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How Early Lessons in Finding an Audience Still Keep Me Going
Personal essay writers adapt to their readers, as they should
I was a teen in the time before blogs, before social media, before MySpace. I still didn’t even have an AOL Instant Messenger account. Whatever angst I transmuted into words became poems in a black notebook or short stories I worried could land me on a watch list with the school counselor.
Often, I found myself finishing couplets, trying to rhyme with blood or love. (Vampires, for most of my life, have been top of pop culture.)
Other than what I handed in to my English or creative writing teachers, those early drafts were something I guarded. It was a tremendous sign of young infatuation — and misplaced trust — when I let one of my first boyfriends read my written work. He let me read his. We were timid, creative kids who relished being weird and daring with words. I wanted to be the next Edgar Allan Poe; he was emulating The Crow.
Both of us, probably, should have been spending more time with that school counselor. By the time we broke up, it was a relief.
But flipping open my notebooks for other eyes transitioned me from someone who scribbled and edited and rewrote for my own amusement, to someone who understood my work might have an…
