Worlds Away

In a week and two days, I will be on my way to the Macondo Writers Workshop in Texas ("Macondo"). Macondo was founded by the writer Sandra Cisneros and takes place in San Antonio. It is a group of socially engaged writers who understand a "global sense of community." See http://www.macondowriters.com.

Years before, I had seen references to the Macondo Writing Workshop (see Marquez's Hundred Years of Solitude for the origin of the name) when I first started writing again and had downloaded their application. It was onerous.

The Macondo application required you to meet a number of categories (social justice, published essays/stories and working with established writers) and I started filling it out. Soon, I realized I was far short of meeting any of the categories' requirements. At the time, I was a business litigator for a large law firm. In my head I was socially engaged, but in reality, I was a sell-out. And, my only published work was a legal article about insurance coverage. Shit.

Now, a decade later, things have changed. After years of writing and placing memoir pieces and essays in journals and magazines, I more than met their creative writing publication requirements and in my job as a deputy public defender representing the mentally ill, I am an advocate for social and legal change on a daily basis. Add in my legal writing and some encouragement to apply from a close writing mentor friend and I applied and got in.

It still feels surreal. Most days, I am still that little girl sitting on top of the roof looking down at the world below hoping my parents will stop fighting so I can slip inside and go to sleep. The Go-Go's song "Worlds Away" captures it, that feeling of wanting to escape the chaos. The chorus and last lines say it best,

"I wanna be worlds away
Apart from the day to day
I know I'll be okay
When I get worlds away
Worlds away
Worlds away

Slipping away to somewhere
In my heart
Go to a world where no one's been before
That's when I find myself
Not quite sleeping
But still dreaming
And I'm worlds away" (The Go-Go's)

In my day to day life as a defense attorney, I have confidence. I have to. But my writing persona is another matter. There is always a voice in the back of my head telling me that I am not good enough. That my work is crap. That I can't write. That my voice is juvenile. That I will never finish my book.

But sometimes, when the words flow and I lose myself in a story, it feels magical, right and true. It is in those moments that I know I am meant to be a writer.

As a little girl, I used to dream myself into stardom (much like the Judy Blume character in "Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself"). In my head, I was a famous singer on stage with Sean Cassidy. Or an actress on The Brady Bunch. And sometimes, even a writer.

The fact that the latter dream may be coming true is incredible and makes me want to be present, To be there, in the moment, relishing each and every minute, in the very world I have created for myself from the chaos.