whoo boy, I am anxious. I write and share pieces with my classmates, it’s what you do in a creative writing program. So that’s not weird, and I don’t even feel like I’m necessarily high- maintenance about it, especially considering that I write about really charged race and gender stuff all the time. But I’m worried this time.

I’m explicitly talking about myself and my experiences in this draft, which is something that I usually only do fleetingly in other pieces. Also, i tried to be really, brutally honest in this one, with the goal of making myself look bad and draw parallels between myself and some bad hombres. So I was already worried about what my classmates would think, and then, when I received my instructors feedback, I got really worried. First, he noted that the length of the draft made it a ‘big ask’ of my classmates, especially considering the current context. Which is something I knew, so that didn’t bother me. But when I saw his feedback on the essay itself, ngl, I panicked a bit.

In the main, it’s sort of telling me that the way I’m addressing the subject matter (racism, both casual and aggressive) is problematic, and particularly that I’m expressing too much sympathy for people expressing racist sentiments. This is not to mention the section that he recommended I cut, because he believes it will offend and alienate readers. I’m not sure about this, and I admit it was a snap reaction, but on first reading his comments, I felt like I was low key called a racist, which isn’t a great feeling when you’re waiting on a dozen more responses from people who don’t know you well enough to give you any benefit of the doubt.

As I was panicking, I immediately wanted to send the piece to some people who know me, who I felt will give me the benefit of the doubt and tell me that I’m great, that this dude isn’t reading closely enough to understand the nuance of what I’m going for. And, from those responses I’ve gotten so far, they’ve accommodated me, told me that it’s fine. But it doesn’t make me feel any better. 😦

these are people who are on my side. They start reading with the assumption that my intentions are positive, and while I’m grateful for that, I also feel like it sort of invalidates their judgment on this. I can’t expect to throw bombs out there and just be like, ‘well if you misunderstand then that’s on you.’ Which is hard, because my goal is to be ambiguous, to make the reader uncomfortable and to be unflinchingly honest in holding myself to account.  But how do you do that without making the reader simply write you off? I don’t know if it’s possible, but i really want to believe that it is. maybe it’s not, and I either have to abandon this idea or resign myself to alienating some readers who simply don’t see things like I do and don’t see the value in trying to understand my perspective.

Still, I want to make myself clear, to show people what I see. just the slightest bit of finesse, might  have made a little less mess. have I been laughable, wrong?