Blue Collar Writer

A lifetime in higher education has taught me that connections, not authenticity, make a writer.  At least in society’s eyes.  If you can afford the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, doors will be thrown open for you.  Don’t you dare being born a nobody, though.

I’ve been writing since I was a teenager, unconnected, in a small town.  My teachers praised my work but really had no experience with publishing.  Stories moldered away in a dilapidated cardboard box stuck in a ratty, unused upstairs room until the bulldozers threatened and I had to haul them away.

I grew up without much.  I had an armload of books for friends and I wrote tales that no one ever read.  This kind of thing doesn’t get you a job.  In a small town with no bookstore—or even a library—I never heard of literary journals; I didn’t even hear of journals period until I got to college.  First generation.  Thoroughly confused.  Nobody has to teach you how not to know anything.

All this reminds me of high school awards ceremonies.  The over-performing kids with well-connected parents shine.  Those who truly deserve recognition, who pull themselves up by their own metaphorical boot-straps, but who don’t preen and strut in front of others, or fondle balls adeptly, sit quietly in back.

The A-list hires the ghostwriters to make their autobiographies interesting.  Writing is a lonely profession, and one with precious little recognition.  As the writer moves from job to time-consuming job, only wanting time to polish their art, those who are connected end up on the New York Times bestseller list.  Everybody cheer.  Cheer for the privileged.

In higher education there is a movement now to hire “authentic” underprivileged academics.  Those of us who fit that bill can’t even publish in working class literary journals because we’re too tainted with success.  The way it feels to me is that I have hundreds of stories to tell, but nobody’s listening.

Call it sour grapes.  Call it sweet lemons, for all I care.  Those who have no choice but to write will also have no choice but to be overlooked.