My inspiration doesn't flow on a poetry wavelength, but I want to post this Marge Piercy poem which always hits home for me and applies to this week's blogging prompt.

For the Young Who Want To, Marge Piercy

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

However, along with my thesis and the rest of my classes, I'll be working on applications to MFA programs this semester. Not because I want the diploma to frame, as I think my science-major friends will laugh at me even with that kind of recognition of my moxie (what a good word).

I get into a good program that offers me a full-tuition waiver and teaching assistantship with monthly stipend and health insurance. Having finished Step Dance over the summer, I agonize over my query letter and send it to agents off a diligently-made spreadsheet of possibilities. As I go through my first inspiring and successful year at __ University, one agent agrees to take on my book.

“My coworkers think this kind of romance is too radical for teenage girls, but I disagree,” says my ideal agent. “I think this is going to be the sleeper hit of the summer.”

Of course, success doesn't matter to me. I'm above it. It's a good thing, too, because as I'm preparing to finish my M.F.A., Step Dance still hasn't sold. One more novel is finished and in a drawer in my agent's desk, another in its second draft on my computer. What do I do now? I've been working part-time at Barnes and Noble for the past four years. I remember my first manager, belly like a bowling ball under a plaid shirt, still “writing a novel,” the same novel, and annoying his entry-level employees by promenading up and down the aisles and not doing any work. Has my life really been leading up to that? Long-avoided student loans loom. A few days after graduation, when my friends and family have gone back to their real lives—though maybe by then I have a someone who stays—I call my agent. “I'm sorry,” is the first thing she says.

I keep writing, keep working at Barnes and Noble. During her quarter-life crisis, an old friend quits her job and asks to sleep on my couch for a few weeks. Late at night, like we've always done, we dream about the store we'd open if we could—sometimes a wine shop, sometimes a bakery, a bookstore, a cafe, and, our favorite, a combination of them all. “If we could? We can. Let's do it,” I say. Her stepfather's an asshole, but an entrepreneur and independently wealthy. “We'll write up a proposal and get him to back us.”

We do it and for the first time I feel like I'll be satisfied with my life if my hopes of being a Writer never come to pass. A few months after our cafe-bakery-bookstore with Friday night wine tastings is open, my agent calls. Two editors are interested in Step Dance and are starting a bidding war.

I get a six-figure, two-book deal and beautiful cover art to boot. Step Dance gets limited popularity, but a cult following, which is always better. The sequel gets some more notice and wins a Lambda award for Childrens/Young Adult Literature and is a finalist for the YALSA Margaret A. Edwards award. I find success matters more once someone else says I deserve it. Writing is still the best part of the day. Making cookies is a close second.