become an legitimate essayist

I think if I am forced to also write about the process of being an essayist it’ll somehow motivate me to stick to it. Also I have no idea what to do first. Do I just start a blog or something? Can I make any money at this? Where do I submit my work to? Some direction would be great.

I’m unemployed and hoping to get accepted into graduate school in January. Suffice to say I have some extra time on my hands while I wait. I have ample opportunity to write so I really have no excuse if I don’t.

Part of me feels as if my creative self has already taken up residence in Boston and is simply waiting for me to find her there so that we can catch up, reunite.

This isn’t a horrible image, essentially, but I’d really love to have something written, a portfolio when I arrive and start trying to find legitimate work.

A lot is keeping me from sitting down and letting the words find their spot on paper—stress, frustration, sleepiness, lack of spontanaeity and adventure, too many banal obligations, etc…but I’m 24. That seems both incredibly young and incredibly prime and while I don’t expect to be the Next Big Thing, I love to write, I love to read, and I want so, so terribly to be an integral part of the industry that tends to fund both.

So my next step is…?

I’m not sure if it’s that I forget I want this, if I’m not in a place where I can cohesively write biting, engaging, hilarious commentary, or if it’s that I’m inexplicably lacking in literary confidence lately.

It’s something, though, and it’s annoying.

Sometimes I forget I want this. When did I get so cloudy-brained?

On NPR.org, I listen to Jonathan Franzen read these brilliant passages in his adorable voice and I know-so viscerally-that the way he writes his world is the way I’d love to write mine. Genuine, introspective, honest, entertaining. Must one become a prize-winning, vaguely scandalous novelist before being permitted to publish a brilliant nonfiction piece?

I need to somehow hone this craft and honey, blogging ain’t doing it just now. Once I get to Boston, I really do imagine I’ll have a much more alluring literary appeal, but at the moment, I’m just going to work and coming home.

I still want to get there, yos, I do, but how does a person bust into the other side of a business when at the moment, she still feels intensely young?

There’s so much I’m waiting for.

I didn’t know that writing essays was a passion of mine until I actually had a name for it, but as the obvious dawned on me as it often does, I’ve been inspired. I’ve been writing essays in the form of blog entries for years now and after reading Jonathan Franzen’s How to Be Alone and finding much of myself within its pages, I’ve been inspired to publish my words as well. Fiction is no longer the ultimate in publishing, yos, and while I never fully share their notion, I now hope to someday be paid what friends and family members have always said were brilliant strings of words.