Embrace Your Cringe Writing
It will tell more than you think about your voice and style.
Last week I was a woman engulfed in moving boxes. Stacking books on bookshelves and thumbing through the pages of old lovers and toxic friends. Having lived with so little for years, I was tyrannical about editing down my collection. And as I was making piles for donations, I came across a small tome, really a leaflet, and I was jettisoned back to the spring of 1997 where I wore baseball caps, binge-drunk, and celebrated scoring a job at an investment bank before graduation. I’m with my friend Liz and we’re thumbing through J. Crew catalogs and junk mail when a guy stops me. He’s holding a print-out of a short story I wrote and he asks if I really wrote it. Because he can’t make the connection between writer and finance major.
And for years, I couldn’t either.
After the story is published, I attend a launch party which amounts to sitting in a bar with warm beer and everyone gives me a double-take. The editor, the guy who stopped me in front of the cafeteria, looks at me differently. It’s a look that no longer holds disdain, but curiosity, as if I’m a woman who needs to be figured out. A tiny gold baby glinting in a glass jar. I am the party’s amusement.
