so ahead of the curve that the curve became a square (more musings from 2015)

So I’m sixteen and there are times when I feel like I’m not “good” enough for the literary world. I’ve gone to summer writing camp before, read the sample winning pieces from contests; I’m not the kind of writer who can just write about Jean-Marc and Pierre questioning the meaning of life as they eat excruciatingly detailed butter croissants and watch the object of both of their affections and the reason behind their future friendship break-up (Genevieve-Marie) recline on the red velvet plush seat of the train car. Nor am I the kind of writer who writes about the emotionally distant father and the way the crossword puzzles in his eyes grazed the white piano keys of destruction until they turned red and blue and black again. I’m Korean, but I don’t write about the dried lotus petals a dying mother keeps tucked away in a jewelry box to remind her of the home she lost. I write the way I write, with an unmistakable immaturity (due to, you know, my youth) that I can’t shake off but need to accept for now in order to preserve my self-esteem. 

I have elitist wannabe-precocious problems that Yahoo Answers can’t solve like “Plz Helpp!!: I’m 16 and haven’t read any Nietzsche and I don’t identify as an atheist or a ‘Buddhist.’ Does that mean I won’t get into any MFA programs when I grow up?” And I’m aware that I’m only allowed to be asking these questions as a sixteen-year-old. Nobody will give a crap that I’ve read Nietzsche when I turn twenty-two; if I mentioned that as a twenty-two year old, everybody would just groan and talk about how I think I know everything because I took half a semester of philosophy at college. So my question is not “Is this normal?” but rather, “Why does this bother me so much?” What is so wrong about being someone who writes “genre” fiction? What’s so wrong about not being precocious?