Hey everyone, I’ve been sick for quite a while (just a cold but it never feels like just a cold does it?) after my daughter got over an ear infection the past week. On top of that, we’ve been back and forth between places and are also packing to go to different places. I’m also just a few weeks away from my 31st birthday as well as my first ever short story published in print (Island Magazine thank you!!).
And yet, I feel sort of creatively stuck. I’ve been wishing (like I used to when I was a kid) for a writerly anti-mom (uber-mom?? ultra-mama!) figure who’s part witch and all librarian to go all tough-love on my ass and just…kind of magic away my problems. Since I don’t have this (quite the opposite, alas), I decided I’d just do it for myself. What else is being a writer for, after all?
And because I hadn’t sent y’all something for a while, I thought I’d share it with you too! Here goes:
Writer’s block is real and you should respect it. Toni Morrison said this, and she’s smarter than whatever productivity bro told you to push through. Sometimes it’s blocked because it’s not ready. Walk away. Read a book. Stare at the ceiling. The thing will come when it comes.
Reading counts as writing. I’m serious. If you spent six months doing nothing but inhaling novels and poems, you’d come back to the page a better writer than if you’d forced yourself through six months of joyless morning pages. Stop feeling guilty about the book in your hand.
Finish the bad thing. I know it’s gone sideways. I know you’ve lost the thread. But if it flows when you sit down, freakin’ finish it anyway. A drawer full of half-drafts teaches you less than trying to fix a finished mess.
Your jealousy is useful. When you read someone and feel that specific sting in your chest — hey, that’ s a beautiful thing, ya goon. That’s your taste showing you what you want to do. Don’t you scroll past it! Sit with it, with them, those gorgeous unattainables. Figure out what they did and how they got there. Emulate the shit out of good stuff.
Nobody cares about your routine. The cabin, the special pen, the 5am alarm. Process-fetishism is procrastination in a pretty cardigan. You can write on your phone in a parking lot. Write with your mascara-tinged tears, for all I care.
Most writing problems are structure problems. You’re fussing with sentences when the real issue is that your piece doesn’t know where it’s going or the form it wants to take You’ve got the wrong entry point, or you’re burying the thing that matters on page five, or you’re circling the same idea three times without realizing it. Zoom the fuck out.
Write the thing that scares you. The one you keep circling. The one you think about in the shower but won’t put on paper because wHaT wOuLd PeOpLe ThInK!? Ugh, that’s so never ago. My dear, people rarely think. Who are these people anyway? I can bet you they’re not thinking about you, at the very least.
Your first draft is supposed to be humiliating. If you’re not a little embarrassed by it, you’re probably editing while you write, which means you’re not actually reeaalllly drafting. Let it be bad. Let it be real reaaaal nastay. That’s it’s whole existential purpose.
You don’t need permission. No, really. You don’t need an MFA or even a publication credit, not a single byline my friend, and nor a mentor tapping you on the shoulder (though this right here could be that if you need it!). You just decide you’re a writer and then you do the work. It’s unsatisfying and it’s true.
The publishing industry’s opinion of your work has almost nothing to do with its quality. Books get rejected for market reasons, timing reasons, vibes reasons, reasons that have nothing to do with whether the writing is good. Some of the best books I know took years to find a home. Some of the worst sold at auction. This industry is chaos. Write anyway.
Note on Art: This painting1 by Hwang Hyeyoung shows a girl who becomes her own house, or maybe the house becomes her—legs sprawled on the grass, eyes peering out from the rooftop. I found this while looking for something that felt like the inside of a writer's head. I love also the concrete letters above the doorway: DREAM. The dream is real and alive and mysterious and a kind of warning yet also a promise. Be the dream itself, dear writer.
Image: Little House © Hwang Hyeyoung. 2022. Used for editorial commentary purposes only. All rights reserved.
Well, I also don't have a writerly ultra-mama who's part witch and all librarian either, and now that you've mention that, it does sound pretty appealing, especially in March, when things always kind of suck, and I just missed a deadline I wanted to submit for. But we do have you, reminding us what's important and what's not. the next best thing! Thanks.
Co-sign and friendly amendment...which is already implied here: it's all writing. All of life, walking around, muttering, the shower, that stupid idea rattling around in your head, the friend you haven't seen in ages... it's all the writing...not just the sitting down and writing part.