Tag: memoir

Rejection: The unsurprising reality of being a teenage writer

Laura WildLeave a comment

When I was 13 I decided I wanted to write a novel, and over the course of a few years I did just that. At the time I was sure that the mere ambition I had to do such a thing made me extraordinary, and I expected my book would be made into a movie someday. I guess you could say I was an idealist… Needless to say, I was not nearly as special as I thought I was, and my ambitions were far from unique. As like any creative adolescent with a wild imagination, I just wanted my art to get the credit that I thought it deserved. Disappointment was almost inevitable.

Four years later I finished my first book, tried unsuccessfully to publish it, and subsequently began to let go of the dream that had consumed me for most of my youth. Countless rejections to brief queries and pieces of my manuscript left me feeling embarrassed and inadequate. When I was able to accept that my book wasn’t going to be the next best seller, I realized I was further from my dreams than I had ever imagined.

At a time in our lives when optimism and high aspirations seem to be at their peak, why is it that so many of us feel pressed for time? I don’t know about everyone else, but ever since I turned eighteen I have felt as though time has begun to pass faster than ever, and being told that I am in the prime of my life stresses me out more than anything. I am compelled to do as much as I can, as fast as I can. I don’t know if this makes me wise or naive… either way, the feeling certainly doesn’t seem to be fading.

At the same time, life has also never felt more ironic. Now, at nineteen, I have officially entered the realm of adulthood that prevents me from using my youthfulness to my advantage. Instead, it seems to be only a sign of my lack of experience. Any chance that I might have had to use my age as an asset is gone, and I have found myself without a platform or an edge. For writers, and especially writers who don’t know what the hell they’re doing, this is the worst possible position to be in. And yet here I am, just as devoted to my current project as I was my last. I have been working on Into the Wind, a memoir about my struggle with depression before and after my bike trip, since I returned home last November.

While my adventures in querying agents this time around have been much more encouraging, I still haven’t gotten close enough to finding representation to converse with any actual people on the phone. The little interest that I have gotten has kept me on the edge of my seat, and I have even prioritized prospective agents over people in my own life at times. The truth is that I have become, as much as I hate to admit it, madly and undeniably desperate for success. And I don’t think I am alone.

While not all young people want the same things that I do, I know that many of my peers feel a similar pressure to not only be successful, but to be young and successful. Most of us want to change the world, too, which I think is a really good thing for society, but sometimes a frustratingly difficult thing for us to achieve. At times my entire career as a writer can seem to hang on small bits of encouragement that I receive, even though those words are dwarfed by the numerous rejections that I find in my inbox every week. Being so restless by nature and eternally undecided I count on the advice from others to give me direction. When that advice is to follow my dreams and never give up, I can make myself feel powerful and unstoppable. However, when that advice is to be sensible and major in something that will undoubtedly make me financially independent, changing courses can seem tempting, too.

Could my real weakness be the fact that I am so impressionable?

In my plight to scavenge for anything in my repertoire that can make me stand out from the crowd, I have taken the words of one of my favorite writers very seriously. Lena Dunham is the perfect example of a writer who knows how to find beauty in her imperfections, and that is truly what makes her writing so appealing. By being slightly unpolished and painstakingly truthful I have told myself that I shouldn’t force beauty out of my writing, but try to let it come out on its own. This has to be my philosophy, because if I believed that all of my writing had to be literary gold as soon as it hit the paper, I would be totally screwed.

Right now I don’t feel like I could let myself give up if I wanted to, but that doesn’t mean I’m not scared of the repercussions. Opening up has been such a freeing thing for me in so many ways, and equally binding. I can only hope that I become a better writer as I grow older, but I know that when that happens I will have to be careful not to pick apart old writing that I have shared. After all, if there’s anything I know for sure it’s that you have to start somewhere, and I have never been one to wait for the perfect timing.

Sharing things like this reduces so many insecurities that I have about the choices I make. I have used writing to dwell on my insufficiencies and ruminate over my regrets, but I have also used it to dilute my sadness and anxiety by opening up the area in which I keep it. Sometimes being publicly honest is the best remedy for pain and dissonance, and I have even felt relief in just reading other people’s version of the truth. I suppose my ultimate dream in publishing a memoir would be to affect people in a similar way; to free them of the pressure to conform parts of themselves that have yet seemed unjustified.

The Heaviness of Being Home-Free

Laura WildLeave a comment

November 4th, 2014; 50 miles from the coast:

I’ve spent almost sixty days looking for this final horizon; this is where I have envisioned my success. I will plow through the unblemished sand and be met by the incoming tide of the Atlantic ocean, where all of the saltiness of my being will be washed away by the saltiness of the water, and I will be a different person. A better person. Brand new.
Suddenly I feel heavy again. Up until now all of the weight that I have been shedding in the past two months has seemed to be lifted from my shoulders, and even as I hunch over the handlebars of my bike I feel taller, and slimmer. But the heaviness has crept up on me again, and every forward motion feels like I am already pedaling through that promised land sand. Because I don’t want to go home again. I haven’t found enlightenment yet.

By the time I got to Mississippi all I could think about was Florida. As I drew evermore eastward, transitioning through Alabama and landing in the gulf coast, I became consumed by the idea of it. If I squinted my eyes I could see the ocean cresting the horizon, and if I breathed deeply enough I could taste the Atlantic air. I thought about it to the point that I didn’t even pay much attention to where I was, until suddenly I was there. The foam of the St. Augustine sea was splashing through the spokes of my tires and the foam of much awaited champaign was splashing against my skin. In a moment, it was all over.

When I left on my trip a year ago today, I set off in the hopes of broadening my horizons. Little did I know that I was actually, literally just making them smaller. With the help of a couple different bikes I crushed the United States down to a size that had somehow been manageable to me, and with a moderate amount of physical strain I pedaled across it. America was tiny; but the kind of tiny that makes you feel tiny, too, not bigger in comparison. As I approached my final destination I finally began to feel like I was prepared for it; not for the end of my journey, but for the beginning of it.

Unfortunately, making it to the finish line only meant that I would soon be returning home to the short winter days of South Dakota, where my stark tan lines would quickly fade and so would the sense of achievement that I had gained. The let down that followed lasted a lot longer than I expected, and as I’ve said before, I didn’t feel particularly enlightened in any sense of the word. I don’t know why I wanted it so badly to begin with; almost more than daily enjoyment, I wanted growth. But when my trip was over, the greatest feeling that I had toward it was that I was glad I had done it, and I wanted to do it again. I didn’t realize exactly why I was feeling that way until recently.

On the first day of my trip I made a journal entry about the Pacific ocean. I made some melodramatic metaphor about how the sea and I were similar, because we felt so strong but we were ultimately contained within ourselves; we were stuck. As I began to move through space I realized that wasn’t necessarily true for me anymore; in reality, I was as free as anybody could possibly be. I was graced with the lightness of the unknown, something that I have since come to value most about my experience. Looking back, I realize that I was closer to enlightenment on day one than on any other day of my trip, because I was brand new. I had nearly nothing to lose and that, matched with the exhilaration of not knowing what the hell I was doing, is the closest I have ever come to complete freedom.

When I finished something that was so pivotal in my transition to adulthood, I found it impossible to move on. The only way it stayed with me was if I continued to drag it around long after it was over. Though the memory of my experience on the Southern Tier is heavy with longing and nostalgia, I would never dream of letting go of it. Instead, I continue to reflect on it, motivated by my eternal desperation to write it all down. The only way I see that changing is if I replace it with a new, bigger adventure. But being a broke college student, that is easier said than done, and I spend more time than I would like to admit just fantasizing about what I might do next.

It is that anticipation that makes everything I do seem less risky, like settling down and going to school, because I know that there must be something in my future that will give me that same feeling of freedom again, and purpose. Even though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was so lucky to have an adventure that was so rich in new experiences, hard lessons, and satisfying rewards. But those aren’t always the best stories to tell, and I feel compelled to find another story to write about, one that has to do with much more than just myself. Next time I set off for the great unknown (which will be as soon as I possibly can) I’m going to focus less on the destination, and more on the journey.

I think this counts as an awakening.

Laura WildLeave a comment

Our 21st night in Texas, that’s what I want to write about. The state was huge, needless to say, and I had been anticipating it since the day I decided to do the Southern Tier. Sometimes the prospect of riding across the whole thing seemed more daunting than the rest of the country. The first half of it was in the desert, until we reached a peak in elevation just before Austin, and then leveled out into what would eventually become the lowlands of Louisiana. Most of it was the same story I have told over and over again… about the familiar toll of my 6 o’clock alarm, the gentle mornings, the harsh afternoons, and the yellow evenings that ended in a display of fiery brilliance that never failed to cast my shadow on the ground before me. I changed a lot of tires, screamed at a lot of large insects, applied a lot of aloe vera lotion to my burnt skin and ate a lot of Mexican food.

Riding my bike was starting to feel really familiar, and even comfortable, despite the fact that I was almost always fatigued. I couldn’t describe those iconic days accurately in a million words, but I’m going to try to express what it felt like when the hot Texas sun went down, and was replaced by stars that shined brighter than anywhere else. They had no city lights to compete with.

On the 21st night, the last night, we tried to wrap our minds around the scope of the state that we had overcome, but it was impossible. Our heads weren’t in Texas anymore; we had given up on our daily plight to be present a long time ago. We’d been day-dreaming for the better part of a month, wishing ourselves away from that place even in the easy spots, even in the cool mornings and mild, shady afternoons of the hill country.

We couldn’t help ourselves; it’s what we had to do to not be driven insane by the constant vibration of our thin tires against the chip-seal pavement. It’s what we had to do to keep from being hypnotized by the eternal buzzing of an earth that was never silent, or lulled to sleep by a night sky bigger than our eyes even allowed us to adequately ponder. The same sky that turned to darkness two hours earlier than we were prepared for. I suppose I was physically still in Texas in mid-October, but in many ways I felt like I had really been home all along. All I had to do was close my eyes, and there I was. And there we all were.

I guess I was always looking upwards then, if not for the unconscious boost of optimism brought on by literally holding my chin up, it was because I just couldn’t look away. I guess that’s what you do on a quest for enlightenment. You tilt your head back, and you breathe a deep breath, and you stop trying to hold on to the moment you’re in and you let yourself get lost in your own fantasies.

Because it was fall, I was usually thinking about my auburn-haired mother. This was our favorite season, and I could picture her in the red and orange canyons of the Black Hills where the leaves were the most brilliant, the same leaves that would be long dead before I returned to them. She’d be taking their pictures while they posed, taking advantage of the soft Autumn weather that we were both so addicted to. I wanted to be there, I wanted to be in that moment almost more than the one I was in. I had the whole world to look at, every last star in the entire galaxy was twinkling above me and I would have traded it all for one breath of those tart fermented leaves.

What’s funny is how I tried to escape it all. As if I wouldn’t dream of it day in and day out; as if I wouldn’t miss the same people that I blamed for stunting my wanderlust. But they still had ahold of me; the whole city still had me in its grasp. I knew that someday I would think of that moment in the first year of my adult life, on my first great adventure, when I had conquered the magnificent state of Texas and yet somehow still felt conquered by the less-magnificent state of South Dakota. Maybe when I looked back on it I would think I was wise for my age, or maybe I would think I was clueless. At this point I’m leaning toward the latter, though it was easy to find any philosophy profound when it was envisioned in the wee hours of the night.

What matters is that I was wide awake when the sun came out again in the morning, and I saw a dawn that burnt away every lesser source of light in the sky and every last drop of dew on the ground. It was easier to concentrate during the day; the light brought an added sense of clarity, and the feeling of desperation I had to make sense of the universe disappeared with the rising sun. The few bouts of understanding that I experienced on my trip were intense, but short lived. They came to me swiftly in a moment of contemplative awareness and faded away as soon as I was able to find my blissful ignorance. The answer to the unknown was actually quite simple for me; though it was beyond breathtaking, I didn’t belong in Texas. The word ‘enlightenment’ was starting to seem less and less significant to me, and I was beginning to get a whole new appreciation for the word ‘home.’ I was starting to like the idea of it more, too.

Why I biked the Southern Tier and why I’m writing about it.

Laura WildLeave a comment

I dipped my tires in the Pacific ocean on September 2nd, a Tuesday, and headed for the Atlantic. I was on a really cheap bike that I had purchased only months before on a whim, after I skipped my high school graduation to climb Devil’s Tower and was inspired by my climbing guide to bike the Southern Tier. I was not a cyclist, was out of shape, had little money, and had no idea what I was doing. But I was with three acquaintances from Colorado that seemed to know a thing or two about self-supported touring, so I got in line behind them and headed east.

What began as a way to fulfill a case of severe wanderlust quickly turned into a way for me to write another story. I wanted to suffer, I wanted to do crazy things, and I wanted to write about it. But a few days into my bike trip I found that I only had the energy to do three things: eat, sleep, and ride my bike. I didn’t actually get around to writing about it until I got home again in early November.

I wanted to blog about it then, but for whatever reason I am choosing now, several months after the fact, to tell my story. While a bunch of really shitty things happened to me during those two months that I was gone, and I definitely think some of them are worth sharing, the most interesting part of my story happened before and after I left. I tend to be totally devoted to everything I do, at least until I lose interest in it, and I think that’s pretty much what writing has been for me throughout my adolescence, as well as rock climbing, bike riding, and going to school.

I took a gap year this past year, which turned out to be a really good call. I was all signed up for classes and housing at Black Hills State University last fall, but I pulled out at the end of summer when I finally convinced my parents that I was serious about biking the Southern Tier.

I wanted to do it all by myself at first; I was freshly off of my most recent rereading of Walden and I was fit to embark on my own quest for enlightenment. This was partly because I had a completely naive do-it-yourself philosophy that I was devoted to, but also because I wanted to be really, really lonely so I could write about it. I just loved drama so much, I couldn’t get enough of it, or at least I didn’t think I could at the time. Unfortunately though, my female anatomy prevented me from being able to go it alone, simply because it would be unsafe.

Even though there was a period of time that I thought a good can of pepper spray would be a good enough companion for me, the reality of my situation was that I didn’t live in a world where I could do everything a guy could do, at least not in the same way. My parents drew the line at me taking off through the desert all by myself, and I don’t blame them. I mean, even with the help of the more experienced cyclists that I ended up riding with, I still got into some pretty precarious situations (more than a couple of times).

It was a good thing that I saw any type of adversity as a way to spice up my story-telling game. I was all for getting knocked down a time or two, and doing things the hard way, and even having a couple of ultra intense break downs in 110 degree heat. Those were the perfect conditions for a melodramatic coming-of-age memoir to be born, and the best part was I wouldn’t even have to stretch the truth. That’s what my current nonfiction project Into the Wind is about; in one sense, it’s about an 18 year old girl who rides her bike across the country. In another sense, however, it’s about a quest for enlightenment that went horribly wrong.

I didn’t find the meaning of life out there in the eerie emptiness of the deep South; I didn’t find it under the all consuming night skies of the Texas hill country and I didn’t find it in the rich, culture-saturated lowlands of Louisiana. In fact I still haven’t found it, but I feel closer than ever. When life altering things happen to you, like losing a loved one, everything can start to look a little bit more clear. When you realize what really matters to you more than anything, everything else starts to seem small and unimportant. Especially cross country bike trips.

The death of my dog has brought a lot of this on, but I don’t mean to go off on some rant about the important things in life. I don’t want to say that I have gotten wiser since I have had my best friend taken away from me; she was so much more than a way to grow and learn something about life. She was, and is, an ongoing relationship that is just as profound as all of the other ones I share. It’s just that I didn’t feel like I had changed very much after I went on my soul searching bike trip, but now all of a sudden I feel like a different person in just the past couple of weeks.

I guess I really just want to write about things that people can relate to, whether that is loss, depression, wanderlust, societal prejudice and discrimination, or anything else that accompanies the onset of adulthood, being female, or choosing to live one’s life unconventionally. I keep telling myself that nonconformity is becoming the new normal, and if that’s true then I know my story is relatable to a lot of people. I guess I would also like to think that my life is interesting enough to enjoy reading about, especially if I pull off the dark, dramatic style that is my favorite form of expression. I kicked it Thoreau style for a couple of months and now I’m ready to kick it Poe style, which is so much more fun. I’m going to be starting at the beginning, long before my bike trip, with the events that lead up to me feeling like I needed to run away in order to get my shit together.