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My Writing is Still Remarkably Real.

And so is yours, even though we didn’t Win the Remarkably Real Challenge.

By Judy Walker Published 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 5 min read
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My Writing is Still Remarkably Real.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

It’s the day after the winners were announced. There was a delay. I was secretly thankful because I could still dream of winning. Or placing second, or even third. One of my submissions made Top Story. Surely, there was a chance. Then, the winners were announced and…wait for it…my name was not among them.

Regardless, I have earned the Remarkably Real Writer award, as have you! As have all the writers who ever left a warm bed to write before the responsibilities of parenthood swallowed their day; those who write on their coffee breaks, or on the train, or in a cold arena, waiting for the kids to finish hockey practice. We are remarkably real writers when we pass on Netflix and grapple with a stubborn plot-twist in our story instead. We are remarkably real writers when we’ve had our writing rejected, passed over, ignored, and have felt disappointment more times than we’d like to admit and still, return to the laptop or notebook, or journal, asking ourselves the most writerly question of all. What if...?

Twenty years ago, I saw an advertisement on a bulletin board at my local grocery store for a correspondence course (yes, those still existed back in my day) on how to write children’s stories. I sent in a page of my writing for them to deem my "raw talent" sufficient for their tutelage and danced a jig when two weeks later, I received a letter of acceptance. I knew little about creative writing, but told myself that having been a ferocious reader since childhood, I must have picked up some writing skills through osmosis.

Over the next six months, I wrote story after story. I sent them off, like little orphans, to a school in Connecticut where a faceless writing teacher read, edited, commented and returned them in his yellow manila envelopes. This was the first time I had shared my writing with anyone. I still remember the frustration and disbelief when my stories made it back to me, all marked up and changed by my teacher’s red pen. Let’s just say, I learned humility and grappled to accept criticism without quitting.

A few years later, I took another course. This one from a real College in Ontario, with a real writer whose books I had read and loved. I wanted to write a memoir of my family’s escape from communist Czechoslovakia in the late 70’s. Having then been a teenager plucked out of her homeland at a delicate age, I believed my perspective of escape and immigration to be original. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I finished the memoir and hired an editor. She told me it was good, but would be better if I could re-craft it into a young-adult novel. I re-wrote the memoir into a work of fiction, buoyed by the idea of publication. My manuscript made it as far as the publisher’s round table and then…thud.

I was devastated. I was too attached to the work. I had become the work and the manuscript my baby. My fragile ego interpreted its rejection as a rejection of me. I boxed up everything: my notebooks, research notes, photographs, first, second and third drafts, memory sticks, all of it inside a cardboard box that I shoved into the darkest corner of the basement. I told myself I needed a clean break. I needed to recover from what felt like a fatal rejection blow. I needed to get my shit together and start again.

But I didn’t. I stopped being a remarkably real writer the day I buried my manuscript.

What followed was a colossal writing drought. I decided I wanted to become a yoga teacher and took yoga teacher training. After that, a year of massage therapy school. I attended a slew of self-development programs in hopes of finding myself. I left my marriage. I started and left two jobs. I crashed and burned after a painful relationship that landed me in Codependents Anonymous and then, one frigid winter morning, when I felt as though life had made a pin-cushion out of me, I picked up my pen and began to write.

Morning Pages to start and then, Facebook posts about the gritty bits of emotional healing I thought others could relate to. I created a blog and began to compose personal essays that I submitted to an on-line magazine publication. My first two articles were chosen as editor’s picks. I couldn’t believe that someone out there, someone I had never met, thought my writing was worthy of a gold star.

I wrote like a maniac about my struggles in relationship, about healing from codependency, about addiction and trauma-bonding. I wrote about childhood wounds and Christmases gone by. I wrote about emotions, monogamy and TikTok videos that demoralize women. The more I wrote, the more I became obsessed with success. The more I became obsessed with success—the hearts, the likes, the shares, and making the coveted eco-system winners' round—the less I felt like a remarkably real writer.

I stopped writing for the magazine.

So here I am, on a new publishing platform, creating in a very different way. I feel as though my writing is transforming into something unfamiliar; as though I’m hiking the bottom of the Grand Canyon without any idea of where I’m going. Some days, I have no drive or inspiration. I sit and look up at the achingly blue sky between the slices of red earth and just wait. I sit with the discomfort of not knowing what kind of remarkably real writer I am becoming. I sit with the disappointment of not winning The Remarkably Real Challenge. I sit with the fear of failure, of being a fake, and then sit a bit longer until I am ready to write honestly about where I’m at.

Flannery O’Connor once said, “I’m a writer simply because writing is the thing I do best.” She didn’t say she is a writer because others deem her to be the best. When we are remarkably real writers, writing is the ember that smolders inside us and does not cool until we’ve taken pen in hand, or keyboard to fingertips. We write because we must. We write to communicate that, which we can’t utter aloud. We write to express our innermost feelings. We write to discover ourselves and the truth that lives inside. We become remarkably real writers each time we risk sitting down to create something where before, there was nothing. I raise a glass to us all. Let us never stop being remarkably real.

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About the Creator

Judy Walker

Love & Life are my true inspirations.

If you like my writing, please share, or if so inspired, tip (no obligation).

Your support is appreciated 🙏.

You can find me on FB here.

Instagram here.

Elephant Journal here.

My blog here.

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