"Being published sounds way cooler than it actually is,” said Niti Mathejia, author of Eunoia, between bites of her pancakes.
It’s Sunday midday and we are both wildly overdressed for the far-flung IHOP we chose for brunch. I got to know Niti through Spark Magazine, a fashion publication on UT's campus, and if you just passed by her on campus, you wouldn’t guess that she published a book of poems three years ago, available for two-day shipping with Amazon Prime.
While I understand where she's coming from (being a writer is not the most glamorous capacity) and I admire her modesty, it's easy to say when your book is penned and published.
For the last seven months, I’ve been working on a book about love and dating. Of course when I say working, what I really mean is splitting my time between finding content, taking endless notes, and then eventually typing up the manuscript. You might think the writing part is where I spend the majority of my time, but in reality, I spend the bulk of it going, "That would be a great idea for a chapter!" to everyone from the guy taking my order to my roommate.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, how did I get to even deciding to actually put hands to keyboard in the first place? Well, I somehow got talked into starting a book after a particularly impassioned guest speaker came into one of my classes in the spring semester.
“I want to meet the Dali Llama! C’mon now, you can think of a way to do it! It’s on my bucket list!” she pleaded with the class.
One kid finally raised his hand and gave her a way to reach someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows the Dalai Lama. The point was clear: If you really push and try for something, you can find a way to make it happen.
Okay, so maybe it was a little blown-out of proportion, but I was inspired. Who knows where I’ll be in the future? I could be too busy to write or even not around at all. Morbid, I know, but true. If I don’t start now, I may never. Sarah Dessen was first published in her 20s! Why couldn’t I?
Sure I didn’t have the fancy accolades or the household name or even the financing, but what I did have was passion, a laptop… and coffee, lots of coffee. It’s not like I hadn’t considered trying to become an author before, but rather that I figured that I would have a nice tenure and/or a well-padded savings account before I actually got to writing. We were here now though, and by golly, I was going to write - and write I did.
A writer's aesthetic. Not pictured: the looks I get from taking intense notes on a men's self-help book entitled How to Please Your Woman. Photo Credit: Amanda MacFarlane
A few times a week in my relatively laid-back summer of house sitting, I would drive to my favorite coffee shop in Denton and spend hours writing. I would write 10 pages a day, taking a deep dive into the memories of boyfriends past. I interviewed dozens of people on dating apps and dated quite a bit myself. This was the height of my writing “career” (if you can call it that since no one was paying me) and the part outsiders who know writers usually see.
Now a lot of books have also been written about the tragic writer who is an emotional slave to the typewriter or word processor. If you’ve seen Moulin Rouge, you know exactly what I’m talking about. What viewers who have never even journaled need to remember though is that good writers have a flair for drama in the written word.
The reality, as always, falls somewhere in between these extremes.
Since I’m in college and I don’t have time to angst-ily stare at a blank word document for hours, a day of writer’s block looks by all means like a normal day. It’s me running errands and going to dinner with friends and yes, even spending a day with my boyfriend. I laugh and I joke, but maybe I linger at the counter of the café just a little too long to avoid literally pulling up a blank on my screen.
It’s not exactly stress-inducing, but it’s just a short pause for something. Disappointment? Fear? Doubt? Somewhere between these feelings are where I begin to question my decision to start writing at all. I’m lucky. Some people give up high-paying jobs to do what I’m doing. But it doesn’t make the feeling any less real.
