My thoughts on writerly accomplishment

At this point in my life, being accomplished means having the ability to write in a way that I can be proud of. It means pushing myself to the very limit of my abilities and learning how to trust my own instincts. I want to create work that is honest and meaningful and that resonates with people. On an academic level, it means having an awareness of the world of creative nonfiction, and a dedication to reading the work of other creative nonfiction authors so that I can continue to expand my understanding of what this mighty genre encompasses.

Another part of accomplishment, for me, is learning how to better act as my own editor, so that I can not only craft my essays into existence, but can also have the skills and the distance necessary to objectively critique my work and hone it until it’s ready for submission. I might add that the moment of “knowing” something is ready to send into the world still feels elusive, and I wonder if even the most accomplished of writers still feel this pang of uncertainty.

Now that I’m entering my third year in Bay Path’s Creative Nonfiction MFA program, I can see how much more self-confident I am. My writing has become more crisp and focused, and occasionally even a little more profound. I am willing to share parts of myself more than I used to, including some of the ugly bits. And I’ve discovered the immense solace that can come from putting down on the page thoughts that I had previously kept trapped inside.

My hope is that as I continue down this path, my writing will naturally transition into something that’s more frequently fit for publication. So in that sense, I see a connection between being an accomplished writer and being a published one, although I don’t necessarily need the latter to achieve the former.

While accomplishment revolves around the quality of one’s body of work, I consider the concept of success to be more about the financial side of the business. Being able to earn something resembling a living whilst being a writer will always be the dream. And while I don’t necessarily wish this were the case, being able to write work that is financially successful confers upon the author a level of prestige and accomplishment that is especially important in our results-driven world.