Hello From A Very Reluctant, Tired Writer
On self-criticism, a small summer reading list, local journalism, and cutting myself some slack
It was brought to my attention today that it’s been three months since my last Substack post.
I don’t really have a good excuse for not writing other than I found a million reasons not to. I had many ideas for new pieces but each time found the subject matter too banal. I’ve tried to avoid the diary entry-esque blogging style that’s very popular on this website; I tell myself I’m supposed to be some kind of intellectual, not just another girl online with a blog.
Of course, I am just another girl online with a blog, one who is sometimes a little insecure and often very tired and almost always entirely too self-critical. Maybe that bleeds through in the writing a little bit; I don’t know. If I send out basic newsletters with photos I stole from Pinterest and a couple of links to books I’ve been reading or sweaters I’m wearing then am I really a writer? My brain demands I write essays wielding the scalpel of laser-precise, Didionesque cultural critique. To this my depleted energy levels and wobbly skill set raise a wary eyebrow.
Whatever. I’m not Joan Didion. At some point you have to make peace with yourself. You need to blindly believe that whatever you are is good enough. You need to release the shame of being a writer whose work rarely lives up to her own standards.
I don’t have it in me to write anything upwards of 900 words today, and I probably won’t for the rest of the summer, either. So, here are a few updates (writing and non-writing related), a picture I stole from Pinterest, and pieces I’ve read recently that made me feel cultured, if not a little bit inspired.
I’m happy to report that I can finally tell the well-meaning adults who’d ask me what do you plan on doing with that journalism degree? during college that I am, in fact, doing journalism. (The fun kind of journalism, not the oh my god our democracy is dying and the media layoffs are coming for me next kind.) I’ve spent the last two months reporting in the Oakland food and beverage scene, including this story about a natural wine/jazz/oyster pop-up. Please send me any and all story tips if you have them—covering this beat is a lot of fun, and it helps me eat on somebody else’s dime. :)
I’ve been chipping away at another poetry collection forever now (lol) and can’t promise with any certainty when it will be done. Know that I’m working on it (sparingly, sometimes) and that it will certainly (hopefully) be much better than the last one.
These are the only writing updates I can offer.
A brief summer reading list for you:
Recital of the Dark Verses by Luis Felipe Fabre, translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary. This is a glorious tale of three humble body snatchers on their quest through medieval Spain. It gives serious Don Quixote vibes, and it’s just about as funny. The men arrive at a monastery in Úbeda with the secret task of transferring the remains of Saint John of the Cross, the great Carmelite poet and mystic, to his final abode. Thus commences a series of adventures and misfortunes populated by characters that seem to be drawn from mythology…inviting the reader to reflect on issues such as the sacred and the profane, the body and the soul, and spiritual (as well as carnal) ecstasy.
Fabre’s novel has everything you need in a fun summer read: an undercurrent of inherent queerness, night-stalking demons, provincial threesomes with tongue-devouring shepherdesses, and devastating lines such as “The blade has not been forged that can slow a woman in pursuit of frivolity.” So true.
I also recently read two brilliant pieces of short fiction in the Paris Review’s Winter 2023 edition. They make for fantastic summer reads:
Hostess by Fiona McFarlane. This story brought the heat of a swampy Australian summer spent with a cool retired air hostess right into my climate-controlled apartment, and I couldn’t put it down. It’s a great read if you want to brood over delectably pinpoint prose. It’s even better if you want to envelop yourself in an Aussie summer romance with someone you’ll never see again—someone who carries with them a loss so profound that you know your eventual split means nothing to them.
Ahegao by Tony Tulathimutte. It’s vulgar, gay, hilarious. It’s also devastating. Not in the way Hostess is, but in the way that anyone who’s ever felt intense shame about how they are can relate to. The story chronicles a recently-out man struggling to communicate his kinks with his partner. I particularly loved this passage:
“Here, Kant perceives the true rift between them: Julian doesn’t know the difference between embarrassment and shame. How shame soaks, stains, leaves a skid mark on everything, and, when it has nothing to stick to, spreads until it does. Embarrassment is contained by incidents, gets funny and small over time; shame runs gangrene through the entire past, makes the future impossible.”
Shame makes the future impossible. This passage stuck with me for a while, and it’s only now that I’m beginning to realize why.
In part, shame is what keeps me from writing. There’s the obvious, surface-level shame: that being vulnerable (on the internet or in any form) is shameful, especially with strangers, and especially with such a small platform. There’s the deeper shame, too—there are so many writers out there with impressive bylines and book awards to share with those people who asked them in college, what are you going to do with that journalism degree? I have no laurels to rest on. Then there is the existential level of shame that maybe one day I’ll have to give myself a long, hard look in the mirror and decide that I must sell out for survival, find a good corporate job and put the tortured artist days behind me.
But if I know one thing, it’s that writing (even when I’m not really writing) is the only thing that brings out the most authentic version of myself. And I guess the thing about healing that legacy of shame is you can only do it by accepting your own authenticity. I think I’ve been letting shame rob me of my future—my future as a writer, perhaps even just as a person.
I think this summer I’ll have to cut myself some slack and acknowledge that, yes, I am just a girl online with a blog, and that this is very much okay.
Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you soon. Have a great summer!