Recent Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies Alumnus Dr. Cathy Humikowski Discusses a Recent Essay Acceptance

Medicine taught me to be strict and precise, to stay in line and follow the rules. Medical education demanded perfection, exactitude. What would this new education [the Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Writing] demand?

The professor said we would work our asses off, and we did. She reminded us we were artists, truth-tellers. “Essay comes from the French verb for to try,” she said.

We talked about structure and craft and I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew it was safe to find out. It was safe to struggle. It was safe to try.

I wrote freely, quickly, with urgency. I shed the formality of medical writing, where an editor once told me to omit the word sex. I used profanity and improper grammar on purpose and found a satisfying combination of relief and gratitude when the workshop liked my first essay, however scrambled and rough. I built confidence and trust. I loosened up.

I wrote my second essay, “Thursday’s Child,” in a single day, the Friday after the 24-hour period enclosing the main timeline of the essay. There was no narrative distance, only raw necessity to get the story onto the page as quickly as possible so I could hold it, shape it, own it. It’s about my work in the pediatric ICU, braided with the collective trauma of gun violence. It’s the kind of material one must extrude quickly.

I brought the first draft to workshop the following week and the reception seemed hesitant, flat. My classmates, all of them careful and kind, were also honest. “It feels really bleak,” one said. A few others offered tips on places to clarify, provide context, and soften the language. Trying to sound positive, someone said, “I liked the sentence about riding home in your Subaru. I could really picture that.”

As the classroom emptied, the professor called me to stay behind. I thought she was going to give me a pep talk, like Hey, chin up, kid. We all flop sometimes.

“They hated it,” I started. “It’s okay, I can take it.”

“You need to publish this,” she said. “Immediately.”

I trusted her as a writer, and I was beginning to trust myself. If I believed this essay had something important to say, did it matter that my workshop didn’t like it yet? What makes an essay good?

I don’t know the answer to that, but I am learning what makes an essay better. I incorporated feedback from my workshop and softened the writing in places. I provided more context and added details to enhance intimacy, taking inspiration from the Subaru line. I asked permission from named characters to share their stories. I contemplated the idea that someone outside my workshop might read this thing, and then I craved it.

Over the course of a year, “Thursday’s Child” was rejected by twelve literary magazines. Some were too lofty, some were contests, some never replied. I kept submitting anyway, either because I believed the story should be told or I was too stubborn to give up.

When the acceptance email came from River Teeth, the nonfiction literary magazine at Ball State University, I clasped my hand over my mouth like a bewildered gameshow contestant. They said they loved it and were honored to publish it. Their email also included stats on their acceptance rate, which I had read averaged around one percent for most literary magazines and River Teeth confirmed theirs was no different. (It’s far easier to get accepted to medical school.) In that context, twelve rejections seemed like a quaint little beginning.

In other words, keep at it. Because essay comes from the French verb for to try.