Am I Legitimate Now?
By: Joe Shetina
Tags: Life, Writing, Professional Development, Careers, Shame

Am I Legitimate Now?

Melanie Griffith in the Reagan-era Girlboss Movie ‘Working Girl’

I made my first website last month. Whether or not I’ll have enough money to upgrade to one of Squarespace’s plans remains to be seen, but I suddenly feel very serious about being a Capital W Writer.

That’s not to say I haven’t been serious about my writing. I’ve been writing since I was seven years old. One day, I came home from the second grade determined to write a short story for an English class assignment. “It’s gonna be at least thirty pages!” I told my parents. Not the last time my plans would outweigh my ability. Still, I think I made it to three pages. Not bad for a seven-year-old.

Calling myself a professional writer, though… that’s always been a fraught and complicated thing. I am proud to be a storyteller, proud that I have some success — though certainly not financial — in the field, and proud to be a part of a community of artists who’ve made me feel less and less like the privilege of being an artist is reserved for the select few, even if the people who hold the money and the power in the arts industry tend to disagree.

To be honest, I still don’t really know what it would look like to be a professional writer.

I could imagine — but only imagine — what it would be like to work in housekeeping for forty years as my mother has. My father didn’t fare much better as a real estate appraiser. The job title might suggest middle-class comforts, if not “respectability.” For a myriad of reasons, that was not what my family knew. At all.

I come, mostly, from factory workers, laborers, mechanics, and a couple of medical billers here and there. These were the careers that were modeled for me. My respect and admiration for those jobs are limitless, but I would be a God damn disaster at most of them. I can’t even drive a car much less imagine what goes on underneath one. I grew up watching the toll work took on my relatives’ bodies. Worn, calloused skin and cracking joints were as common at the dinner table as smoldering cigarettes, cans of Old Style, and Rice-A-Roni dinners.

I never wanted to claim writing because it felt like a betrayal — or obfuscation of responsibility to the family, to the home, to the hours my parents put into work because they were hopelessly tied to their jobs out of fear that they couldn’t slip without the whole house, the whole family, crumbling.

Writers, on the other hand, must be lazy. Writers do nothing but sit on their asses and stare at computers all day. Obviously, I know this isn’t true. It’s not something the logical part of my brain tells me. It’s something deeper and less easy to get at, too stubborn and intrinsic to my upbringing to exorcise completely.

So, I’m here, “trying to make it” as a writer. Never just am one. Just always trying to be. Locking myself in the shame of dreaming.

For the longest, I thought all it would take would be the right person, the right institution, the right circuit in the switchboard of these industries to connect me to a career. It was easier to imagine myself as helpless and adrift than it was to take some control.

In the past month, as merciless and stressful and scary as it’s been, I sent out dozens of submissions to literary magazines. Three of my poems were selected for publication by the same press. Half of the other submissions were rejected in the first couple of days — and even that was exhilarating. Again, I’m overwhelmed by the sensation that I’m somehow legitimate. Real. More submissions are out there in the ether. I’ll probably forget about some by the time my answers come.

I am seized by the irrational fear that I’m still behind, but it’s tempered by the sensation of finally accepting myself as a “working writer.” Maybe not a gainfully-employed one, but a working one.

I think this newsletter means I’m legitimate, and I guess being legitimate just means believing I’m legitimate. At some point, I’d like to not care about that so much. I’ll settle for delusion for now.