This week’s question comes to us from Jonathan Stephens:

I want to write like you when I grow up. What potential paths would you recommend to travel towards?

Whatever path gets you to the library the quickest.

But before we go into that, let me just say how much I appreciate the compliment. It’s very nice of you to say that.

Now, let’s talk about basketball. We are currently in the first round of the NBA Playoffs, which I love, because there are sometimes four games to watch a day, and first round games tend to be insane and unpredictable. (Hello, Knicks fans!) So yeah, I’ve been watching a lot of basketball, which means it was bound to serve as an analogy for something at some point. (Nothing goes to waste.) If you watch enough basketball, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of space to fill during time-outs, halftime, and the occasional garbage time. So along with Draft King ads, GLP1 ads, and ICE recruitment ads, you get the occasional interview with a player. Sometimes it happens courtside, sometimes it’s been pre-recorded in the studio. And once in a while, these players, who are very very very good at playing basketball, will get asked about their origin story on the basketball court, and more often than not, they will mention a player they grew up watching and attempting to emulate. They grew up wanting to shoot like Kobe, or wanting to defend like Gary Payton, or wanting to wag their finger after a block like Dikembe Mutombo (easy to emulate, but incredibly inadvisable unless you can actually block like Dikembe Mutombo, which you cannot), and they all wanted to learn how to do a crossover like Allen Iverson (the only AI worth a damn)(second time I’ve snuck this joke into a newsletter). What I’m saying here is that these people who are now very very good at basketball all got their starts watching other people who were very very good at basketball and then trying to repeat what they saw.

If you want to become very good at basketball, a great first step is to watch people who are very good at basketball actually play basketball. (There are, of course, more steps. Otherwise I would also be very good at basketball, which I objectively am not.) If you want to become very good at riding a bike, a good first step is to watch other people ride a bike. If you want to become very good at baking, a good first step is, no, not watching other people bake, but eating some baked goods. Because you need to know what a good donut tastes like before you should even attempt making a donut. If you want to get really good at writing, your first stop is the library. You need to get really good at reading. You need to experience what good writing is like.

Luckily, we have been blessed with libraries, where you can borrow amazing books, on a vast variety of topics, for free. (Knock on wood.) And we need to be using the fuck out of them.

A few years ago I made the only New Years resolution that’s ever stuck: if I am bored, I read. I took that shit to heart. I became a monster. Lazy Sunday afternoon? Pick up a book. In bed, but not quite ready to go to sleep? Pick up a book. Layover between flights? Pick up a book. And not only was I reading, I was casting a wide net. Whose books haven’t I read before? Where are all those books you should’ve already read, but didn’t? Let’s reread the books I really enjoyed. If a friend recommended a book I’d read it. I got a library card, which sadly I hadn’t had in ages. My library card kept me sane as a kid, (mostly because all the other kids were playing basketball) but I lapsed. Growing up, I was the kid who always carried one or two books around with me. As an adult, those books had turned into a phone, and reading turned into a thing I’d get to after I checked my “socials,” which never seemed to happen. And when I was reading, I was mostly reading a lot of industry books because I wanted to be good at my job. But that turned reading into a chore, which it had never been before.

Never turn your escape pod into a utility closet.

Let me be clear about this: the most important goal of reading is to read. It’s exploration at an intimate human scale. You can immerse yourself in the history of this world. You can immerse yourself in new worlds. (Which are always not-so-secretly about our own world.) You can learn more about things you care about, and learn that you care about things you didn’t even know about. You can look at something from a point-of-view you hadn’t considered yet. A book is a time machine, a scalpel, and a rocketship. And it can all happen from your favorite reading chair. (You do have a favorite reading chair, right?)

The cure for the “male loneliness epidemic” is to get your hands on a fucking book, read it, and then get a second one. For one, you are never alone when your nose is in a book. You are somewhere else, with a cast of characters that, when well written, become as real as you need them to be. And please, my lonely dudes, venture away from the crypto how-tos and biohacking aisles and venture into the other parts of the library. Read to get lost. Read for joy. Secondly, as John Waters once famously said “If you go to someone’s house and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ‘em!” Gentlemen, get to a fucking library if you want to get fuckable.

But as a writer, there’s a second goal in reading. It’s to get better at writing. And the best way to get better at writing is to absorb good writing. I mean really good writing. The kind of shit you get immersed in and enjoy the fuck out of. You will never become a good writer unless you’ve read a lot of really well-written books.

Hold on, we’re going on another tangent. I also watched a lot of basketball when I was a kid. Specifically, growing up in Philly, I watched a lot of Sixers basketball. I grew up watching Dr. J do his thing, and after getting a basketball for Christmas one year, I went out to the local court and quickly realized that I would be going to art school instead. So that’s what I did. First step of becoming a good artist? Look at a lot of art. Luckily, Philadelphia has a great art museum, so I was able to spend a lot of time looking at great art. Step two was to try to emulate some of that great art. Which, of course, started out as a disaster (same as everyone’s first attempt at an Iverson crossover). And honestly, it’s frustrating to suck at something, except that we all suck at something the first time we try it. The trick is figuring out whether this is something I could see myself getting better at with practice (art, writing) or whether this is something I was absolutely not designed to be able to do no matter how much I practiced (basketball). (We talking about practice?!) (Three of my readers will understand that I absolutely nailed that reference. The rest of you will be annoyed by this long nonsensical parenthetical. I don’t care. Actually, that’s a lie. I want you all to watch the infamous practice press conference because it will not only explain the reference, it will improve your life. Here’s the longest version I could find.) Luckily, I wasn’t completely frustrated by how badly I was at the start. Art felt like something I could, and more importantly—wanted, to get better at. So I stuck with it. I got a little better every time I tried it. More importantly, I could feel myself getting better at it, which was building my confidence in being able to do something. Later in life, the same thing would happen with writing.

Now, a good art teacher will give you these projects, “Go to the Academy of Fine Arts and copy this Eakins.” (Philadelphia is swimming in Eakins paintings. We had one in our high school. Pretty sure there’s one hanging in the Center City Wawa.) And they’ll give you this project not because they think you’ll be able to copy an Eakins (you won’t), although there’s certainly something to be learned from the attempt. You can learn composition. You can learn foreshortening. You can learn a fuckton about light and shadow. And while those are important lessons, they are not the main lesson.

Attempting to speak in someone else’s voice will irritate you to the point where you will eventually find your own voice.

“You have a heavy hand.”

This is what my art teacher said to me after I presented him with one of my Eakins attempts. Of course, what I heard was “too heavy,” which is not what he said. But in my multiple attempts to copy the same painting something had become very clear to my art teacher. I have a heavy hand. This means my pencil, my charcoal, my brush, does not glide elegantly across the page. It means I carve into it. As a writer, I think the same is true, my words do not glide smoothly across the page. They carve into the page. They leave a mark. And any attempt to make my words glide smoothly across the page would be as elegant as me attempting an Iverson crossover at 58.

Reading had the same effect on my writing. When you read Joan Didion or Eve Babitz you will eventually attempt to attempt to write a sentence like they do. (Jesus fuck, no one could write California like Eve Babitz. No one could do lazy, sun-drenched, washing over you, initially seeming throw-away, yet revealing itself to be dark and deep as fuck like that woman. Read all her shit.) Good writing wants to be emulated, and in the failed emulation you find yourself. You find your voice.

I write because there is something in my head that I am trying to communicate to you, my reader. My goal is to do that as clearly as possible, which I feel I’ve been able to accomplish a couple of times. (Oh, he’s fishing.) But the struggle of writing a sentence, erasing it, rewriting it a few times, leaving it be, and then scrolling back to rewrite it one more time in the middle of another sentence three paragraphs down pales in comparison to the dopamine levels released when you feel you’ve taken that thing from your head and put it on a page. The same as it feels to paint something great, or to cook an amazing meal, or to do a crossover that totally snaps your defender’s ankles (I imagine.) It’s a feeling worth chasing. The joy of finding your own voice is a pain in the ass, but ultimately worth it. It takes effort. You will fuck up. You will try on a lot of other people’s voices before yours bursts through. This is The Process. Trust The Process. (Waves at the six people who got this reference.)

And look, I know there are stupid tools out there trying to sell you the easy way out. Trying to convince you that it can do all of this shit for you. You just need to write a prompt, my man. The stupid tools will comb through the stolen knowledge of every writer that’s ever put pen to paper. They will give it to you in the style of Didion. They will give it to you in the style of Faulkner. They will even give it to you in the style of David Foster Wallace, although why you would want that, I do not know. They might even return something… capable? But the stupid tools will never hand you the best source of joy you’ll ever encounter: the confidence of finding your own voice. Which takes work. Work that is ultimately rewarded by getting compliments like the one you paid me at the very beginning of this ride. Compliments that make me think I succeeded in pulling an idea out of my head, and managed to put it on the page in a way that resonated with you.

That kind of a connection, which is so important to the human soul, and cuts through all the bullshit, only happens when you do the work.

I promise you that it’s worth it. And I’m confident you can do it.

🏀 🧡

🙋 Got a question you’d like a long meandering answer to? Ask it!

📣 Erika has a few seats left in her Let’s Do Research Right workshop next week. It’s a fantastic workshop for learning how to ask questions. (Some of which you can then send to me!)

📣 I have a few seats left for my Presenting w/Confidence workshop on May 7 & 8. It’s a great workshop for finding your voice!

📓 My new book, How to die (& other stories), is now available as an ebook. For people in tiny apartments, foreign lands, or who just prefer that sort of thing.

🚲 My friend Brian Carr’s non-profit, Game Devs of Color, could use your help with their fundraiser. Riding bikes for a great cause!

🍉 Please help the children of Palestine, who are being murdered by bombs paid for with our tax money.

🏳️‍⚧️ Please support Trans Lifeline.

🚰 Never hesitate to just say hello.