Fiction

The truth always comes out

I’ve felt like a fraud ever since the ninth grade.

Early in the school year, my English teacher led our class to the computer lab and instructed us to write something about Veterans Day. It could be anything—an imagined tale, a personal story about a relative who’d served—but we only had one 50-minute period to do it.

At the end of class, we had to print out whatever we’d written and turn it in. The English teachers would review all the submissions and choose two to be read aloud at the Veterans Day assembly.

I had no clue what to write. In a panic, I scanned my memory bank for scenes from every war movie I’d ever seen and started typing the cheesiest, most clichéd story I could think of.

There were young soldiers on a bloody battlefield. Gunshots. A dying promise. A pregnant widow. And, finally, a young boy saluting the grave of the father he never knew. (I got that part from images I’d seen of three-year-old JFK Jr. saluting President Kennedy’s casket.)

The story flowed effortlessly from my fingertips. For some reason, I wrote it as a poem that didn’t even come close to rhyming. I laughed to myself over how melodramatic it was as I stapled the two sheets of paper together and handed it in.

You can probably guess where this is going.

I was horrified when my teacher told me she loved my poem. She said she cried when she read it.

That piece of garbage? I thought.

Then she asked me to read it aloud at the Veterans Day assembly.

Shit.

This wasn’t just any Veterans Day assembly. This was the Veterans Day assembly one month after 9/11.

American flags flew everywhere. Support for the troops was at an all-time high. And I’d have to clomp my Dr. Martens sandals across the gym floor to a mic stand and read my dumb poem in front of everyone—including actual veterans who’d fought on real battlefields and who would immediately recognize the despicable fakery of mine.

But it got worse. My teacher had me practice reading it aloud to my English class first.

And I bawled my way through it.

I’m talking full red-faced, throat-clenched sobs. You’d have thought I’d watched my own father bleed out from enemy fire. It was ridiculous and humiliating, but the other kids were in tears, too. They ate it right up.

My parents came to the Veterans Day assembly. I’m sure my father has a video of it that would require some unknowable feat of technology to be able to watch now. It’s probably best it doesn’t see the light of day.

This photo is not from that assembly, but from the spring of 2002. You get the vibe. Braces were involved.

But the poem lives on in every Timbercrest Junior High School ’01-’02 yearbook that still exists on this planet. As if two dramatic live readings weren’t enough, someone decided to fill an entire page with it.

My yearbook is long gone, but I’ve unearthed the typewritten original:

Just... wow. Click to enlarge and read each page, if you dare.

I’ve been terrified to write fiction ever since—not because I think I’ll somehow be forced to read it aloud again, but because I believe I have no actual talent for it. I’m afraid I’ll just do what I did in ninth grade: rely on clichés to hammer out a lame story.

I studied journalism rather than creative writing. I’ve stuck to reporting real events and true feelings because even if my writing is bad, at least it’s authentic.

But several weeks ago, I told my therapist about a thought experiment I’d been mulling over: What if women got so fed up with the current state of [gestures wildly] everything that they decided to pack up their children, head to an uninhabited island, and start a new society from scratch?

“I’d love to read that as a short story,” my therapist said.

“I’d love to write that as a short story,” I replied.

So I did. And it was fun!

I have no idea if it’s any good, but the story flowed effortlessly from my fingertips, just like the Veterans Day poem did in my junior-high computer lab. It’s satirical and ridiculous, but a potentially therapeutic read for anyone else who’s disheartened by the broken state of a world that was designed by men to primarily benefit and protect men.

The story is not anti-men. (I know and love many wonderful men! I’m sure your father, husband, brother, and/or son is great!) It’s anti-patriarchy, and a starry-eyed exploration of how idyllic a well-run matriarchy could actually be.

I’m afraid to blast it out to a gymnasium full of people, but I feel good about sharing it with the current equivalent of my small English class: my wonderful paid subscribers. Look for it in your inbox next Friday.

I want to preface it by saying, in real life, I’d absolutely invite the gays and the theys to join my new society, but for this silly story, I stuck to an unnuanced binary structure.

I had so much fun writing it that I got the courage to start thinking seriously about writing a novel. A fully formed romantic-comedy plot popped into my head over the holidays, but I dismissed it because I can’t write fiction.

Or can I?

The idea lives in the back of my mind behind more pressing tasks, like being a mom, finding a job, and keeping my commitment to publish this newsletter every Friday. But in my free time—quiet evenings, downtime at all-day dance events—I’ve plotted out the whole novel and almost finished writing the first chapter.

Is it any good? Probably not! I’d love to find a writing group to get some feedback and learn more about the process of writing quality fiction.

I’m so intimidated by fiction writers, though, since I still feel like a fraud. I don’t have an MFA. I don’t have any fiction publication credits, other than the Timbercrest Junior High School ’01-’02 yearbook. I still suffer from imposter syndrome. And writing a novel is far from my top priority right now.

But it’s relaxing to let my brain make up whatever it wants to write. I don’t have to stick to the cold, hard facts. I can write about experiences that feel a world away from my current reality, like falling in love.

It’s a dreamy, hopeful exercise, and far less painful than writing about waiting for my mother to die, watching my mother die, and the aftermath of my mother dying—though I’ll still be sharing some of that in this newsletter, especially since I’ve just returned home from laying her ashes to rest in California.

I’ve been stuck in a dip of the rollercoaster for years and I don’t want to continue living there. I’d rather be inching up to a great height, looking up toward the sky, unsure of where the track goes next. I’ll take thrilling anticipation for what’s ahead over the misery of crushing low after crushing low.

The nonfiction book I wanted to write is on hold indefinitely. The story has changed, and I feel like I’m still living deep in the trenches of conflict, far from any resolution or meaningful reflection.

I want this rom-com project to be a fun thing just for me. If I work on it with the intention of submitting it to literary agents, I fear I’ll start writing what I think they want to read rather than what I actually want to write.

I keep asking myself: What would I write if I had nothing to lose?

Because, really, what have I got to lose?

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