Someday I'll Edit "Paper Airplanes"
Revisiting from 2010 (essay included at end of post)
Most of what I’ll share here (hidden behind the paywall) only exists because I encountered the right prompt at the right time, and the prompts themselves were gold. Unlike most of what I’ll share here, this essay has had a bit of notoriety in the past (won an award and was published, separately), though it still isn’t what I’d call gold. Today I found some documentation of how this piece got started and how it’s changed over time, and while there is something there, it feels like mostly beginner’s luck!
Back in 2010, I was working privately with a writing teacher named Carol LaChappelle, who I’d originally met through StoryStudio Chicago. She’d written a book called Finding Your Voice, Telling Your Stories, which was just what I needed at the time. That July, Carol sent out a call for submissions for a book idea she had: Growing Up With Drunks: A Collective Memoir, and was looking for pieces 500-2500 words. It caught my eye for a couple of reasons, one being that 500 words is my sweet spot for writing.
I remembered there was a part in Carol’s book that described a childhood scene that she’d written a poem about, titled “Growing Up with Drunks,” and that it had felt eerily familiar to me. I went back to it and it put me right back in that place, with my own parents. The prompt that followed asked me to free write using “I remember” as a starter, and to bring up as many scenes and images that I could from a house I grew up in, and “Paper Airplanes” just flowed out of me.
I doubt I edited it much, if at all, before firing it off to the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition, which, if you don’t know, is A Very Big Deal. More to the point, I had no business sending them something I’d just written and had shown to nobody. I never even told anyone I submitted it, and I used a pen name. I was just sick and tired of never having anything to submit, so I sent it. I figured it would be my first rejection, and good to get it over with.
Imagine my surprise when I opened the email from Jessica Strawser, the editor of Writer’s Digest magazine, informing me that I’d won 61st place in the Memoir/Personal Essay division of their contest! I was at my desk at school and it was the end of the day. I ran down the stairs to the office in a blur, excited to tell my friend Shawne, who was a great supporter of my writing. We shrieked!
It was sweet to look back at the email this morning, which I still have, and to see how quickly I’d forwarded it to my best friend, Lisa. So, apologies to Lisa because she’s already seen this essay a LONG time ago and therefore is getting ripped off as a paid subscriber this month. Sorry about that, Sweetie.
I still think beginner’s luck had something to do with placing in the contest, given the fact that the essay was so raw. That and the judge, who I think maybe had a soft spot for a story like mine based on similarities to her own content. I later received a certificate with the pen name I’d given, which was also printed in the annual contest collection. I was so paranoid about keeping my writing private that I had deprived myself of the ability to enjoy this public accolade. I was waiting for capital “S” Someday to share my writing publicly, and it’s finally here!
