What Did You Do With That Video Production Degree?

In Self-Help, a collection of stories by Lorrie Moore, page 117 to be exact, lies a short story titled How to Become a Writer. It begins with my favorite published sentence to date:

"First, try to be something, anything, else."

I first read it while attending a community college for a video production degree. I was questioning my choices as a future producer and wanted to dip my toes into a much more profitable English Degree. The class was ENGL-1040 and covered short stories and the authors that created them.

Within the first paragraph, the narrator lays out that "it is best if you fail at an early age." I was 22 at the time and a year away from reaching late-stage Gifted Child Burnout. To hear that writers need to be okay with failure was a foreign and loathsome thought. I hated how it seemed that it was out of a writer's hands to protect themselves from failure.

I passed the english class with a 99%—which really pissed me off—and went forward with my courses for video production because I abide by the sunk-cost bias. I worked multiple jobs (sometimes three at a time) to pay for my classes. I wasn't picky: chocolatier, home heath insurance recruiter, keyholder at a clothing boutique, nanny, lighting and rig technician, keyholder at another clothing store, and a church secretary. I secretly liked any of these jobs more than I liked producing videos for other people.

I never stopped writing in my journals.

I graduated a year and a half later. By then, I had started my own freelance graphic design company to pay for college classes. This was what I wanted to do. I was blessed that it only took two months for me to find a job as a graphic designer. The Gifted Child Syndrome was buzzing with a perfect gig and the bubbles of impending collapse.

I continued to write in my journals, but this time it wasn't about me, it was about these (fictional) characters that were yelling stories at me.

The 1999 single What's My Age Again? by blink-182 thrice states, "Nobody likes you when you're twenty-three." Frankly, I didn't like me, either. The Gifted Child bubble had popped. I was going through some traumatic shit that took a therapist to unpack. If you knew me back then, no you didn't, but I'm still super, super sorry about it.

I was doing one of those miserable deep cleans of my room because I needed to make more room for a shelf to put all my filled journals. I laughed when I opened a closet box to see several college books inside, specifically Self-Help.

I read How to Become a Writer again. It wasn't lovely to see my life paralleling with the narrator—"Decide to experiment with fiction...Take all the babysitting jobs you can get...spend too much time slouched and demoralized...Perhaps you are losing your pals, your acquaintances..."—but it was comforting. I continued to work as a graphic designer at a print house for three years.

I continued to write in my journals. The characters now had storylines and intertwining plots. I think I was telling people that I was moonlighting as a writer at this time. I wasn't ready to claim it but I was ready to hold onto the idea.

When the pandemic happened, I had too much time on my hands so I read what books I had at home. Like a purple and white beacon, Self-Help brought my mind to safe harbor. How to Become a Writer had the magic phrase needed to propel me out of a pity party and into finalizing a manuscript that was reaching it's seventh anniversary from conception:

"You are said to be self-mutilating and losing weight, but you continue writing. The only happiness you have is writing something new, in the middle of the night, armpits damp, heart pounding, something no one has yet seen. You have only those brief, fragile, untested moments of exhilaration when you know: you are a genius. Understand what you must do."

I finished my first manuscript by the time the quarantine was over. The world had changed. I had changed. But I hid the manuscript and took a job as a landscaper.

I was laid off in September because of Covid restrictions. The job market was tough then. Gifted Child me would have been an anxious wreck. I had reached the point in therapy where I could give myself grace. The universe gave me some grace when I read How to Become a Writer again. "You must write from what you know, from what has happened to you."

I began writing my second manuscript in that time. I also began writing my third because I still had a little Gifted Child in me that needed sating.

I got a job as a jeweler because I'm not picky. Loved the technical work, hated the work culture. I quit and started a dogsitting business. Loved that more than anything I had done before. I'm not shy to say that it's because I had more contact with dogs than humans. I finished my second and third manuscript. I dared to call it a series and talk to my friends about it.

Just as it's written in How to Become a Writer: "Sooner or later you have a finished manuscript more or less. People look at it in a vaguely troubled sort of way and say, 'I'll bet becoming a writer was always a fantasy of yours, wasn't it?'...Say that of all the fantasies possible in the world, you can't imagine being a writer even making the top twenty."

But I kept writing in my journals and brainstorming a fourth story.

I started putting "Writer/Dogsitter" in my bio on dating apps. It was a new me that I wanted to show of to the world, so I might as well be authentic about what I was doing. The emotionally unavailable men I continued to date, "with a face blank as a sheet of paper asks you whether writers often become discouraged. Say that sometimes they do and sometimes they do...'Interesting,' smiles your date, and then he looks down at his arm hairs and starts to smooth them, all, always, in the same direction."

Spoiler alert: that's how it ends. With the Narrator's dates acting the same way that my dates do.

I'm not shy to say that I cried upon realizing I've finally reached a milestone. The story doesn't end with the narrator becoming a successful writer and this story is the opposite of an instruction manual. The story ends with the narrator in a state of understanding of "this is how it is" as a writer.

Now, after what's been eight—soon to be nine years later and with five manuscripts—I dare call them a series—under my belt, I read How to Become a Writer before writing this post, and I see myself through the entirety of the story. I feel I'm finally understanding that I became a writer when I took on all aspects—discouragement, exhilaration, misunderstandings, loss, obsession, etc., etc., etc. I was finally okay with failure as it had become a familiar and assuring thought.

And so; while I've done my best to be anything but a writer, it's only ever confirmed that a writer is exactly who I should be.

Cheers,

Katherine Arkady

P.S. If Lorrie Moore is reading this right now: you're the reason my video production degree is somewhere in my mother's attic. ❤️