still DREAMing

I almost unfollowed writer Morgan Jerkins on Instagram. I logged in yesterday and there she was, resplendent and joyous in her photos and a post about how she had been worried that only industry folks cared about her new book—her fourth in seven years. She also wrote that because it took her four years to write her most recent novel, she’d had doubts about whether she had the skill to pull it off and that she used to be insecure; she’s still “ferocious” and “brave.” She ended her post with, This author life may not always get easier but it sure gets better.

After I read it, I sobbed.

That was the second time I’ve had an ugly cry about Jerkins. (In fairness to her, the first time was also because of Roxane Gay.) At a writers conference in Albuquerque back in 2018, I had explained to a white male agent that my memoir was about my eccentric upbringing and transforming adulthood dealing with a narcissistic mother. The agent gave me a look I interpreted as, That ain’t gonna cut it before telling me that I needed to write essays more like Jerkins and Gay did and that I should use their books as my “comparable titles” instead of The Glass Castle. (I mention that he was a white male because I believe a woman would have understood the inauthenticity of my doing that.)

Back then, I hadn’t yet heard of Jerkins or Gay, so I went home and googled them, and the agent’s point became clear: Jerkins and Gay had boatloads of brilliance. Jerkins graduated from Princeton and the book she’d just published in 2018, This Will Be My Undoing, was about social, cultural, and historical Black female oppression. Gay, whose writing often addresses racial and feminist issues, attended Yale (until she dropped out her junior year) and finished her master’s at the University of Nebraska. She published two books in 2017 and an anthology in 2018. After discovering all that, I sat on the stairwell of my home and sobbed because I was a middle-aged white lady who graduated from the University of West Florida and in 2018, had been slogging on my book for over six years. For me to evolve into a bold writer the caliber of Jerkins or Gay could take a lifetime.

Jerkins and I shared a dream, and she had made hers come true, so I did the least effective thing to be like her: I followed her on Instagram. Still, I don’t want to unfollow her now. I want to be brave. I want to feel the joy of her successes. I am supportive of other writers; I am supportive of women writers; I am supportive of BIPOC writers. I don’t want to be so envious that I can’t bear to see someone publish their fourth book before the age of 34 even though I’m 56 and (still) haven’t published my first one. So I’m hanging on, and on, and on, because if I give up, my book may never be published and my author life probably won’t get better like Jerkins’s author life has.

This morning, I pulled myself together and curled my eyelashes to look resplendent as I make this plea on behalf of all writers—apparently, we all have our insecurities—that if you know one, well-published or otherwise, give them a hug (ask permission, of course). Maybe find anyone who has an unrealized dream and ask if they need a hug. I’m betting they do.