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As a teenager, I knew I was going to be a writer. Screw boring office jobs; I was going to build my writing oasis, sit down with my coffee every day, and bang out several thousand words towards my epic fantasy series (which would of course be wildly successful). I had it all figured out, and to kickstart this process, I was definitely going to college for creative writing.

The college part happened, at least. But like a wish granted by a monkey’s paw, it wasn’t what I expected. 10 years later, I’m only just starting to undo the damage. My advice to young writers considering enrollment in a creative writing program? Think very hard about whether your writing can survive the ordeal.

Fiction, A Love Story

I’ve always been obsessed with stories. In my early school days, we’d gather in a circle and sit in (mostly) rapt attention, unraveling the adventures of the Boxcar Children or basking in the whimsical world of My Father’s Dragon. When I learned I could access these fantastic stories by myself, I was fully addicted.

I was introduced to the other side of the coin in third grade. I didn’t know it then, but my teacher was an award-winning writing curriculum developer, and she fostered our creativity through in-class writing time that culminated in production of our very own storybooks. I still have mine (which I wrote about my cat) in a closet somewhere.

By the time I was a teenager, I was writing prolifically, although not in any sort of publishable sense. The journey came to a high point in my freshman year of high school, when I finally started taking fiction writing classes–first at the local community college, and then at a four-year university. Writing became my entire identity.

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The Double-Edged Sword of Formal Education

By all accounts, I was having a blast in college. My writing was well-received in class workshops, I was getting plenty of praise (tempered with salient feedback) from my instructors, and I was showing some competency in the writing craft. But under the surface, something was going wrong.

Before I go on, I want to preface with this: I don’t blame the faculty or my classmates for my eventual abandonment of writing. Many people graduate from creative writing programs each year and go on to writing happiness, avoiding even a glimmer of the identity crisis I ultimately faced. Back then, I had no idea of my apparent neurodivergence, and I was probably too caught up in my artistic identity and supposed brilliance to have noticed the warning signs. Even so, academia was becoming the breeding ground for an insidious nemesis: crippling perfectionism.

A Perfect Monster

I’ve written about perfectionism before from the standpoint of my Gifted Kid™ label, but it’s also a common characteristic in the two neurodivergencies I believe are applicable to me: ADHD and (perhaps) autism. For those with ADHD, perfectionism can feed into procrastination, either through pervasive and continued dissatisfaction with work quality, or just an inability to start. In the case of autism, perfectionism may be driven by autistic traits like black-and-white thinking, and failure to adhere to the conditions of “perfect” often results in self-directed criticism and shame.

College was probably when my shame cycle was at its peak. Intellectually, I knew writing was complex and subjective, but emotionally, I was plagued by the feeling that there was a right way to do something and a wrong way, and that I should be perceptive and capable enough to do it the right way. If something wasn’t perfect, it was wrong, and this would represent a lack of effort and forethought I considered tantamount to a moral failing.

You don’t have to tell me this was horribly dysfunctional.

So, clearly I was already a rocket engine primed to go from zero to self loathing in no time flat. But what were the particular ingredients of an academic writing program that fueled that possibility into reality?

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The Building Blocks of Failure

A Room Full of Egos

I won’t deny that giving and receiving useful feedback is an important skill. Early on, when a writer is perhaps still too attached to stories they can’t recognize as flawed, it’s important to learn how to set aside illusions of grandeur and listen to what could be done differently.

Notice that I say “differently” instead of “better.” Sometimes different is better, but the next step in the process is realizing that there aren’t necessarily any right answers in this writing thing. It’s also important to consider the types of people attracted to workshop classes.

Some are well-balanced mature individuals who truly want to give — and be given — thoughtful, measured feedback. Others are just there for the credit hours, and find themselves obliged to say something during workshops so they can avoid being marked down on their participation scores. And the third, well, they’re artists: self-acknowledged experts and sources of highly valuable information that you’ll (undoubtedly) want to know all about.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with these varied motivations. Can you guess what type I was? (Hint, it wasn’t the first two). But the danger lies in what I ended up doing on the receiving end of all this feedback, which was trying to synthesize opinions from all these groups at once (plus the instructor). The attempt to somehow follow all of the advice from years of workshop classes in my mind drove me to paralysis.

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Genre Writing, The Ugly Stepchild

My love of writing started with fantasy and science fiction and now incorporates romance. From the standpoint of supporting a career and making a living writing, there shouldn’t be anything wrong with this. Statistics show that speculative fiction is very popular, accounting for more than $1.5 billion in sales (with ever-reviled romance making up the lion’s share).

Despite its measurable success (or maybe because of it), there’s a well-known undercurrent of disdain for genre writing in academia. In my experience, it was less noticeable in undergrad, but I perceived it as downright nasty in grad school. While my teachers didn’t ascribe to the genre hate, it was impossible to ignore that it did exist.

One particular example stands out in my memory. In 2010, we had a special fiction workshop with a visiting writer, Robert Olen Butler. If I remember correctly (it’s been almost 15 years, after all), the only way to get into this workshop was to be recommended by a professor; we were the best that the department had to offer at the time.

I made my piece of flash fiction as literary as possible, knowing full well that Butler disliked genre writing (see reviews of his book on fiction writing if you want receipts on that claim).

I was proud of my little story. It was snappy, poignant. Yes, still student material, but it did later earn me a personalized rejection from a top science fiction and fantasy magazine, an honor saved for those who get past the initial slush pile. Butler still hated it, and I remember feeling deflated. I would have to work harder to justify my existence as a speculative fiction writer.

This is when the editor in my head took up full residence, and first drafts became impossible under a constant stream of internal criticism.

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The Ideal of the Artist

Despite teaching me how to write multiple short stories, my degree did absolutely nothing to help me complete a novel, which was my main goal all along. I’m sure that’s partly because — and this is just a guess, but I think I’m justified in being confident — the program probably wasn’t designed with undiagnosed ADHD in mind.

Another reason could have been the idealization of the artistic process. Many writerly types, especially those who want to consider themselves artists, eschew the concept of structured processes, something they might consider formulaic.

To be worth something in academia, you need to write from a position of pure originality. Implicit in this understanding was that writing would become a process of discovery; your characters would tell you what was important as you got to know them. Rough outlining was always acceptable, but following a guide like The Hero’s Journey, etc.? Sacrilege.

A lack of a clear roadmap was disastrous for me. It would have been far more valuable for my neurodivergent self to follow a step-by-step path of writing a novel. Write by numbers, even! I would have hated to hear it then, but I do think there’s something to be said for the concept that a first novel doesn’t necessarily need to be publishable. Just the process of getting it to completion can be a lesson in the requisite building blocks, and getting to the end point could be a triumph that confirms that yes, even I can do this.

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10 Years Lost, and Finally a Recovery

By the time I graduated, the cracks were beginning to show. I was pushing myself to write a thousand words per day, edit stories to submit to markets, and was increasingly convinced that everything I produced was pure dreck.

When I joined the corporate world, I hit burnout hard. I stopped writing, and started deflecting whenever people asked how my projects were going. Where my passion for writing had once been the basis of my identity, only guilt and shame remained. I even stopped reading, unable to face the story worlds I’d once loved.

10 years passed. I strengthened my copy editing skills at work and came to truly understand that no first draft is ever golden, no dreck beyond salvaging, and having something on the page is always better than having nothing. Eventually, I came back to reading. Gently, via audiobooks while I did the dishes or folded laundry. I started following some bookstagram accounts and finally decided to check out a novel written by one of those influencers.

It was — and I write this lovingly — not very good. And that realization broke open something that had blocked my creativity for years. I finally understood: something doesn’t have to be perfect for people to like it. Maybe I, too, could write something that someone might enjoy.

Anyway, 900 words down, 89,100 to go. I’ll let y’all know when I reach that finish line.