breakthemystique - Tumblr blog

[breakthemystique]

I have ink in my heart.

I don't know from where it came. Maybe it has been there since birth.

I have a notion that I received it from those who came before me. Those who gave me my wide flat nose and my melanated skin, who gave me the lingering bruises from their trauma and the resilience in my limbs. Those who could not give me their language, whose lives and names I, unfortunately, do not know.

But their truths have been passed down through the ink that fills my veins, through the stories that die on my tongue yet somehow spill out when I put pen to paper.

I have ink on my skin.

It has lost its vibrance. It has faded with stress, with age, in the California sun. Yet, the ink is still there. Reminders of my love. Of my religion. Of my health. Of my joys and ambitions. Of who I am and who I want to be.

Through the faded black ink that marks my skin, my body has become a platform to house my truths. And, during a time when I thought my pen had stilled, when I believed that my stories had dried up and my voice had been silenced, when I thought that the version of me who had ink running through her veins had been abandoned for the sake of corporate ambition, I, unknowingly, had tattooed my deepest secret...

The ink in my heart bloomed onto my skin in the form of a pen, a quill, and a pencil that sprawl across my right arm — my dominant arm, my creator's arm.

The image reminds me that, even when I thought I had nothing more to share, when I believed I had no stories left in me to tell, I am, at my core, a writer.

And, by God, I still have so much — so much — that I can say.

I have ink on my fingertips.

It smudges from the pages I hurriedly scribble under the covers, at my kitchen table, on the side of the road, at my desk...

I feel compelled to catch up, to make up for lost time (because, God, I feel like I have lost so much time...).

Will I be able to share what I want to share? Will my stories reach those for whom I write?

Will she, my younger self, ever forgive me? For losing so much time, for stilling our pen, silencing our voice?

I cannot answer, so I write. I write and write and write, and the ink coats the grooves of my fingerprints.

I have ink in my heart.

It flows through my veins and spills out when I put pen to paper.

[breakthemystique]

I’d be fine if no one but my loved ones read anything I wrote because my mom wouldn’t be able to appreciate it anyway. Not unless I sat by her bed, elbows propping me up, reciting my work like a bed time story. She likes my voice and she likes the way I dance, so I don’t even really have to write. Though a few times a year when I can proofread an email or a resignation letter that she’ll never send, she realizes the utility of my proficiency in this silly language, and so do I. I like being useful. I like that understanding structure and the conventions of English can get things done. Others’ use of it have sparked movements. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s all play, or can be. But for a long time I stopped treating it that way. Writing in the English language is hard work! And it’s SERIOUS! And grammar! And punctuation! And can you organize a good essay?! What about a whole book! Take that! Pow!

Maybe that’s why I like the poets so much, even if poetry is that last form I’ve discovered. I like their vibe, their ethos, their air. They got something right about innovation at the level of the sentence. Ocean Vuong said something to that effect and he said so in a church, with wonder, and that’s what I want. To wonder, and wander, as if I were a child in an open field. A player on the court outside of practice and outside of games. A driver in my beat-up Corolla going anywhere at the end of the day long after anyone has stopped needing anything from me.

So I’m curious: Can I say anything that reminds you of wonder? And imagination? That would be pretty cool. And that would make me believe in life. That’s the cause I’m fighting for here. Cause with a small “c,” the teeniest one you ever did see, so microscopic it may not even matter. I’m not dying for it because I have other things that make me believe in my life as one worth living. And I think that’s a good thing. Writing as tool not as toolbox. As a flavor, not the whole chocolate box.

Now that I think of it, it helps that my parents’ first language, not even their second, is the one that I speak and read and write in. There’s an arbitrariness, a luck-ness to it. My native language could have been anything so my continued use of my native language can be anything. And the attitude of “let’s see where this goes” makes more sense than any of my ambitions. There’s a chance that something could happen, but what?

And, really, what are any of us ever doing but testing our luck every day? Oh, you lived another day? Here’s a job, maybe make some money, or have coffee with a friend. And maybe on your way out of the cafe you bend to pick up a penny, the same one your now-husband was also eyeing on the sidewalk. I don’t know. The best writing is something like that: conveying possibility, reminding us of what some might call a miracle.

[breakthemystique]

I have a collection of first lines. Statements that open doors to rooms that fade away.

Are they first lines when nothing follows?

There are lines that I hear in my head, in the shower, on a walk, in the middle of another conversation, that are never captured by pen and paper. And I quickly regret forgetting them, until I forget they existed at all.

Many call me writer. It is a technicality. I practice weaving words and language for clients and audiences, but beneath them I hide and I reveal very little of myself.

There are many things I believe that prevent me from abandoning myself to writing:

(Oh, the things I tell myself.)

My stories are never mine alone. The truth and the details that come with them will involve many people. Truth doesn't care about anyone looking good, and many people will be offended if I make them look ugly.

To write well, after all, means getting into the little details.

So I write about other people. Easier this way. For them I have first lines, last lines, and many kinds of lines in between. I assume their voices and sit in their lives and spill the truth they permit me to tell. I craft their stories with care, lovingly even, because I know how hard it is to put yourself out there.

Here's what I can tell you.

I'll never be ready to put myself out there. I don't know what it is to lie bare and bleeding, revealing guts and gray matter. Or of sharing self unapologetically — this is me, you don't have to love me but at least get to know me. To write myself on the page for nothing, no one else but me.

Is that how it works?

I do know that it is increasingly painful to keep it all in.

What now?

What now?

What now?

(I'm running out of things to tell myself.)

[breakthemystique]

[breakthemystique]

Things happen when you’re in the company of fellow writers. When community starts to happen.

For a long time, I thought that writing needed to be done in complete isolation. You lock yourself in your tower and don’t emerge until you have a masterpiece. Workshops and generous mentors were helpful, but they also filled me with dread because it felt like the stakes were always being raised, the goalposts moving even further. You see what others are writing and creating, and you wonder why you’re not. Or you deeply question your own work.

It took decades before I stopped buying into the mystique of publishing. Witnessing how many breakthrough authors made it by chance referrals or going to the right school and workshops, having the right connected mentors.

Are they talented writers? Yes. Do they deserve it? Of course.

But it wasn’t primarily worthiness or talent that gave them that chance. They have already been ushered into a room that remains closed to most aspiring authors.

So what then?

Yes, I still want the validation of a book deal with an influential publisher.

At the same time, I have to get the looming shadow of that desire out of the way for now and get comfortable with taking up my own space.

That means no longer doing things alone. That means writing in community with writers who want to get their butts-in-chair along with me.

Who will drag me to do it on days when it gets tough.

Who will make space for frustrations and celebrations in equal measure.

Who are as fed up as I am with being held back by arbitrary standards.

So what if I haven’t been anointed by a prestigious degree or mentor? I’ll send a proposal for my memoir, anyway.

So what if I l've never participated in workshops in the US or Europe? I’ll self-publish my collection of juvenilia poetry for the NYC Poetry Festival, anyway.

So what if we’re not an established literary journal? I’ll take part in a guerilla anthology with this cooperative of writers, anyway.

Good writing doesn’t happen away from the world. It happens when we step down from the tower and leave our caves. When we bear witness to the world and each other, one word after another, the best way we know how.

[breakthemystique]

The unofficial Tumblr of writers who want to break through the mystique of getting published so they can effin' focus on actual writing.