Risky Business

Today, my poetry professor emailed me to tell me I'm too hard on myself and that I am a gifted writer. He thinks that I am always looking for the right answer, which can't exist in poetry. I think that what he said was true, but I would include that what I really want is to know that I am on the right track. I want to know that I'm saying something meaningful to someone other than me. I think I'm starting to need validation as a writer.
It's too late for me to switch my major, but I want to know that what I'm writing isn't complete bullshit. Poetry is my downfall, and unexpectedly my poetry classes are my favorite this quarter. I would still consider myself a fiction writer, but I think I'm learning more from this class than any other writing class so far.
So here it goes, I'm going to post a draft of a poem that I am working on. You can hate it, love it, or tell me it needs work. I'm up for anything. My professor also told me that I take criticism well, I am willing to rewrite and that I am an open, risk taking person in my writing.
So here's another risk, posting my own poem online.

Outside

In one moment our friendship was lost

Like the dog on the sign taped to that streetlight

My boyfriend is drunkenly petting a stray cat on the lawn

Your boyfriend is next to me saying you didn’t mean it

You snarled and snapped and stomped back into the house

the house where everyone else drinks and laughs

The house where I should be instead on this concrete curb,

My hands cupping my face
and your boyfriend, not mine

Attempting to bring me inside

Your boyfriend laughs when I tell him there’s nothing left to fix

Inspire me.

I believe I've mentioned in a previous post, but I'll mention again that I need inspiration to write. I'm not the kind of writer who just writes randomly for hours. I like to wait until I have something I want to write about.
That flaw or whatever it may be considered has been worrying me for this upcoming quarter. I'm taking three workshop classes, so I'm going to need a lot of inspiration.
Fortunately, I already found some. It was simple, actually. I don't want to post all about my short story here, but I want to share my love of waiting for inspiration.
Waiting makes me feel unburdened by my writing, and the words flow out. I think my characters sound more real, and I think my story is going to be funny. And I'm not great at funny.
Hopefully, I keep getting inspired. Especially for my poetry workshops. Poetry writing is my greatest flaw in being a writer. I just don't have poetry in my poetry. Not to make myself sound amazing but I feel I often have poetry in my fiction, but not in actual poems.

Certainly, uncertain.

A lot of people I know who are Creative Writing Majors, including my TA's, and professors always talk about how much they write. They wrote this the other night, and that this morning. Hearing them talk about how often they work always worries me as a writer. It worries me because I don't work like that. I don't just write all the time. I'm not working on anything really. Maybe my stories for class, and sometimes I journal (and I try to write in this blog). But I don't sit around just writing.

I wish I did because hearing them talk about it and realizing I don't do what they do makes me feel like maybe I'm not meant to be a writer. I always sort of knew that, even in declaring my major. I don't expect to behind a laptop in a coffee shop all day long making money. I still don't know what I'm going to do when I graduate. I want to be around literature, and around writers. I know that much.

Sometimes, I say that I have to wait for "inspiration" in order to start working on something. I guess that is true in some ways. Once I got inspiration for a short story in my fiction workshop this past quarter, and I think that story is the best thing I've written to date. I want that to happen again, and I also want to continue editing that story. But am I editing that story? No. I'm watching television, and organizing my apartment. Does that make me a writer? Probably not.

It's too late to change my major, and I don't want to. Maybe I'm not meant to be a writer. Maybe I'm just different than the other writers I know. Maybe watching television, organizing my closet, and scrolling through tumblr is my way of writing. Maybe, I still really don't know.