I Ignored the Only Writing Advice I Ever Needed

When I was in college, I had a professor who was a bit of a guru. (I am calling him the Guru because I wrote about him once before on my blog and that’s what I dubbed him).

I took two classes with him; my freshman year introduction to American literature, and my senior year his advanced creative writing fiction class.

In the intro to American lit class, I felt in my element. We were reading books that I was really interested in. Early on, we had a short assignment to write a Kerouac pastiche. When he picked mine out of the pile to read aloud, the teacher’s pet in me was a little smug.

College was an adjustment for me. I was always a relatively lazy student, which I quickly found wasn’t going to cut it.

But I did well in the Guru’s class, possibly because I loved the class and never phoned it in. He had a great ability to spin yarns that were inspiring and funny, but relatable too. He loved books and writing, and it showed. But I knew other students found him harder to please.

I didn’t have many opportunities to take his classes after that, he only taught a couple and I had a lot of requirements to catch up on. I took a year off of college after my sophomore year and had some making up to do to get enough credits for a major.

In my senior year, I had the opportunity to take another class with the Guru. I was nervous I wouldn’t get into his class because I had only taken one other creative writing class, and this one was labeled “advanced”.

I had to show him my work, which I didn’t realize until the first day of class. He one hundred percent did not remember me from his class four years previously.

I had to run to my previous writing professor’s office to get my work. He was the one who encouraged me to go for the Guru’s writing class, he knew of my fondness for this teacher.

I have never felt so nervous as I handed the folder of my puny short stories and pitiful poems to the Guru. He glanced over them briefly, handed them back to me with a smile, and said I could be in the class.

I was under no delusions that he actually read any of my drivel other than to see if I could put two words together. I felt relieved but also a creeping feeling of insecurity about my justification for being in a “real” writing class.

It was a popular class, there were one or two mature students and a few “serious writer” types. You could tell who the serious writers were because they were bringing in chapters, series/things they had clearly been working on for a while.

Whereas me, I was just a phony with half a folder. Everything I wrote was brand new. A lot of it was clumsy, trite and mostly desperation fuelled just to get something down. Most of my “fiction” was just thinly veiled memoir.

The truth is I am not a fiction writer, at all. I think I naively thought I would just magically start writing fiction under duress.

I had written a couple of short stories in my previous class, but they felt amateurish compared to what many people were producing (I was only an undergrad for Pete’s sake, I don’t know why I held myself to some ludicrous/ made up in my head standard!).

And so my “imposter syndrome” began to kick in, big time, throughout this class. Except this was the 90s and we didn’t have words for that. I felt like I was in over my head.

But for whatever reason, the Guru liked my stuff. More often than not if I wrote something that week he would have me read it aloud. Not everyone got to read, and this made me increasingly self-conscious about the quality of my writing.

I was convinced everyone thought I was terrible (and maybe they did! Who cares now!). There were far better descriptive prose writers in the class. There was one guy who was particularly good.

His writing blew me away - it was so intricate, his worlds so complete. He was tall and blonde and good-looking, but oblivious to appearances going by the way he dressed: like a rural (not hipster) lumberjack. He wrote microscopically observed stories about a couple in a farmhouse in Maine, and I have always half expected to see him pop up on a bestseller list someday.

The only reason I could think why the Guru was picking my stuff to read over much better writers some weeks was that my stories usually had a beginning, middle, and end. A lot of the writers who would read chunks of bigger works would get passed over after a while if they didn’t have something new to read.

He also wrote very lengthy, encouraging notes on almost everything I wrote. I cannot imagine how long it took him to do this for everyone, as he seemingly did for the most part.

The only time he was dismissive of me was when I turned in something that was trying to be like the other, more descriptive writers. It was pure flowery filler and I knew it. He basically called bullshit in his polite zen master way, and I felt like an idiot.

Obviously, at the time I internalized it as “I am a crappy writer how dare I try to be artsy”, but in retrospect, I think he was saying, stay true to what you do best/your own voice.

Eventually, the sun set on our class, and we had our final meeting. He was a man of many words, usually, but he never trotted out cliches or feigned wisdom.

He lacked the self-importance or structure of many teachers; he could spin a meanderingly looping story with ease. This often led to moments of something that felt not far off from epiphany.

I was looking forward to any wisdom he might have for me as we parted ways. When I asked him if he had any advice for me/the future, he smiled his beatific smile and said: “Just Keep Writing”.

I was pretty underwhelmed by this, I won’t lie. I even asked him if there was anything else or something to that effect and he repeated a variation: “Don’t Stop Writing.” I must have been looking at him densely because I’m pretty sure he also said “That’s it.”

This man who had often written eloquent, pages long replies to the word dribble I had written, this was his only advice.

Part of me thought he was full of it, I really did. I did NOT get it. I felt gipped, like my Guru was nothing but a carnival barker feeding me this pat b.s.

But obviously, he was right. It really is the main thing. You are either smart enough to get it, or you are not. I was not, and for many years I ignored his advice. That’s how dumb I was.

I stopped writing anything much for a long time. I moved to a new country within three years of graduating, got married, went through cancer, lived an otherwise good life, and wrote almost nothing for a decade. I forgot I was a writer, completely.

Maybe I never quite believed in myself. It’s not like I never had encouragement, but I had a few hurdles to get past I guess. I only remembered my teacher’s advice again a few years ago, and when it hit me I felt incredibly stupid. It was there all along, the answer to that lost feeling inside me.

Obviously, it’s a bit more complex than “just write”, anyone who reads the endless writing advice online can tell you that (me, I'm anyone!).

For me, the more I write the better I think I become, that is the hope anyway. But having lost years of my life where I could have been writing, I have often felt like I am playing catch up.

I have so many bad habits and unrefined qualities and lazy technique and I can’t help but wonder if I hadn’t stopped writing if I would have found a way to do something more with it.

I think it would have been easier to develop “my voice” as a writer if I had stuck with it twenty years ago; as a person in my forties now I admit I have the existential middle-aged dread of failed potential creep into my thoughts on a semi-regular basis.

And yet I did eventually find a way back to it. My blog was the first baby step, but I never felt comfortable really going for it and trying new things the way I am starting to feel inspired to do publishing on larger platforms.

Just keep writing. Don’t stop writing.

That is really all that matters in the end for anyone who wants to be a writer. Without it, you lose that part of yourself pretty fast. That’s it. It’s crazy simple but easy to forget if you are not careful. So don’t forget.

I don’t intend to stop writing ever again. I am happier and more connected to a feeling of peace/knowing what is really going on in my head when I am writing regularly if nothing else. I hope I never forget that again.

*I originally published this piece on Medium