Shanon Adame

I have had to take a bit of a writing hiatus as I pushed my way through finals, completing a thesis, term papers, and work.

Now, I have three glorious weeks of no commitments sans work. I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier in a day while drinking Earl Grey tea and snacking on cookies. I drove around Townsend, Tennessee with my husband while demolishing a cup of spicy boiled peanuts from a roadside stand and washing them down with Mountain Dew. These may be tiny moments, but they brought me so much happiness.

As we inch closer and closer to Christmas, I’ve had three things on my mind – the beginnings of a new year, a recent residency rejection I received, and a strange conversation I had.

I love New Year  – the idea of fresh starts and clean slates may be cliché, but I eagerly devour them. The excitement of starting anew, growing, and guiding the new year in the direction you want it to go – even if it veers off-course later, are all things that give me hope and motivation.

Every year, I compile a list of resolutions (see! I told you – cliché’) and do my best to stick with them. Some are the more standard resolutions: eat healthier, no social media until 9am, spend more time outdoors…but some get a little more specific, like – stop watching eating disordered people on YouTube (don’t ask, just know that I was successful).

This year, I am committing to not making myself small and to being unapologetic about taking up space. This leads me to the conversation I have been mulling over for almost a year with a well-meaning albeit misguided fellow writer. I had just written an op-ed that I was trying to get published.

 I decided the best course of action was to start submitting to the most prestigious papers and then work my way downward. I figured with no submission fees, I had nothing to lose. I even received a response from The Washington Times, and even though it was a rejection, it was a personal response that I felt lucky to receive.

I was telling this writer about my experience submitting my op-ed. When I said I started by submitting to The New York Times, she looked at me wide-eyed and said, “Oh, you don’t want to start big like that! Start small.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. I feel as though for most of my adult life, I have started small, kept myself small, and allowed others to dictate my size, never feeling quite good enough in any arena I was in, whether it was dance, theatre, or school. I always felt like I should just be grateful for the little I allowed myself to have and was too scared to want more.

But I did want more and still do.

When I started writing again, I decided it would be, “Go big or go home.” I wasn’t going to be scared to submit; I wasn’t going to worry about all the other wonderful writers out there. I wasn’t going to say things like, “I’m trying to write,” or “I’m an aspiring writer,” I was going to say, “I do, and I am.”

And the practice of thinking big and taking up space has served me well. It’s helped me open the doors to experiences I wouldn’t have had otherwise, which leads me to the rejection I have been thinking about.

I applied for the 2024 Steven Kemp Residency through the Great Smoky Mountain Association. The residency allows its selected resident to stay in the national park for six weeks to write.

The small me would never have applied for it, thinking I was too green. The big me unapologetically applied with writing samples from my Medium account and articles I wrote for the student paper.

While I wasn’t awarded the residency, I was in the final 16 they were considering, which, honestly, is farther than I thought I would get.

As we move into 2024, I encourage you to assess the size you keep yourself and your dreams. Don’t listen to the people who tell you to start small; you deserve all the bigness you can muster.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!