A year ago I wrote a personal essay called “Millennial Writing Life” that I didn’t intend to show anyone, because its only purpose was self- therapy, and making light of the weird and unpredictable world that was right in front of my face, after finishing my university studies. I edited it a couple times, and what started as a for fun “maybe when I’m old and grey I’ll add this to my memoir” essay, turned into a “showing this to people will somehow help me understand the world around me better” essay.
Once I decided that I actually wanted to show it to people I sent it to Brick literary magazine first, and then once they rejected it I sent it to several other literary magazines and online magazines, and they also rejected it. An important lesson I’ve learned about writing is that taking rejection personally isn’t a good idea but something about watching something that is so deeply personal, and from a vulnerable place, be rejected several times in a row made me question whether I should have shown it to anybody in the first place, and then I thought to myself: “maybe this piece is just for me, and if I actually become a best selling writer one day, perhaps someone will find it, and it will be worth something.”
That’s when I realized what was really wrong. I was putting too much emphasis on the negative, and talking through a cliche perception of who I think I am to other people, that I wrote during a period of reading too many Everyday Feminism articles, and watching a lot of Laci Green videos on Youtube in my spare time. The draft that I revised prior to sending it to UK-based online magazine, Talking Soup Magazine, (who recently decided to publish “Millennial Writing Life” by the way) focused on the aspects of the story that are extremely important: what I’ve accomplished, inner desires I’m still working on fulfilling, and my perception on Millennial stereotypes, that came up in articles I’ve read on Millennial issues, over and over again.
Now, whenever I read that essay I feel as if I’ve come along way since I wrote it; I’m proud to say I have the most fulfilling relationships with everyone I care about I’ve ever had, some of the changes and issues in all aspects of my life, that I was working through when I wrote it are slowly resolving themselves, and my freelance opportunities are getting better and better. If you get the chance to read “Millennial Writing Life,” when it’s published in Talking Soup Mag think of it as a story, of a journey’s beginning, and hopefully you’ll get something out of it.
