Everyone wants to know how you become a writer
like how do you write
like how do you get paid
like when do you get to call yourself a writer
is it when you talk about writing or
when you write?
mfa or nyc
mfa or diy
mfa or die
mfa or [ ]
the great literary debate and it doesn’t even include
sex
or
death
what a waste
spent 7 years in college to be taken seriously
taught poetry at a college for nothing
at a men’s jail for something
buttoned up my blouse all the way and pretended to be older
You a writer miss?
No, she’s Taylor Swift
You just graduate high school to teach high school?
at night, after teaching poetry in the jail I poured 5-dollar beers into plastic cups for tourists
Jack London’s old bar
a literary place with literary drunks
“What else you do?”
“You’re looking at it.”
(fight the urge to say:
I’m in college
I’m a teacher
I’m a serious person
please just fucking adore me)
“you’re probably too young to have read White Fang”
Now he was a real man
a real writer
writers aren’t shit now
I’m toying with an idea for a book now (they all say)
Jack London died at 40
alcoholic
his wife Charmain typed all his later works
he drank
smoked
dictated to her.
(she was also
a writer,
her husband’s editor
she goes down in history
as
his typist
if she is
written about at all)
At the bar I imagined
never coming back
getting a real job
getting taken seriously
being a professional writer
one where people don’t ask
but what pays the bills?
Now I’m on unemployment
lost one job in the pandemic and left another
fight the urge to explain my situation daily
now I just want a job that pays me
buys time to make art
give me an apron and someone who looks down on me
assume I’m a slacker
set the bar low
lower
in my free time I review books by real writers
it’s how I’m using my degree(s)
read something I hated
wrote about it in a tempered manner
lots of 5-dollar words to talk a lot of shit
not much nice to say about the book but I liked when she wrote
“That’s poetry. . . life and sex and cruelty. Not something you learn in community college. Not something you write in a notebook.”
my favorite writer is a college drop-out
she never claimed to be a professional writer
she writes emails in all lowercase and asks questions like
How much does your art mean to you?
What will you sacrifice for it?
sometimes I think she’s the only one asking the right questions
She is the true GOAT
***
Shelby Hinte is a writer and teacher in California. She is a regular contributor to Write or Die Tribe and a fiction reader at No Contact. Her writing and criticism have been featured in BOMB Magazine, ZYZZYVA, Hobart, Entropy, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere.
***
image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 