wine and cheap perfume

One of my professors just told me that my writing "witty, hard-edged, and urban." To hear this from an accomplished author is so exciting there aren't words. It could have been because her evaluation form is due next week and she wanted a flattering write-up, but still. Ever since I started grad school I've been wracked with insecurities about my writing. To be around so many other people aspiring to do exactly what I do is intimidating, especially because many of them do it better. Well, not better, per se. But smarter. My writing tends to be very energized but superficial, and I think it is because I have a pathological fear of delving deeper and discovering nothing but a gaping hole of mediocrity. So I can write about ex-cons and facial peels and all the odd little things that I encounter in my silly little life and have a good enough time doing it that I don't feel the need for introspection. Which is cowardly and lame. It's time to take the bull by the horns, whatever the hell that means.