What "Beginner" Really Looks Like

A story of being humbled and also reminded

While my days of being a devoted runner are in the rearview (kind of can’t believe it was a full decade ago that I spent my summer marathon training, but alas), I still do enjoy it as a form of exercise, and go through phases of getting more into it, then backing off when some part of my body inevitably complains about the increased wear and tear. Because I still subscribe to the Peloton platform, I like choosing runs when I’m on the treadmill, and my favorite genre will forever be “Advanced Beginner”, because that is always, even with a marathon under my belt, how I feel about running. I have experience, I have miles logged, but my speed and my on-again-off-again relationship with the sport will always relegate me to “Beginner” status in some way.

I often think of myself as an Advanced Beginner writer, as well. Multiple manuscripts, a couple agents, some small successes. But still not at the point of publication, of the book deal, of having that mark that has said “You made it”. In fact, every time I start a new project I find myself googling and cobbling together new systems for trying to write a book, as if there’s a way to optimize that process. Sure there are formulas and beat sheets and things like that, but they never work the way my brain does and as a result I start every project feeling once again like a Beginner, though with enough experience to label myself also “Advanced”.

But is that true? Am I still technically a beginner?

I learned through another art form that I am further along down the path than I give myself credit for. This school year we had an in-house PD day and one of the options was spending time at the pottery wheel. I jumped at the opportunity, having never tried wheel-thrown pottery before (and being a good twenty years removed from any art class). I had grand visions of artful, hand-shaped mugs, a bowl, something wonderful.

Instead, I made this:

Barely high enough to constitute an ash tray, thick-walled, an in-between brown/khaki/sludge color. In every way, in every definable metric, the identifiable work of a beginner. Nothing about pottery came naturally, not the rhythm of the wheel nor the way I was supposed to contort my body. This was the best I could do in a new-to-me art form, with what I thought was some artistic ability. No. The clay humbled me, the wheel laughed at my beginner’s efforts.

Now, when I start a book, I like to think I produce something greater than the novel equivalent of this sad, barely-formed bowl. Even if I’m starting over every time, the muscles I developed in writing the prior books activate along the way, the knowledge cobbled together from ten craft books in a trench coat. My inner metronome leads me to craft beautiful sentences, to make each chapter about the same length, to think about things like motivations and backstory and pacing while not really thinking about them anymore (at least in drafting—revision certainly holds space to be more intentional).

So while I was no ceramics wunderkind, nor am I a writing one (hello 40th birthday on the horizon), I have certainly sunk enough seconds/minutes/hours in pursuit of my craft to start considering myself perhaps an intermediate. And anyway, we’re all still learning all of the time (with the exception of your Harlan Coben type folks who found a formula that sells and stuck to it). I relish the words of my agents other clients as they write about not quite getting right, reading other authors post about the roughest parts of their process. There is no one formula in this business. But it is nice to enter my thirteenth summer writing towards publication and know that I actually have come pretty far already, and that the second half of my life lays in front of me, with stories to write and hone and share (and maybe I’ll get into pottery in retirement, who knows).

Reading this week:

Kind of like if All Fours by Miranda July was good (ha, inside joke, I hated that book so much). Totally terrible, entertaining, mess of a main character, set in 2007/2010 and just done so brilliantly in that way. Taking suggestions for summer reads now.

Dinner this week:

I mashed together several recipes I’d found on the internet for various different meals and roasted chunks of halloumi on the same tray as chickpeas. After a while, added an additional sheet pan with yellow papers, shallots, and cherry tomatoes. Served over polenta. No pictures, I feel like “bowl meals” are so unappetizing, but this was good and easy.

My week ahead should yield time to work on my WIP and feel like I’m back in it—the end of the school year/boys birthdays time narrows my life down to its responsibilities in those arenas and squeezes out things like writing, and exercising, and being more mindful. Onward!