Reflecting on Write of Passage

And a quick treatise on critical gratitude

David Perell promoting Write of Passage

Write of Passage ended on November 11 with us, lucky cohort #13.

WOP was an intense 5-week writing bootcamp by David Perell based on a novel idea: writing is social. Most graduates hail the program as life-changing.

I can’t say that yet. I could be on the cusp of something transformational, but we’ll see. I’ll report back in a year. (Never hire me for marketing copy. I would write gems like “Is the product good? It depends.”)

Since it’s Thanksgiving weekend in the great US of A, I wrote this simple reflection sans the pressure of making it the best thing I’ll ever write. Let’s begin with a quick treatise on critical gratitude.

*

Write of Passage feels like a person I’ve come to know intimately—brilliant, frustrating, and utterly human. Gratitude for such a character isn’t simple. Then again, gratitude is quite elusive for me. I feel it easily when I enter the shade of a tree in the Arizona heat. But when it comes to people, I am grateful for actions and specific, isolated characteristics. Ask me about the whole person and I’m in trouble.

Perhaps it’s about the unknowable. I almost never see someone wholly, so I can’t appreciate the depth. And when I get the opportunity to dive, I find conflicting traits. No surprise there since people are wonderfully hypocritical and imperfect. But if I know someone and I stay, it means I’m really serious about them. It means I care. If I didn’t, I’d say nothing at all or something superficial and performative.

While I believe others can express pure gratitude for people, it just doesn’t work that way in my mind. For me, gratitude for people is about reconciliation and contrast. Aka critical gratitude. But before we get into it, I’ll start with pure gratitude. The shit sandwich method, if you will.

*

First, I made a self-discovery. I have three parts: the Writer, Reader, and Editor. The Writer is often in agony, swinging between intense emotions. Then it gets a reprieve by becoming the Reader, who might not like or care about what it reads. But the Editor loves every piece it touches. And judging by the positive reactions to its feedback, others seem to love the Editor too. Let’s hope the praise doesn’t inflate its already big head.

People say the Editor goes above and beyond, but I don’t think so. Giving feedback is a gift to me. I get something meaty to sink my teeth into, a portion of someone’s soul. Sometimes I’m delicate with a piece, but sometimes I scramble it up, lovingly, so it looks like a Picasso. I’m sculpting raw, messy material, and it reflects back my own soul. When I get to know someone’s writing, I rough it up and hope it loves me back. It’s a process that feels similar to critical gratitude.

Second, I wrote and published all three essays I set out to create. Each one is personal yet quite different from one another:

• Suicide is a Scream, a Meme, and a Killer Joke is provocative. I took a taboo, injected dark humor, then blended it with personal experience, cultural analysis, and copious footnotes as an ode to David Foster Wallace. This was the most fun essay to write; I laughed out loud finding the memes and writing the killer joke.

• Regretting Non-Motherhood is raw. I grieve a recent breakup over the question of whether to have children or not, starting the essay with my mind locked in a circular debate before stepping into my heart and ending on a bittersweet memory. This was the most healing essay to write; I started to scab over a fresh wound.

• I Let My Mom Get Crypto Scammed And I’m Happy About It is unsparing. I reflect on how lifelong family dysfunction led to losing it all, culminating in a cathartic reckoning. This was the essay I signed up to write first, but had to write last; I needed to become something beyond my initial stories first.

To my surprise, I'm happy and proud of each one. So in this I met WOP’s promise: you will write 3 pieces better than anything you’ve ever written before.

Third, I met some damn good editors. Two in particular went above and beyond:

CansaFis Foote

and

Rose

.

CansaFis elevated each essay beyond what I could have imagined. He found the sprouting flower between the cracks in others’ feedback, and guided me in watering it to full bloom. He even gave contrarian advice, against both the crowd and his own personal preference, if he thought the piece needed it.

Rose excelled at identifying narrative beats and flaws, sensitive to the nuances and feel of a word, sentence, and paragraph. She knew if I was trying to flee or lie, and reeled me back in each time. And her line-by-line edits were flawless too; I paid close attention to where she was bored and where she was enjoying the melody.

If I were anyone else, I would end my reflection right here. But no reflection of mine is complete without salt to balance the sugar. So, let’s dive into the shit portion of the sandwich.

*

I paid $1,000 and WOP was worth it at that price point. I’m uncertain about the value at the full price of ~$4,000.

First, I was surprised that WOP discouraged opinions on the quality of ideas. In idea gyms (Zoom sessions where two people are paired up to share ideas), we were meant to listen and support the other person, not share whether we thought an idea was good or bad. But to me, good ideas are a key part of good writing; there’s only so much prose you can put on a pig. So I ignored this guideline for my own writing, netting good results. My first essay would never have emerged from its unrecognizable first draft without feedback that separated the good idea from the slop.

Second, I was close to quitting in the first two weeks. There were several instances where both official representatives and cohort members were dismissive of my first writing topic (recovering from suicidal ideation). I got a strong impression that dark personal writing should be hidden away and tagged with a bunch of trigger warnings. So I avoided most gyms in the first two weeks, worried that I would ruin someone’s day if they got paired with me. It wasn’t fun to feel like the black sheep.

On reflection, that’s BS. Trigger warnings make sense for a general audience, but a serious writing program of all places should welcome uncomfortable, boundary-stretching work. I conclude that WOP is a far better fit for people writing about a family friendly niche or growing a business audience. The program probably should have rejected scholarship applications like mine, since I was forthcoming about my no-no topics. Nonetheless, they accepted me, and eventually I made peace with being the odd one out, thanks to some other oddball flock. <3

Third, I kept running into gatekeeping and hostility with my approach to building connections. For instance, when I asked to connect with other scholarship winners since I wasn’t able to organically find many, instead of receiving a list of names, I was told to find people I resonated with.

It’s one thing to not want to host scholarship get-togethers, but the reasoning was frustrating. I joined a writing program for diversity of thought, not to find people I already vibe with. Meeting a mind foreign to me is such a delight, even if we don’t end up as friends. Besides, in my personal experience and my understanding of network theory from a data science program, it is weak ties that lead to the greatest and most surprising outcomes, not strong ties.

Since I can increase the surface area of luck through large, shallow networks, I’m going to keep wandering beyond the vibe fields. WOP shepherds may prefer to herd me back or even bleach my wool white to be more palatable. To that I say, no thank you. Let the black sheep baa in peace.

*

To end on gratitude: I’m genuinely grateful I met some roadblocks.

When something other than my family triggers a fight response, I listen to it, especially since I rarely get angry. Over the years I've realized that my angry part loves me the most. It wants me to speak up for myself. So here I am, stewing in critical gratitude and setting new boundaries.

It’s okay if someone dismisses or doesn’t want to edit my work. During WOP, I would still muster up the enthusiasm to engage with them and their work, no matter how coldly they treated me. But now, it means our relationship ends at an impasse. Quid pro quo. Equivalent exchange. I won’t read or edit their work either. A devastating loss for them, I know. They’ll never be able to recover.

I also won’t stew for long. That’s the beauty of writing; once the words are clearly inked, the mind settles down. From that stillness emerges a deep-seated resolve: to keep writing, to keep giving feedback, and to keep growing.

Perhaps that’s the life-changing aspect I can look forward to.

---

---

Thanks for the feedback on this reflection:

Eddy

,

Anthony Marigold

,

Rose

, &

Nat Lee

post publication which prompted me to add a line for clarity re: scholarships

I’m keeping up with the post-WOP momentum here:

• Michael Sklar
  ’s Personal Cartography

• Michael Dean
  ’s Essay Club

• And all of these great gyms hosted by:

  CansaFis Foote
  ,
  Maksim
  &
  Danny Oak
  , Promise Tewogbola