In case you’re just joining in, here’s the intro spiel:
Between writing coaching and The Core Stories Collective, I’ve been thinking and talking about writing, like, all the time. For months. And I still have more to say. So that’s what this Substack is for now: writing about writing, for writers and “writers” and wishful writers-to-be.
You’ll get a newslessay (a newsletter-essay, yeah?) in your inbox every Thursday from here on out. (Except if I’m sick! Also, vacations! And this schedule is subject to change. We’re experimenting.) Like the one below, each one will include a brief reflection on the practice of writing, plus a writing-related quote and a prompt offering.
For now, reading remains free. At the end of April, I plan to switch to a paid subscription model. Free subscribers will get one monthly email, while those paying the $7/month rate will get one each week.
If you’d like to set up your paid subscription now so you don’t miss future posts, just click here:
1 | ON WRITING AS RELEASE
I was supposed to start this essay — which was going to be focused on another message entirely — on Tuesday. But then I committed the writer’s cardinal sin: I looked at Twitter first. I saw the videos of the gleeful in-flight announcements that mask mandates had been struck down, the flight attendants strutting the aisles with their trash bags outstretched like prizes, the passengers removing their silly little masks and swirling them like confetti in that shared air, and I got so, so angry.
I could not write. I could not focus on anything but the roaring flames of rage. The smoke blocked my view of anything beyond it.
And so, I tried again to write on Wednesday morning. I tried different twists, different angles, different themes. And I still could not write anything decent, because nothing was appropriately urgent for a collective moment that felt so precariously ugly to me. Writing is usually about making sense, and when nothing makes sense, it can feel farcical to attempt to make sense of it.
Writing is a wonderful tool for tidying a sloppy mess into a cogent narrative; for unearthing the logic, the meaning, the moral. But I do not want to be tidy right now. I don’t want to perform the okayness that I’m already performing in most other zones of my life, when I nod at the maskless stranger who cuts ahead of me in line at the grocery store and say, “Sure, go ahead,” or when I tilt my frustrated texts to friends and family in the direction of optimism. I don’t want to be rational. I don’t want to find meaning. The fire is still right here.
And so now, it is Wednesday night, and I am trying for the third time to write something. I am looking around at the ashes. I am putting a hand on my heart. I am remembering what drew me to writing in the first place, when I was a kid just learning words: it let me let my feelings out. That was it. That was enough.
—
I stopped trying to write an “essay” and I started just…spilling, dumping, drenching the page in all of the emotions that were clogging up my writing pipes. At first, it looked something like this:
KJABDILUhfo9q7weyt0qhpwuojn;dkPH(U*SD7yt0w978edpruibjo;nxzkvfhpa9u8fsguibhkasha I AM SO MAD 09qwur-280jno;asjdf knasd WHAT THE ACTUAL BLEEPING BLEEPITY BLEEP BLEEEEEEEEP hjasdoiuasdnasdp9u8yw0r723hurnjdsf UN-BE-LIEV-ABLE ajnsdlkas123981dasuyet724bhjsdfihuasgodiasbfiuaslkjfljnsdflnjas THOSE BLEEPING MOTHERBLEEPERS ARE SO BLEEPING [redacted] aijsdoaouhsd9p8 IT HAS BEEN TWO WHOLE YEARS AND WE STILL Jabsdpiasdh97atd07w9e2r a90usd89aysdhuibjkn23 eznxfasd MILLIONS OF PEOPLE 0a8hsyd98uh23bijsdas08ydabjsd HOW DARE YOU oiasd98d823rhdandfasf [redacted]
And then, I was able to access some sentences that were a little more coherent, if not especially lovely, like:
You think a mask is so constricting? Try wearing a subcutaneous glucose sensor at all times, linked to an app that tends to buzz and beep at 3:27am or during very important meetings; try an insulin pump perpetually clipped to your bra or your pants, with long, wiry tubing that snags on door handles and drawer corners, the insertion site leaving red lumps on your skin. You think the mask just isn’t fun? Would you like to join me for a ride on the rollercoaster of my blood sugars? WheeeEEeeEeeeEEEEeeee, you’re hot and nauseous and sweating through your clothes, and now you’re shaking and your tongue is kind of vibrating, and oh, wait, whoops, now you’ve gone high again, grab that syringe as fast as you can, how’s that for fun!
And then, once the resentment was released, I could see the tenderness beneath it. I could see how all the rage was rooted in a desire to be seen and understood so I could feel safe — so we all can. But those strangers on those planes, they are never going to see me.
That’s what the page is for.
—
Guess what? You are allowed to write bad sentences. Your writing doesn’t have to be good, in any sense of the word.
You can write stories that don’t quite congeal, but simply free you from emotional overwhelm. You can write a rant down and delete it later when your temper cools. You can probe the depths of your sadness without making it meaningful. You don’t have to prove anything, solve anything, change anything.
Writing can be the one place you don’t instinctively edit yourself. It can be the space where you let yourself feel things out loud and process the stuff you’d never screech on the sidewalk.
In that notebook or that Microsoft Word document, you are safe to be pissed and petty. Throw yourself a pity party on the page. YELL.
When you write your feelings down, you become your attentive audience. You tell yourself that the hurt matters and that it’s worth witnessing. The healing starts there. When you suppress, submerge, avoid, or deny, the emotion still finds its way out somehow, and it’s more likely to injure others in the process.
Your writing practice is the perfect container to hold all of the too muchness you can’t contain yourself. Forget doing it right or well or prettily. Just do it.
2 | A QUOTE TO KEEP CLOSE
“Creativity flows from that realm of extremes. If I’m living in the MEH land of not caring enough, where I am just a person who’s pretty okay but not that remarkable, a person with an ordinary life? That’s not fruitful or interesting. Luckily, when I feel ordinary, what my head tells me is YOU ARE NO ONE AND NOTHING AND THERE IS NO CHANCE IN HELL THAT YOU’LL EVER MAKE ANYTHING MEMORABLE OR WORTHWHILE. Ironically, those words that block me are also words that free me — and you! Because even though we’re extremists at heart, and that’s sad, so sad for us, that’s also how we slip into that sublime space of understanding the drama inherent to being alive, the necessary weight and enormity of existing here, on this day, in this skin. Personally, I need to face the truth of my COMPLETE UNWORTHINESS (I mean, I am unworthy! It’s true!) in order to feel again, to care again. Caring is only possible when I can feel how bleak and pointless my writing is, which connects (ironically!) to how BIG AND IMPORTANT everything is, how CRUCIAL this stupid moment on this planet in this house inside the skin of this fucking arrogant delusional woman is!
I get there lots of different ways. Some days I get there by letting the dark parts in without fear – or with fear, actually. When I was writing Foreverland, the subtitle got me there: TEDIUM. I needed to know I wasn’t just writing a book about love. I needed to know that my book was also about feeling aggravated and lustful and embarrassed and fully alive. I needed to remember that I was writing a book about being human – disgusting, awful, afraid – and that my book was enormous and strange and valuable for that reason alone, because even though I’m afraid of a lot of things, I’m not afraid of showing how disgusting and awful and afraid I am.”
- Heather Havrilesky in her Ask Polly column (which I 112% recommended)
3 | A PROMPT YOU CAN USE
What makes your blood boil? What do not nearly enough people give a damn about? Tell us. Make it messy. Make it gorgeously raving mad.
On writing as release.
Love.