300th Post! I Won’t Let Fame Get to Me
Last night, for the first time, I dreamed that I was famous. True to myself, not fabulously famous, but I had a short story posted in the New Yorker that, for some reason, everyone knew about. As if one small publication could make you a household name.
“You don’t know me!” I kept insisting, until they
reminded me of my success.
In the dream, I was in the middle of legal battles
with someone who had wronged me on a personal level. Possibly sexual assault,
but I’m not quite sure. I kept having people say, “I didn’t know you were that type
of person. I didn’t think it could happen to you.”
“I didn’t think it could happen to me either,” I’d
say.
I recently read about Lena Dunham’s comment, and
apology, about how she wished she had had an abortion. She was trying to be
funny, and it fell flat, according to her. I don’t know much about Dunham; my
only experience with the show was an attempt to watch it on a flight home from
Australia, and having a girl throw herself one-sidedly at an apathetic guy hit
a little too close to home and I promptly turned it off.
She does have the tendency to stick her foot in
her mouth. Every time I hear something about her, it’s because she’s said
something to tick people off, and not intentionally. Of course, I would be
lying if I didn’t believe some of her anger-inducing comments were due to the
unlikable persona she has to the public—the subject matter she discusses, her
openness of low self-esteem.
Yesterday, I was introduced to a great deal of
people who, despite never meeting me, knew me. They were friends of a friend
and would see every time our mutual acquaintance on Facebook would like a
status of mine. People who I never would have presumed to read my blogs know my
life’s story due to my prolific attempts at disclosing my life
online—apparently successful in its endeavors to gain people’s attention.
I’m not sure I ever discussed why I started
blogging; I probably assumed it was obvious.
Back in 2011, I decided to take major steps
towards my career. It was my junior year in college, and I lamented how little
I had done to get published. By that point, I sent out five query letters for
my fourth manuscript, receiving only one rejection in response. I had planned
on doing more, of course, but the novel itself wasn’t exactly ship-shape, and I
still enjoyed writing a great deal more than editing.
That year I actively “buffed up” my resume. I
started submitting to literary journals, got active on social media—something I
had zero interest in prior—launched a website and began my blog. Technically, I
had started it earlier on a separate site, but then moved them all over to
“What’s Worse than Was,” a title I was, and am still, irrationally proud of
even though few people get it. Pretty much my writing career in a nutshell.
I blogged because I hoped to entice readers. I
always loved stalking authors’ webpages and knew that I preferred those who had
new information often. I had believed that having a successful online presence
would set up a platform that not only would appeal to agents, but be able to
appeal to readers who were already familiar with me.
I am always tepid about what my blog says about
me. I attempt to balance bonding with my readers through like-minded experience but not the god that hemorrhages blood and ceases people’s faith in me. We like
our idols to have their shit together.
Also, I can be callous and petty, an egomaniac like the best of them. And not always in
a funny way. I hold grudges and can be bitter, but not only that, my analytical
side can come off as pessimistically critical; even on occasions that I was not
emotionally affected by a problem, my obsession with solving it can come off as
deeply wounded.
I forget I exist when other people aren’t around.
Yes, you heard that right. I stop
existing. Last summer when I’d drive my coworkers home, we’d chat for a while,
yet I’d be shocked when their friends would ask about my writing career or
other elements of my life. Why are you talking about me? Why are you, two
acquaintances, talking about my writing? That sounds like the worst kind of
small talk.
They liked me, I knew, and it was nothing
negative. Still, it always shocks me when anyone thinks about me unless I’m
directly in front of them. I suppose that says something.
In college, my professors acted like catty school
girls. They didn’t like my projects and would sabotage me (as well as other
students) in revenge. Remember what I said about petty? Sure there's more to it than that; they're far more complex individuals than just my perceived malice, but summed up, they would make a point to get back at me for unspoken disobedience. Praising me to the potential freshman, parading me around
like I was an example of how creative freedom was a staple in our department (I
had to fight for it), they’d turn around and whisper intellectual criticisms to
my fellow students, “Her play was just
bad,” which of course always got back to me. They told my peers not to work
with me in secret and for my senior project I had to fight for a space to do
a staged reading of the play I wrote that I had no interest in doing in the
first place. The whole story is worse, and I’ll tell you one of these days,
once I’ve gotten over my triggers, so I’m asking for a little faith when I say
that having people talking about what I’m doing has rarely been to my
advantage. (I’d also like to note I was not the only one they tried to
disrupt.)
I still see myself as living in obscurity. Every
once in a while, someone posts my blog to a forum and I get inundated with hits
and conversation (always smart, positive debates). I’ll receive some negative
mail here or there, but again, it’s pretty respectful, even if the implication
is I’m dead wrong. People who aren’t in my life tend to know what I’m doing,
which is exactly the point, and yet, starting to see the result scares me. Some
will start to talk to me about a project and I won’t know which one they’re
referring to. I’ll change my mind later in life and contradict myself from
something I wrote in 2012, something that the person I’m talking to read just
last week.
It’s odd, to say the least, to actually start to
have an impact on life outside your own, even if you’re just the tiniest
butterfly who, on one side of the Earth, has someone talking about how she flapped
her wings on the other.
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