There should be a limit to one’s ability to feel embarrassed by juvenilia and other potentially cringe-worthy work. Like that first poem I wrote and work shopped, if it still existed anywhere.[*] And yet early efforts in some ways, whether they subsist only in one’s memory or in actual, viewable format, possess a certain strength in their imperfection—something I’ve recently discovered by reminiscing other artistic endeavors:
I vividly remember my first camera, how it felt: the textured red plastic case with the smooth black cord I now would call a wristlet strap.[†] Its rectangular flash stick—my camera didn’t take cubes, which I felt were far cooler. I was ten or thereabouts. I kept most photos, even bad ones, in an album that had sticky pages with plastic covers. With age, the glue became visible wherever photos weren’t. Somewhere along the line, I learned about acidic (not archival) paper. I did not necessarily become better at photo taking.
By high school/college, I switched the photos to an album now called a scrapbook. It had manila pages and clear photo corners, which I found disappointing. I thought the pages and corners would be black, like the scrapbooks of yore, the kind my grandparents remembered from their youth. Removing the old photos proved to be challenging. They’d peel and tear on occasion, the cantankerous, yellowed glue refusing to graciously cede its grip. This time, I added some captions, school awards, and the like.
It didn’t occur to me that I was revising my first draft. (I still kept many of the bad photos because they were all I had or were wrong in the right way. Because sometimes, mistakes[‡] can be cool.)
Side projects, both sweet and hilarious, informed my process. My friends and I decorated clipboards for each other using photos, magazines, stickers, and contact paper. Concepts from collage shaped my scrapbook. How these projects somehow gave me permission to make my own wedding invitations,[§] and how I never questioned that I could do so even though I’d never created cards previously.
(I sketched designs and found instructions on the Internet, and I made every last invite, with half the tools and knowledge I have now. There are a few mistakes, but fewer than I’d guessed there’d be.)
I’m working on new projects, considering re-doing a few old albums with the more modern approach I currently use. I worry if my projects are too conventional, my captions too cute and canned. I’m working up some new phrasing. I’m an editor, after all.[**]
And somehow this proves that even when I’m not writing, there’s this writerly quality to what I do and that I improve, try new things, and find surprising measures of success that sometimes make me amazed that I did what I did. Then, this epiphany clicks: my older writing is just that—older. It’s only a step in the process of becoming a better writer.
What projects inspired your writing or changed how you saw your work? Share your thoughts in the comment section below. Also, sign up for the Sequence’s newsletter to keep current with the latest posts.
NOTES:
[*] It doesn’t. I checked.
[†] Of course, no photos of this long-gone camera exist, which amuses me because I remember it more clearly than some of the events my 110 recorded.
[‡] Mistakes or errors are signposts to success. They point where you need to change direction, learn more, or just try harder.
[§] Permissible but not by my any means sensible. Hating every over-the-top romantic and/or too expensive card that felt very much unlike us also fueled this decision.
[**] I re-read my posts and fix the tiny grammar errors. Yep, editing all the way out the door and to the store.
Rita E. Gould: An Artful Sequence of Words 