Author: Elizabeth Clapp

I discovered the magic of Google Drive in the July of 2013, during a writing camp in which our instructors would look and suggest edits on our assignments. It was revolutionary. Now, instead of passing back and forth a piece of crinkled piece of college-ruled paper between my friends, playing the ‘write one line and pass it on’ game, we could edit something together in real-time, all night or day long.

Below our works-in-progress we would have a comments section where we’d talk about our days or ideas for the story. We would create a shorthand to indicate whose turn it was (beginning with the use of emojis, evolving to just the use of an asterisk), and using the acronym bbe for ‘be back eventually’. If someone was on their computer, it was their responsibility to indent for the school-issued iPad users. Underneath the chat, we’d have a page count, a list of important in-story dates, and keep track of how many times we wrote common words like ‘said’. We hated the word giggle.

This led to multiple stories reaching 100 pages, 200 pages, 400 pages… None of these were written to be published. We even swore in some instances for them to never to touch the light of day. They were purely created for the sake of writing, for the sake of spending time together by bonding over character arcs and development and world building. Some of the best nights of my teenage life were spent taking my computer everywhere in the house, eating dinner in my room, hunched over with a blinking cursor with my friend’s name on it.

And those stories will remain in the dark, in the nostalgic locker of our minds for us to look fondly back on. Made by us, for us. Just us.

Recently a few friends mentioned how they miss those times, how they may want to write again, collaboratively, but it would no longer feel the same. I have to agree. It won’t feel the same. We now have “real-world” obligations, job schedules, college classes. Our valuable time can’t be ‘wasted’ by creating something that would never be shown to anyone else. We aren’t the same people we were in 2014,15,16,17…

I haven’t written fiction in years, at least not by myself. I recently kicked up the dirt on the grave of a short story I started writing around 2016, in the summer after 10th grade. I’m too self conscious to even share it now, though I did back when I started writing. Writing collaboratively gives you that immediate satisfaction and a sense of approval, someone else there to confirm your ideas and see something from a different angle. It also gives motivation to keep writing, makes you excited to text ‘I’m on the doc’.

How I long to be as confident as that 12-year-old, 6th grader Elizabeth who published fan-fiction online. Who carried her sketchbook around, open for all to see, full of art (illustrating my fan-fiction of course), enthusiastic for people to paw through it. I was a 6th grader, and it was acceptable to be ‘bad’ at things because maybe we were good at it for our age, and if nothing else it was certain we could get better. My peers would compliment my work, I was the designated artist or writer for school projects, it made me feel so good about myself.

How harsh 19-year-old Elizabeth is on herself, only 7 years later. I am most comfortable writing nonfiction nowadays, specifically about myself. It’s hard to get that wrong (it mostly entails googling how old people are in certain grades). Yes, people can still have an opinion about it, but writing fiction opens up a whole new level of criticism. Dialogue issues, world building inconsistencies, character diversity, plot holes, background stories. I get scared to even see another cursor on a Google Doc. Scared of them seeing my every backspace and error. Not to mention that I now attend an art school, where people are artistically gifted way beyond anything I have ever been capable of doing. If I am the most artistic and creative person in my family, but I feel barely adequate as an ‘artist’, what am I?

Criticism, even if it is never verbalized, terrifies me. But there’s no way for me to get better if I never try, or put anything out there to fail in the first place. There’s never going to be a ‘right time’ to do anything. That’s a very cliche conclusion and even knowing or acknowledging that doesn’t feel very helpful. I’m still very self conscious of my art and writing out of my comfort zone. I’m not quite sure how to get out of the rut. Except the whole “stop caring about what people think of you and make what you want to make” thing, which is easier said than done.