Have Faith, Keep Going, Find Your Peeps

With great elation I’ve been telling people that I’ve finally “found my peeps”—that is, my people: fellow aficionados of the classic Victorian ghost story, via a Facebook page honoring Montague Rhodes James. M. R. James is better known in the United Kingdom than in the States. He was a provost of King’s College and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. A medieval historian, he is credited with a particular style of “antiquarian” ghost stories, as his characters tend to be well-educated bookish sorts who have paranormal encounters while doing research, often in churches or libraries. As you see, this is a specific little niche in the spectrum of paranormal writing.

Contributors to the Facebook page chime in with commentary about his canon of stories, post related photographs and articles and links to related readings, events, and film adaptations. After years of feeling almost embarrassed to tell people that I write ghost stories, I have found my support and inspiration group. This page has led me to similar groups such as the Sheridan Le Fanu Appreciation Society (Le Fanu is an Irish pillar of the classic ghost story), the Classic Ghost Story, and many more.

I bring this up because I suspect that all writers at some point have doubts and feel alone. Who is my audience? Who will read this? Am I wasting my time?

My friends have been kind; some have bought my books and showed up at my little events, but most come to support me as a friend and not because they love the genre. Writing is a solitary experience as it is, and even more so when you don’t have anyone who gets your subject matter.

I’ll switch gears here for a moment to go back in time. I promise I’ll bring it back around again. Hold tight.

English was my best subject all through school. I loved creative writing classes and couldn’t understand the groans from fellow classmates: “I don’t want to write a stupid paper…” What? Not want to write?

An English major in college seemed like the easy way out. While my roommate sat night after night with flashcards of biology terms, I got to write five-page papers comparing and contrasting themes in Madame Bovary or discussing obsessions in Poe and Hawthorne. I felt guilty. This was so powder-puff in comparison. My only difficulty was typing too much; I’d forget I was at the bottom of a page and then have to delete a whole line of type with correction tape.

But then I took one creative writing class with a visiting “professor.” No matter what I submitted, it came back with red ink scribbles that crossed out my words and filled the margins with brusque comments. In class, he shook his head so much, I wondered if he were shaking his head with disgust and disbelief or perhaps had a nervous condition that made his head waggle. But no, it always came with a sour face that was not a nervous tic.

He asked us to write about something very personal, something from the heart. I wrote about the childhood excitement of a trip to see my grandparents in upstate New York. The last few miles were the best. We turned off a main road down a narrow country lane. Would that leaning barn still be standing, or would it have finally fallen over? Down to the right was the creek bed. Ooh, water was high. Up there on the right was the house where the man with one eye used to live. He’d jumped out of a loft and landed on a pitchfork. Closer and closer, with each bend in the road, we drew nearer to my country paradise.

My submission came back with so much red ink it was hard to see my words at all.

How could it be so bad? Wow.

The worst blow was he said it was boring.

The rest of the class time was a blur. I was devastated. I must have kept it together for the class, but later I bawled.

Boring?

I’d always thought that I could write. But here was proof that my writing was awful.

I gave up creative writing, though I continued to keep a journal. I shifted focus. Perhaps I couldn’t write, but I still loved to read. I wanted a job in publishing. Maybe I could become an editor.

After graduation, I moved to New York City. A cousin in media helped me land an interview with the Publicity Director of W. W. Norton, Inc., and I got the job!

Long story short, coincidence or not, guess who was going to be published by Norton? Yep. That visiting “professor.” And when I got a galley copy of his book, I laughed out loud! I didn’t like it at all! I even read it twice to be sure I hadn’t missed something. Nope, I just couldn’t relate to it at all. No small wonder he couldn’t get me either!

This was an opportunity to hit a reset button,  to change that whole story, erase the bad memory of that class. I wrote a poem to him about how he’d been so quick with the red pen and must have been unhappy, about how we as a class had felt slashed by his harsh critiques. I said I wished him well, hoped he had found happiness, and I meant it. I got his address from his editor and mailed it, though she advised me against it.

Not long after, I got a lovely letter back. Surprised and flattered that I’d found him and composed a poem to him, and a bit sheepish and apologetic. Yes, he admitted that our college culture was foreign, he’d been recently divorced, and yes, he probably had been rough on us since he hadn’t really wanted to be there. He’d taken the job as filler while waiting on something else. He wished me well also.

I sometimes regret that I hadn’t made a copy of my poem or kept his letter. At the time it seemed wise to let both go. Clean slate.

Here we go, back around to the beginning. Had I not set myself free, had I taken his criticism to heart, I might never have attempted to write again. But writing is in me. I can’t write short emails or trite comments on Facebook. I write. I am a writer. It’s taken me all of my fifty-three years to say that with a whole heart. I may never be a great writer, or famous, but I will never stop writing because of an opinion again.

Have faith. Keep going. Find your peeps.