a little of my story…

I signed up for my first creative writing class through Gotham Writers Workshop in 2010. I was a single mother living in a NYC apartment that was perpetually too hot, logged on occasionally, received some really positive feedback from the instructor on an assignment and then never logged on again. In 2014, I signed up again! This time re-married and living in a house for the first time in my life, I took an online class called Jumpstart Your Writing. The instructor, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, was the first person to tell me she felt I should write memoir. I scoffed, didn’t like that idea, and proceeded to sign up for a fiction class. It didn’t go so well. What I learned was I had a lot of questions I was looking to answer through storytelling, but I couldn’t do it writing fiction. It just wasn’t working for me.

Plenty of writers have talked about this. About how they’ve worked through some personal questions in their fiction and short stories, and I wanted to be one of those writers. (Especially of the speculative fiction variety. I love you spec fic!) I realized I needed more clarity (read therapy), more exploration of the nonfiction kind (still disliked the idea of a memoir). I really liked the instructors at Gotham, but I needed a different kind of community. I somehow found myself in a Writing Our Lives class in 2014 offerred by Vanessa Mártir.

This was the beginning of my creative nonfiction journey, of learning so much more about personal essay, and the wild wide variety of literature I had never considered before. (I ended up taking many more classes with Vanessa and my first in person 6-week workshop.)

In 2017, I wrote myself straight into severe depression. As a gentle reminder, I wrote a note to myself about ignoring what everyone else was doing, about ignoring the external pressures and focusing more on what felt right for me. I kept the note up by my desk, kept the picture on my phone.

I spent 2018 trying to recover, grounding myself back into my body. I quietly worked on writing for myself and learned what it meant to rest. By the end of the year, I found that working slowly and with intention, I filled notebook after notebook and had enough material for a book. I had all of the elements, the recurring themes, but wasn’t sure how to put it together. I wasn’t even entirely sure what the story was. This is how I ended up pursuing my MFA in Creative Writing in 2020.

Sidenote: While I had a WONDERFUL experience at the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Randolph College, you do not need an MFA to be a writer. Everyone’s journey is different.