Sharing is caring
His eyes were glazed. Not the best sign.
I could see the gears in his head grinding as he looked for the words that were honest without being overly discouraging, critically cloudy while providing just the right amount of silver lining. The situation became increasingly uncomfortable as I stood there smiling and nodding. He thumbed the pages in a manner that I initially perceived as nervously but in hindsight determined as carefully.
There's a difference. If you're nervous, there's always an involuntary pattern to your movement. A reassuring repetition. If you're careful, you shift deliberately to protect whatever you've made the object of attention.
He relaxed, tensed, smiled, and relaxed.
This guy was young, making his way upward in the world. He was skilled, he was accomplished, he was young. This stop, teaching sophomore English at a very small junior college that shared its campus with a technical school, was either the start of a budding career or the start of a premature and tragic decline. Energetic with the right amount of sad bitterness. Enough to make him appealing to the nineteen- and twenty-year-old women without sufficient life experience to understand the cliché.
What I heard was "blah, blah, practice, experience, blah, blah, patience, my book, blah." I was admittedly distracted by the fact that what I'd done couldn't be undone. No bells being un-rung here. I was acutely aware of things that were not the words leaving his mouth; the dozen (or so) pages in the professor's hand, the dull eggshell beige paint attempting to hide the details in the cinder block walls exposed above the baby blue subway tile wainscot, the fact that the vinyl tile on the floor completed the feeling that the room was designed to be hosed down at the end of the semester, the patterns of the diffuser over the florescent fixtures recessed into the acoustic tile ceiling forming a chess board of dot-grid-dot. There was a slight buzzing in my ears that I still get to this day while waiting for someone to dislike what I've created.
To be honest, the piece of writing in his hands was hacky. That's not said in a self-deprecating, fake humble manner. The work still exists and it is clearly of a period, done by a young kid who couldn't get past his influences. It's definitely full of someone else's ideas. Were I in the professor's position today, my eyes would've been glazed and my words less than kind.
Or maybe I would've lied to avoid destroying someone's dreams and crushing their soul.
I remember saying a few things that explained the typewritten pages the professor was holding. I remember the professor admitting to reading one page and being able to understand where the writing was headed. I remember thinking that it was going nowhere. I remember thinking that I needed to change the protagonist's name. I remember thanking him for the notes, taking the small stack of pages, and leaving the room.
It was as if I'd just left the doctor's office after having been through an embarrassingly invasive outpatient procedure and being told to lay off the nutty bars.
The experience wasn't terribly damaging. I've learned quite a bit about myself since then. I've seen quite a lot since the first time I shared my writing with anyone all those years ago.
For me, sharing my creations is a lot like watching a horror movie. It gets less scary every time I do it.
I could see the gears in his head grinding as he looked for the words that were honest without being overly discouraging, critically cloudy while providing just the right amount of silver lining. The situation became increasingly uncomfortable as I stood there smiling and nodding. He thumbed the pages in a manner that I initially perceived as nervously but in hindsight determined as carefully.
There's a difference. If you're nervous, there's always an involuntary pattern to your movement. A reassuring repetition. If you're careful, you shift deliberately to protect whatever you've made the object of attention.
He relaxed, tensed, smiled, and relaxed.
This guy was young, making his way upward in the world. He was skilled, he was accomplished, he was young. This stop, teaching sophomore English at a very small junior college that shared its campus with a technical school, was either the start of a budding career or the start of a premature and tragic decline. Energetic with the right amount of sad bitterness. Enough to make him appealing to the nineteen- and twenty-year-old women without sufficient life experience to understand the cliché.
What I heard was "blah, blah, practice, experience, blah, blah, patience, my book, blah." I was admittedly distracted by the fact that what I'd done couldn't be undone. No bells being un-rung here. I was acutely aware of things that were not the words leaving his mouth; the dozen (or so) pages in the professor's hand, the dull eggshell beige paint attempting to hide the details in the cinder block walls exposed above the baby blue subway tile wainscot, the fact that the vinyl tile on the floor completed the feeling that the room was designed to be hosed down at the end of the semester, the patterns of the diffuser over the florescent fixtures recessed into the acoustic tile ceiling forming a chess board of dot-grid-dot. There was a slight buzzing in my ears that I still get to this day while waiting for someone to dislike what I've created.
To be honest, the piece of writing in his hands was hacky. That's not said in a self-deprecating, fake humble manner. The work still exists and it is clearly of a period, done by a young kid who couldn't get past his influences. It's definitely full of someone else's ideas. Were I in the professor's position today, my eyes would've been glazed and my words less than kind.
Or maybe I would've lied to avoid destroying someone's dreams and crushing their soul.
I remember saying a few things that explained the typewritten pages the professor was holding. I remember the professor admitting to reading one page and being able to understand where the writing was headed. I remember thinking that it was going nowhere. I remember thinking that I needed to change the protagonist's name. I remember thanking him for the notes, taking the small stack of pages, and leaving the room.
It was as if I'd just left the doctor's office after having been through an embarrassingly invasive outpatient procedure and being told to lay off the nutty bars.
The experience wasn't terribly damaging. I've learned quite a bit about myself since then. I've seen quite a lot since the first time I shared my writing with anyone all those years ago.
For me, sharing my creations is a lot like watching a horror movie. It gets less scary every time I do it.