The B student whine

I’m tired of being a B student. I am not a B student inside. I bulldozed through an IQ test a couple of weeks ago and got 133, but I felt I could have done better with a little revision beforehand. My GCSE results were erratic – As, Bs, Cs, Ds, Es, depending on whether I could be bothered or not. I did only two A levels because I had fibromyalgia, I got an A in the subject I worked on (English lit), and a D in the one I didn’t (sociology). I have a clear and rounded understanding of sociology, I just couldn’t be bothered to learn the quotes. I got a 2:1 in my degree, and I felt like they gave it to me out of sympathy, because of the fibromyalgia. When I did my MA in writing, I really really wanted a distinction. I got a high pass. But so many people were close to getting a distinction and didn’t get them.

I know I’m brainier than my academic results: not many people can go from being computer illiterate to .NET programmer in two years. My technical abilities rapidly outstripped those of the guy who introduced me to HTML. I went from writing Really TERRIBLE Poetry to actually fairly decent poetry in a couple of months, and that was just through self-discipline and research. I never got any real feedback.

The thing is, I don’t want to be a B student at writing. I want to be really, really good. I don’t want to disappear from the shelves of Waterstones after four weeks, like some authors I know and have read. Apparently it takes a writer an average of seven years to build up an income sufficient to live on their writing alone. I say FIE to your seven years!

I want to be Angela Carter. I want to be Jeanette Winterson. I want to be Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath… I don’t want to be Margaret Atwood, I have strangely hostile feelings towards her (if I examine them, perhaps I’ll discover jealousy amongst them).

I don’t want to be ordinary. I don’t want to get a car/settle down/1.8 kids/mortgage hell/office working in a prefab/staring out of a dull window at a grey sky all day. Little boxes little boxes every one the same.

I want to be Princess Grace, have a roof garden, write books, go to parties, be famous and notorious and have all critics describe my great works as postmodern/feminist/nonsense and live on after I die as A Great Female Author of the 21st Century.

My sister is going to be on Panorama in her role as an officer of the law. She just can’t seem to stay away from the limelight. “We think you have the right idea Emma,” said the folks back home over the phone this evening. “A nice safe desk job.”

My parents see me as the ordinary one, and my sister as the extraordinary one! You can’t possibly imagine how irritating that is to me. I am the Cinderella! I am the one with the unrecognised virtue! LOOK at ME!

I wanted to be an author from the age of eight. Already I am twenty eight, and I have wasted twenty years of my life.