A Letter to My 20-Something Self~

This was an out-and-about weekend in literary Washington--one writer's farewell party on Friday night, a coffee meet-up with dozens of women on the roof of the Kennedy Center, editing Count the Waves over a saison at Little Red Fox, my friend Susan Coll's book party (read The Stager!), which was filled with familiar faces from Politics & Prose, and the Three Tents series at the Big Hunt on Sunday evening. When I moved to 18th & S Street NW in 2002 (my little fourth-floor studio with a view of the gas station and questionable fire code compliance) I had no idea what DC would come to mean to me. There's a radius around Adams Morgan that holds a layer upon layer of sense memory: past addresses, jobs, loves, fears, and aspirations of a decade past. 

Dear Self of My Twenties,

So you're the girl seated at the far end of the Kramerbooks bar, scribbling away on workshop drafts. You're the one trying to learn to parallel park. You're the one storming away from the bar at 2 AM after one kiss, a terrible blend of vodka and tater tots churning in your stomach. You're wearing a kitty-cat mask and a little black dress on Halloween night. You're driving an hour, alone, to see the Counting Crows in concert. You're the one who can pull an all-nighter on a single cup of coffee. 

You're going to do just fine. But here's what I wish you'd known along the way.

Say Yes to every creative opportunity, whether it be a reading or lit mag or tutoring or community organizing; whether it be poetry or fiction or essay-writing. You think you know what you want to write, and the way and where of how you'll publish it, but you don't. The less you pigeonhole yourself, the more likely you'll have the variable skill set it takes to make a living as a writer. 

Your underpaying office job knows that you work on your writing while at your desk. They don't mind. Just don't hold up someone else's copy run because you're printing out your manuscript. Stealing pens is okay; stealing postage is sketchy.

Although you bitch and moan about the Metro, you will never have so much captive reading time ever again. 

Resist the futon, as cost- and space-effective as it it. Falling asleep with a television in your immediate line of vision is bad, and waking up to it is worse. You will sacrifice any hope of instilling habitual punctuality to the 8 AM to 9 AM block of Charmed.

There's never a good reason to eat canned spinach for dinner. 

Invariably, you will encounter the Open Mic of Death, in which everyone waiting to read has no interest in the work of others. Someone will have a hacking, sneezing hay fever. Someone will stand up and dodge the "one page" limit by reading single-spaced prose. You will read, then think, "Surely it's okay to get up and leave now." Don't do it. This is where you begin cultivating good form as a writer, and that includes having a Happy Place you can retreat to in your mind, unobtrusively and without egress, during such readings. Also, the host always notices the people who leave early. 

When a work supervisor puts his hand on your shoulder and refers to you as his "nightcap," though your first thought should be "How do I report this," what your actual thought will be is, "How do I prevent the rumor that we slept together?" You will feel terribly guilty, because, How dare you tempt him by making good conversation? This is the downside of being a bright, chatty 20-something woman with a superhuman sense of agency. He knows better. He is a dean of students at a liberal arts college. 

Close-toed shoes really aren't so bad. You should try them. Cold toes are distracting.

When your mother tries to explain hurtful things your partner does by framing it as "Men do X; Women do Y," do not dismiss her with a withering, "I don't believe in all that gender-stereotyping." Just because you dislike her rhetorical frame doesn't make her life's accumulated experiences irrelevant or invalid. Also, she's probably trying to find a discreet way to tell you what it's like to be married to your dad. Also, by the time you're in your 30s you'll find yourself saying "Know what? Men do X; Women do Y."

There are people you admire in the field of writing. You will eventually meet most of them them. Some of them will make you feel small and uncool. You will try again, like a golden retriever begging the attention of a minor god. They will make you feel small and uncool, again and again. This has nothing to do with you.  

There is a delightful subset of this group that will make you feel small and uncool only the first time you meet them. Then you'll realize that actually, they are just painfully shy. These people are usually worth cultivating to the point of friendship, or at least companionable silence in crowded rooms. 

Out-drinking someone is the worst waste of time. Even when you win, you lose. 

Other writers will be, in fact, as as ebullient and kind as you always hoped. There's a generosity of spirit that comes with having talent, and having been recognized for it. 

Just because you regard someone as your mentor does not mean he or she will be able to write you recommendation letters, ad infinitum, on less than ten days' notice. 

Hand-writing the note on good stationery is always the right thing to do. 

I look back at some of the worst sunburns, when the skin across breasts and shoulders itched and bubbled before peeling away, and I think: What the hell? Sun as a byproduct of living: Yes. Sun as a goal, timed in half-hour intervals on a ratty towel: No.

Develop at least a moderate skill set at the 3Ps of pool, poker, and ping pong. When writers get together for any length of time at a conference or residency, there is invariably a group that separates itself in order to play one of these things. It's good to have the option of joining them. 

Andy Warhol had a simple method of record keeping: at the end of each month, he tipped the mess of papers covering his desk into a box. That's kind of space-consuming, but time-capsule yourself in a manilla envelope every few months with a stack of emails, invitations, and handwritten drafts. Doesn't need to be precious--just what was on your mind at the time, labeled. As an artist, you'll be so glad to have it later.

Some people surf from crisis to crisis. Up to you, how much you let their crises become your crises. Don't convince yourself someone is passionate, when what they really are is just dramatic. That said: when in doubt, go for the kiss. You're in your 20s, after all. 

Work a little harder to keep your plants alive.

Please keep all the photographs in which you're laughing. ALL of them. No matter how unflattering or out of focus. Countless poised smiles in front of bridges or mountains, though picturesque, don't summon much of a memory. But the photos where you're delighted & in motion & and don't give a damn about the camera? That's the real story. 

Love,

Sandra