so many of my college classmates?
After an academically disappointing couple of semesters, I knew I wasn’t going to be an economist: Those double C minuses were a clue. I spent a summer in Cape Cod’s Provincetown, splitting my time between babysitting a toddler in return for room and board, and making money for tuition by working on a whale watching boat.
I’d never use my meager econ knowledge again, but when a popular short story writing class opened for submissions, my sun-kissed weeks by the ocean provided plenty of material. I dashed off a story, perhaps the most experimental I’ve ever written, and slid it under the professor’s office door. This was long before email, kids.
No writer remains completely Zen about a submission. My late-autumn anxieties about whether I’d be admitted to this course were compounded, however, by my chronic depression, which left me sluggish and prone to imposter syndrome, convinced I did not have the talent of my writing peers. I had been subject to low periods since early adolescence, but I wouldn’t know for a long time that I also had a mental illness in which major depressive episodes threatened my hard-won periods of stability. As the days grew shorter and exam time nearer, I found myself despairing about everything from getting into that short story class to whether my new boyfriend liked me to how I would spend the upcoming summer.
That year, my work-study job was as a reserve-desk attendant. I loved it, because: books and reading. It was fun to see which works were assigned for courses, as well as to chat with my fellow work-study pals in our large office area, the one place in the library where we didn’t have to speak in whispers. The only downside to the position was late-evening shifts after which I didn’t return to my room until midnight.
My roommate that year was a brilliant, complicated, unhappy, talented young woman who was an A-plus classics major, accomplished ballet dancer, and near-professional flautist. She also, sadly, had a personality disorder that caused raging jealousy over my time and pursuits, and she resented my work-study job because it interfered with her sleep schedule.
Her own pursuits that interfered with my sleep schedule, I was supposed to overlook. She had a rich, gorgeous boyfriend who attended a nearby college, and he spent many nights in our room, the two of them talking and giggling and probably having sex while I turned on my side to face the door and pretend I had no idea what was going on over by the windows. The boyfriend was friendly but rarely spoke to me. His attentions were elsewhere.