Your art — whether it’s visual, literary, culinary, whatever! — matters. It will always matter. What you create with your spirit has inherent value because it heals, nourishes, and inspires you. It makes your heart swell! It feels like magic! And if making money doing what you love, getting an agent, being published, and having a steady fan-base is important to you, that’s wonderful. But these things should never determine the value of your work.
This might seem obvious to you. Or maybe you’re hearing it for the first time. Recently, I’ve had to remind myself of this time and time again, especially since I’ve started to become more active in the writing community on Twitter.
For the most part, being more plugged in has been a super exciting and enriching experience. I’ve learned so much! But along with the thrill of being a part of a shiny, new community, I’ve also been struck with a new kind of painful self-doubt.
You see, all of a sudden, after living most of my life as a solitary writer, I’m networking with other creatives whose careers (by society’s standards, at least) are much more vibrant, thrilling, and “official” than mine. This shouldn’t bother me — my logical mind knows this! If anything, it should be inspiring to see everyone’s dreams coming true after so much hard work. But as I scroll through popular tweets, book announcements, and impressive bios, the fact that I’ve never been published makes my stomach twist and churn. What the heck am I doing with my life?
I tried to push past the feeling. Talk myself out of it, take deep breaths, relax… But when I went back to the writing project I was once so excited about, I just… deflated. Everything felt wrong, grating, and pointless. Who did I think I was? Why did any of these characters matter? Why did I care so much about this fictional world I created if chances are nobody else will? I was literally nauseous. I might as well just stop altogether, I thought. I felt stupid for that time I gushed excitedly about my main character to my friend, and the fictional city I’d carefully constructed for my short story became like an abandoned theme park in my mind: dark, lifeless, out of business.
So, I allowed myself to take a break that night and give some thought as to why exactly I was feeling the way I did. Luckily, I was able to slowly dig myself out of that hole with a few realizations I encountered through reflection and advice… I wanted to share them in case they might be useful to you, too.
On feeling like you’re not a “real” writer:
“When you’re an artist, nobody ever tells you or hits you with the magic wand of legitimacy. You have to hit your own head with your own handmade wand. And you feel stupid doing it.”
― The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help
Sometimes, I find myself thinking that, just by default, successful writers have an inherent skill or ability to succeed that I don’t have. That somehow, they’re just more legitimate than I am, and there’s nothing I can do to change that. They’re Writers. I’m just a Regular Ol’ Gal. But in the words of Amanda Palmer, I realized that I needed to hit myself with that magic wand of legitimacy — nobody else would do it for me, and nobody does it for anyone else.
I might feel stupid saying it, but yes. I am every bit as much a writer as Isabel Allende! Tomi Adeyemi! Catherynne Valente! Sophocles! Why? Because I said so. Because this is what I love, and any inherent, unbridgeable gap between their genius and mine is just an illusion of my own mind.
On feeling like your work is worthless:
“All I ever liked about working in offices was being able to type up stories on the computer when no-one was looking. I was never paying much attention in meetings because I was usually scribbling bits of my latest stories in the margins of the pad, or choosing excellent names for the characters.”
― J.K. Rowling, How J.K. Rowling went from struggling single mom to the world’s most successful author
Why do I include this particular quote? Well, after my near-breakdown, it had occurred to me that every beautiful work of literature I had ever gotten swept up in had to start somewhere. Scribbled in a journal, jotted down on a napkin, outlined in a Word document.
Whenever you feel like your creation is worthless because it hasn’t gotten (or might never get) the recognition you’ve dreamed of, think about this: the magic, wonder, and beauty of Hogwarts existed way before J.K. Rowling was ever discovered by an agent, before she was published, and before she ever amassed legions of fans. The fact that it wasn’t a bestseller at first didn’t make it any less magical. You wouldn’t go back in time and tell past J.K., “Your WIP about the wizards and witches isn’t worth anything special now, but it will be someday once everyone else loves it!” No, it was always worth something, even when it was just the seed of an idea. Her love for her project made it valuable.
So you’re not a bestselling author yet, and maybe you’re the only person who has ever laid eyes on your creative project. The magic is there no matter what. I say this because sometimes, when I feel like a nobody, my art can feel pointless. But it never is. It never was for J.K. Rowling, even when she was technically a “nobody.”
‘If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.’ — Vincent van Gogh (Illustration by Kales)
On feeling like an outsider:
One Saturday the woman at the typewriter accepts an invitation to a literary soiree. But when she arrives, she feels she’s made a terrible mistake. All the writers are old men. She has been invited by Leon Forrest, a black novelist who was trying to be kind and invite more women, more people-of-color, but so far, she’s the only woman, and he and she the only coloreds.
She’s there because she’s the author of a new book of poetry — Bad Boys from Mango Press, the literary efforts of Gary Soto and Lorna Dee Cervantes. Her book is four pages long and was bound together on a kitchen table with a stapler and a spoon. Many of the other guests, she soon realizes, have written real books, hardbacks from big New York houses, printed in editions of hundreds of thousands on actual presses. Is she really a writer or is she only pretending to be a writer?
― Sandra Cisneros, A House of My Own: Stories from My Life
In this quote, Sandra is talking about herself at the very beginning of her career. This kind of connects with the “legitimacy” bit: she’s not sure whether or not she is allowed to call herself a writer. In the autobiographical story she’s telling, twenty-something Sandra (yes, the iconic Sandra Cisneros) feels like a nobody, an outsider, the odd-one-out who isn’t sure of what she has to give to the world of literature. Around her are people who have found success on their own paths (most of them, I should add, probably with a boost from good old racial and socioeconomic privilege).
Sandra Cisneros at the start of her writing career.
As her career progressed, however, Sandra went on to discover that she wasn’t destined to walk the same paths as those men she referred to as “Emperors of Everything.” She didn’t have to, because she had her own path, her own unique perspective on life that set her and her writing apart. Reflecting on her experience as a Chicana growing up in Chicago’s impoverished West Side allowed her to make an indelible mark in literary history, and now, she is regarded as one of most iconic women writers in Latinx culture, a trailblazer in American literature.
Little did Sandra know then, in that moment of overwhelming panic surrounded by all those successful authors, that the words forming inside her would someday change the world.
Sandra receiving the 2015 National Medal of Arts Award from President Barack Obama.
Your voice is your power. Stay focused on you. Do what makes your heart sing. And always know that your creative output has worth and value merely by existing, just like you do.
Natalia del Pilar 