Writing Through Cancer

I’ve been passing judgment on others’ writing.  It’s known by another name, grading.  It’s how I’ve spent my weekend, reading and commenting on the students’ submissions for my current course for UCLA extension Writers’ Program.  I won’t lie.  It’s complicated.  On the one hand, I have to model the balanced feedback I require from them, a blend of positive and constructive, all with the intent that feedback—which is always received emotionally—will be instructional, helpful in their quest to improve upon and develop their creative writing craft.  On the other, I’m sometimes impatient, reading a submission that doesn’t come close to my expectations for students at their level.  That’s when the agony begins.  I have to curb my impatience, silence the ever-present critic which threatens to fill someone’s submission with red marks, and call up the more benevolent, but instructional self.

I remember how I felt (and still feel) when I received critique.  I’m back in grade four, Mrs. Herfindahl’s class, and I’ve written my version of the biblical Christmas story in my most careful penmanship, careful to use quotation marks when someone speaks, to indent my paragraphs, to stay true to the story I’d been told in Sunday school countless times.  Perhaps I plagiarized a bit, opening up my brand new King James Version and copying a few phrases here and there, but surely, I thought, I had handed in a story worthy of an “A.”

In first grade Mrs. Lohr

said my purple teepee

wasn’t realistic enough,

that purple was no color

for a tent,

that purple was a color

for people who died,

that my drawing wasn’t 

good enough

to hang with the others.

 

I walked back to my seat

counting the swish swish swishes

of my baggy corduroy trousers.

With a black crayon

nightfall came

to my purple tent

in the middle

of an afternoon.

(From:  “Purple,” by Alexis Rotella, in Step Lightly:  Poems for the Journey, by Nancy Willard, Ed., 1998.)

My paper wasn’t worthy of that “A,” at least not in Mrs. Herfindahl’s opinion.  When it was returned, a “B+” glared back at me in bright red ink, and throughout my carefully penned story, a host of red marks.  I felt terrible, and to this day, I imagine my students feeling similarly when my comments are less than glowing.  Ouch!  Writing, I have since discovered many times, is an act of living with rejection many times over, and yet, I keep on writing, because it’s what I’m driven to do, what I love doing, and I learn it’s possible to improve as I begin work on another version..

As it turns out, it’s not our grade school teachers, the magazine editors or our creative writing instructors who are our fiercest critics.  Sure, we may have suffered a few harsh evaluations along the way, grown up with a demanding parent telling us repeatedly we were capable of so much more or better.  But take a look in the mirror.  Your most vociferous critic lives inside your head.  You’re looking at her.

We all judge ourselves, whether we’re trying to write, paint, perform on stage, or, more likely, parent our firstborn child or juggle the many balls in the air of our busy lives, even as we cope with cancer and the effects it has on our lives–especially when we complete treatment and recovery, returning to the altered and new “normal.”  It’s when we feel we’ve somehow disappointed others, fallen short of some unspoken level of attainment, or let ourselves down,  our self-recriminations  become especially loud—a veritable Greek chorus.  And we all have them, those noisy, old internalized voices that chide us from time to time, saying “you should do better than that, you know.”

How do we silence those critics, especially those who live in our heads?  How do we practice a little self-forgiveness and allow ourselves the freedom to be messy, woefully imperfect, or terribly human?  A little humor can help.   In a poem guaranteed to make you smile, Kaylin Haught asks God for permission to be herself—and not worry about punctuation!

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is… 
Thanks God I said

And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

(From:  The Palm of Your Hand, 1995)

In “Marks,” Linda Pastan pokes some fun at the frustration of being graded as a wife and mother by her family members:

My husband gives me an A
for last night’s supper,
an incomplete for my ironing,
a B plus in bed.
My son says I am average,
an average mother, but if
I put my mind to it
I could improve.
My daughter believes
in Pass/Fail and tells me
I pass.  Wait ’til they learn
I’m dropping out.

(From Five Stages of Grief, 1978)

What about you?  How do you grade yourself?  When does your internal critic get in the way?  What kind of permission do you want to give yourself?  This week, write about grades, grading yourself, being graded by others–and as you do, try silencing those tiresome voices with a bit of humor!