tenth.

Here it is, friends, the final blog post. I won't be keeping up with this after the class, but it's been real. No, really, it has. I have honestly and truly been writing in this blog.

I think out of all of my semesters here, I've learned the most about peer editing through this one. I came here knowing that peer editing is scary, and I still believe that. I knew that people don't actively want to hate on you for writing something (with some exceptions, natch, but you're always going to find those), and I still know that. But when it comes to the actual critique part, where I sit there and listen to my story being read out loud or watch people reading it and I hate hearing the words I wrote coming from anyone's mouth, even my own, I think I've improved a bit.

Sure, I still dread having to sit there, mouth shut, listening to people say what didn't work. But then again, I've always tried to be a "first time perfect" writer. And that, readers, is incredibly stupid and one of the worst things you can do. I mean it. There is always, always, always something to fix. Even when you fixed that, there's something else.

So going into a crit session, ready to say "fuck you, I wrote it and it's fine," isn't going to help me much. Or at all. And going in there, ready to break down because I thought it was perfect, what I wrote, and hearing that it's not is the biggest blow to my ego and my judgment? Also not going to help.

It's one of those things I've known on a subconscious level for a long time, but never bothered to really think about or accept. A single piece of crit, no matter how gently-worded, would've ruined my day years ago. Now I just take it, grateful, and use it to get even better at what I love doing.

We've done a good job here, classmates.

ninth.

Almost at the end. Trying out a bit of CNF practice instead of the usual posts about me and my thoughts-- oh dammit.

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"Grandma wants to know if you've written anything new lately."

It's a question I dread hearing. Awful poetry? Check. Roleplaying with friends that I've passed off to my family as "collaborative writing" so that they don't think I'm completely wasting my time? Check. New stories that she can't even read because by now that computer-looking machine in the room that was once my grandpa's study won't help her see the words? Check.

There's a poem she has in the house, framed, in her kitchen. I wrote it seven years ago and she hasn't taken it down. My dad keeps telling me she liked that poem and that he liked that poem.

I hate that poem.

I look back on things and they're clumsy.

"We liked the story you wrote, about the girl and the violin."

The one I wrote six years ago. I hate that story.

For me, it's not like looking back on something and realizing I've improved. It's looking back and realizing it was never good, and what was I thinking when I wrote it? What are they thinking, praising it this far down the line like it's still some kind of work of art?

You tell your kid, "you're an artist!" when they smear fingerpaints on a large piece of paper, on your old shirt you loaned them as an art smock, on their skin. You tell your kid, "you write so well!" when they do a paper for school or when they write a poem that's decent for a young teenager with delicate emotions.

But I'm older than that and my grandma deserves something better in that frame than something composed on a dirty school bus, typed up and saved on a floppy disk because I didn't have a flash drive yet.

At the time, I thought it was good enough to share. Now, nothing is. I don't have achievements, I have scraps to hide away. I don't have things to be proud of, but she keeps thinking there is. She wants to be proud.

At the time, she would tell me she didn't think she'd live to see me graduate high school.

Then it was my brother.

Now here I am, six months from graduating college and she's still there, but I don't think she can see it anyway with how bad her eyes are.

I think, when I graduate, first I'll read off the text on my diploma. And after that, I'll read something that's mine.