The Glop Within

It’s been so long since I’ve considered myself a writer of non-academic prose that I’m almost afraid to try again. Reading through the self-indulgent shit I’ve produced over the past seven years is embarrassing. Oh, the stuff I wrote at thirteen was forgivable–what average young writer doesn’t rip off the style and some of the plot of her favorite authors and come up with lame fantasy worlds peopled with undeveloped stereotypes? But thinking back to the self-indulgent trash I wrote as a senior in high school and even as a freshman in college is cringe-inducing. Looking at what I’ve produced, I’m tempted to think that I should have stopped writing at the same time I stopped braiding friendship bracelets to sell on the street-corner, and for the same reason: they were trash, and nobody in his right mind would want them. Now, after I’ve been keeping fiction inside for a couple of years, there’s no telling what will happen if I try again. It is quite possible that it has congealed into a stinking mass of unusable glop, and that attempting to write now would be nothing but an exercise in humility and failure. Of course, it is always possible that it could be fermented into a delicious and heady wine…maybe. Or not. I’d rather not let fear of failure stop me from doing things, though. Even if stinking glop comes out, I think I’ll pop the cork and see what’s been brewing.