Where Do I Go from Here —A Writer’s Perspective on Life After College

I knew I wanted to be a writer since my first year of middle school in 2011. In my reading class we got an assignment to write a short story; I don’t remember if there was a prompt for it, but I do remember writing almost 15 pages when everyone else only got to about 3. I remember my teacher being very frustrated with me because he did not want to read all of that.

In high school I took a creative writing class where we got prompts and had stories due every two weeks, and I thrived with that. There were weeks I struggled to write, though I feel like every writer goes through that, but for the most part I was writing consistently, and it was all work I was proud of. I even wrote a story my teacher told me I could make into a novel; it was the first time I’d ever had that sort of praise and the confidence boost it gave me was monumental.

Once that year ended, everything changed. No matter how hard I tried, I had countless empty documents and it was like every drop of inspiration I had just melted into nothing. It took me four years to write another story.

It wasn’t like I didn’t try. I spent years trying. But I just couldn’t get myself further than a blank screen with a blinking cursor. Looking back, I think it was the fact that I had nothing pushing me further; I had no one who encouraged me to actually put words on a page.

I came to YCP as a Professional Writing major in 2018. I had struggled with writing for years, but I thought maybe if I could get back in some creative writing classes it would push me back into it. I was here for a semester and even though I had a creative writing assignment in one of my classes, I had no motivation to write anything, and my schedule didn't have room for a specific creative writing class.

In that following semester I considered changing my major and spent my whole second semester doing calculus. Spending that time away from writing was the only reason I could come back. For the first time I missed writing. I didn’t know what else I was going to do in the future if I wasn’t writing, so the next semester I scheduled my first real creative writing class in four years.

I spent the larger part of that semester doing nothing. We were given prompts in class to do timed writings with and I had nothing. Still absolutely nothing. Only when we were given our workshop project did I get back to writing, and that was still filled with fear.

I wanted to write historical fiction and I was afraid everyone was going to hate it and say only bad things and ruin my confidence even further. And I got the opposite. I got nothing but positive feedback from both my peers and my professor (thanks Professor Grippi). That was the first time in years that I had any confidence in my writing, and after the class talked about my work, I went back to my dorm and cried.

From there I got more into the Professional Writing program. I met more of our professors, I made friends in our program, and I forced myself to take more creative writing classes. I have loved our program and our professors.

I appreciate Dr. Cutrufello for treating me like I was more than just a name on a list of students, for treating us like people and not grades in a grade book, for being my positive introduction to the Professional Writing program. I appreciate Travis, as the main professor in my creative writing education, for always giving me feedback on my writing that pushes me to improve with every piece I write. Even when I haven’t always liked his feedback, it was something I needed.

But this brings me to my fear now. I graduate in 8 months. In 8 months, I’m back on my own, in that fog of not directly having someone who can push me into my writing. I need to figure out how to do it myself. How do I do this? How do I push forward into a career that isn’t set in stone and that I don’t even know if I’ll be successful in? No class I could take here has prepared me for this part of life.

I can write a book – I am writing a book – but my goal has always been publishing. I’ve never wanted to do a job other than write. How do you finish a book, query, and get started in publishing in 8 months? You can’t.

The biggest issue is that I’m the only one who can really change this. I’m the one in control of where I go after college. I can’t tell Travis to fix it for me like I can with my class schedule. I have to be my own advisor, and I’m notoriously bad at that.

There’s this fear I have that I’m going to leave college, and need to get a “real” job outside of writing and fall back into that hole of “I can’t write,” and I’m going to lose this momentum I’ve spent so long trying to get back.

There’s this fear that I’m going to disappoint everyone with such high expectations of me. When I graduated high school, my school’s English department gave me an award for my writing and said they expected great things from me. My professors tell me they expect me to do well with my writing. What if I don’t? What will they think of me then?

Right now, I don’t have these answers. I don’t know how to solve these problems. But in 8 months I’ll have to figure something out. Maybe you’ll see my name on the New York Times Bestseller list. One day.