Surfing the wave of the Tumblr #Lit tag today and I found this article that was meant for 'teenage writers'. Something I instinctively clicked on, even though my brain jumped slowly through the hoop and said, "Oh, yeah. You're not a teenager anymore."
So much of my writing identity was formulated when I was young--in fact, I started writing so early that people were amazed by the ability itself, not even the actual content, which obviously didn't make much sense. Even when I got older, in 6th and 7th grade, people would still laud me for writing at all, something that always confused me. I knew in 6th grade that I wasn't very good, but compared to my peers, I was a superstar. And because I always felt ahead of the curve, age-wise, I told myself I'd get published before I went to college. That didn't happen. Not even in my first year of college. Still hasn't happened.
I'm still young. I'm just not a teenager anymore. I turned 20 two weeks ago and it was fun and I don't feel any different, but suddenly this label doesn't apply to me at all. I'm a writer but I'm not a teenager.
It struck me more than I thought it would, reading this article. What is so attractive about being a young writer? That you were genius-like, in having discovered it before some guy in his twenties even got his heart broken and picked up a pen, in having written stories that were not only coherent but sometimes poignant but usually full of cliches and not worth the hype anyway? I think it's the sheer force of it, of being an adolescent. You want anything, anything, to make you exceptional. So you'll accelerate this process and being young, you are so much less scared of rejection than some adults and you'll have balls for some it'll work.
I don't know. Maybe I've just always imagined myself as a teenager being interviewed and now, I'm not that anymore.
But goddamnit,when I do get published, it'll blow everyone away.
An explosion of words.
/this was a rant.
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