I’m a reader. 

For a long time, I used to think there was a huge difference between being a reader and a writer, like maybe they were nearly opposites. But not at first, and not anymore.

At first, in grade school, I loved reading the books in my Scholastic book order and from the library, and I also loved writing stories, but, when we read our stories out loud, I noticed other kids wrote about hilarious slapstick things whereas I wrote about subtle, delicate emotions. Someone called my stories “boring.” I didn’t exactly admire or envy their stories, but it put me off thinking of myself as a writer. 

In college I made another try and enrolled in a workshop with a Pulitzer prize winning author. The first thing he did was go around the room and ask everyone for a story concept. He didn’t like any of them, and fortunately never got to me, and I immediately dropped the class and never went back. It took me a long time to figure out that what I liked to read was “literary” writing and that I was more of a literary writer, not a high-concept genre writer (not that there is anything wrong with being that!)

A few years later my Jungian analyst dared me to write, and I did it just to show him what dumb advice that was. I took a class by a local Chicago legend, the late Molly Daniels. Her idea was that creative writing relied on very basic emotions we could feel stored in our bodies. She did not distinguish between fiction and nonfiction, or poetry and prose. The important things were emotions as expressed through objects, and the important words were nouns and verbs. She would read our writing and underline the parts she considered “good” and have us read just those out loud. Sometimes that was one sentence out of six or eight pages. But it meant everything we heard read in class by our classmates and ourselves was good, and we thereby trained our ears.

I took some other classes, and at that time, in the late 90s, linked short stories were having a moment. I told one of my teachers I wanted to write a collection of linked stories, and he encouraged me to try to write a linked collection of stories in one story. My attempt to do that was my first publication—in Tin House. I joined the Zoetrope Writers Studio and engaged extensively in providing reviews and workshopping my own stories. Eventually, I ran out of local courses to take, and my old teacher encouraged me to apply to the low-residency MFA Program at Warren Wilson College, where I was fortunate to be accepted into the Fiction cohort in 2004 and graduated in 2006. 

It can be hard to write post-MFA. One is used to getting such thoughtfully lavished feedback, so the culture shock of sending things out to faceless strangers with no investment in your work can be harsh. Meanwhile, I was also trying to progress in my (somewhat neglected) career as an internal organizational and leadership development consultant. So, I went back to school and earned a PhD in human and organizational systems. I must say that during that time I put creative writing on the shelf, where it remained as I worked to get a foothold in a new career as a professor and department chair in business psychology. I continued to take a summer class here and there but stopped submitting entirely and wrote only sporadically.

I do remember quitting a writing group when I had one of my story protagonists write a poem, and I got a harsh critique from the group at its unrealistic badness. Well, she’s not a poet, I tried to explain. She’s just expressing herself. (Just like me, right? Ugh!)

How did I find my way back? Let alone, my way forward to, of all things, poetry?

I was going through some old papers and found a short piece I had written. I was amazed at how much it resonated for me and could not believe I never sent it out. So, I did, and it was accepted at the Florida Review. 

Then I fell upon a book that was a game changer, or maybe a game-reviver. It was Heating and Cooling, by Beth Ann Fennelly, billed as 52 micro-memoirs. Micro-memoirs reminded me of the things we wrote in Molly’s class. They seemed small and manageable, even for an overwhelmed person like me. I dug in and started writing again. 

The only problem was I need to send things out to feel like I have momentum and closure in my writing. And there were very few places, relatively speaking, to send these to. So, I had the bright idea of breaking the pieces into lines and stanzas and making them into poems. Not that I was a “poet.” But there are So. Many. Poetry. Venues. I began writing and sending things out prolifically, while trying to educate myself enough on poetry so as to not to completely embarrass myself. 

Turned out I loved the relatively quick feedback cycle of write, send out, get acceptances (and rejections—so many rejections). Then the pandemic hit, and there was not much to do after work and on weekends except write, take writing classes and submit writing. Soon I had a draft of a chapbook, which quickly became an actual chapbook published by one of the journals I submitted to a lot, Cathexis Northwest Press. Then I had a draft collection manuscript that I continued to tweak. Sooner than I expected, that manuscript, as well, was accepted for publication by Saddle Road Press. And meanwhile, my short story collection manuscript has placed in over a half dozen publishing competitions.

I’m still a reader. I’d literally rather read than do anything else. But I am a writer, paying it forward, and, yes, I’m a poet …and I know it.