Inside me, there are two writers.
Neither of the writers are wolves, unfortunately. And one was a lot more active for a long time.
I make my living these days as a security engineer. I can write code, but more than that, I tell people safer ways to do things. I do this by looking at their code, by reviewing their designs, and by evaluating third-party software options.
(I promise it’s more interesting than it sounds.)
Sometimes, the thing I do most is writing things down. How exactly to write code more safely, what permissions to allow for a Chrome extension or a Slack app. I figure out how to do things and write them down (and then sometimes I automate them, or so I declare on my LinkedIn profile).
It’s all storytelling, though.
I get lovely compliments from coworkers sometimes about how my documentation bounces. It’s fun when people didn’t expect fun.
There are two reasons for that. One is because I enjoy this and that comes through. The other is that if it’s engaging, more people will read it.
It’s all stories. And I am two writers writing them.
I spent a bunch of years of my career - god, roughly 14 of them - as an actual professional writer. It sounds more glamorous than it was, and across time, the enjoyment dwindled. Writing about hotels was a blast; writing more blatant marketing copy sapped my will to live after a while. And throughout, I had a thin line of self-loathing, because outside of work, I largely didn’t write. Not nothing - when I go back and look at what I did, I had a reasonable output. But it wasn’t daily, it typically didn’t go anywhere, and none of it felt like it lived up to what I knew I could do. I’m good with words and have a brain that spools stories out as surely as I breathe. I knew I could do more and wanted to, always.
I hoped more would come when I shifted from writing to software engineering in 2015, but do you know, throwing my life into complete upheaval didn’t leave me with a lot of spare energy for a while.
In early 2018, I started an experiment while commuting. I kept a small notebook - maybe 6x8 inches, usually 80 pages or so, the kind you can get for $8 or $10 at a bookstore or stationery store that makes pretty, disposable things. And when I got a seat on my commute, which I usually did one way or another, I would write one page of fiction in longhand. Once I did that, I was done. I was free, I’d done my thing, and I could stop being mad at myself for being a bad writer for once.
(I've found that defining done is sometimes the most important thing I can do to make sure I eventually get there.)
I’ve been thinking more of that experiment lately. It felt like an exercise in self-flagellation: why is this hard, why aren’t I excited, why don’t I feel and act like someone else? But almost every day, I wrote my page.
I got those notebooks back out recently to return to a project I'd worked on during that handwritten phase. There were five of them, all full of my train-shook penmanship. I wrote so much more than I realized. I remembered it as an experiment of a few months, but I did it for most of two years, writing out several short stories and touching on other ideas that have lived in my head for a long time, undone.
I did great. I didn’t need to be excited, and it didn’t need to be easy. I just needed to do it and trust that the small things would add up.
Cut to spring 2020. (I know.) Early quarantine was a complete nightmare for me. One of my cats died. Some shit happened in my relationship. Oh yeah, and there was that whole (waves hands) everything else. Buried under several layers of dense and separate sadnesses, unable to escape to anywhere or talk to anyone in any useful way, I buried myself in books and movies, telling myself that these feelings would not be forever.
In mid-May last year, my brain did a wonderfully useful thing for me. I had a late-morning dream, not quite lucid but still that kind that sits close to the surface when you’re not sleeping deeply, a detailed and intricate world, closer to how the brain works when it's awake. And I dreamed a story with a distinct setting and very strong feelings in the little cast of characters I saw in it.
I was off work the next day, and I got up and wrote 20 pages of frantic notes, scene snippets, and early dialogue.
It was the start of a project that I’m still working on, which currently spans three novels (two first drafts, one caught in second-draft hell) and several short stories. I made an ensemble. I’d never made one of those before.
And it’s how I’ve gotten through quarantine. The words didn’t flow until need, practice, a certain lack of distraction, and a strong need for something I could control came together.
The two writers in me sit closer together now. One is all loopy imagination, responding to inspiration; the other says “ass in seat, sit until done.” Between necessity, being an indoor cat, and London Writers’ Hour teaching me to respond with work when I’m given a set amount of time to "Do nothing, or write" (thx, Neil Gaiman, you were right all along), now I can do this thing. I flattened NaNoWriMo, I glided happily through #1000WordsOfSummer, and now I'm participating in Clarion West's Write-a-thon. I seem to have finished the neural link between “I have an idea” and “it’s actually typed out.”
I resented the marketing work, but it made me produce words when I needed to, not when I wanted to.
Documentation isn’t always light entertainment, but writing thorough descriptions of complicated things for varying audiences has made me think around corners.
Doing conference talks is routinely terrifying, but it’s taught me to simplify a message, to combine pith and substance.
And quarantine was terrible in so many ways, but with no other options, I’ve finally done the thing I’ve longed for across so many phases of my life.
Hence this newsletter. I have a lot of different writerly experiences and so many more writerly thoughts, and one of my goals this year has been to find writerly community too. I’m glad you’re here. I plan to write here at least once a month, which will probably be more sometimes, because I get excited. I’m pushing projects toward completion, I’m taking some really excellent classes, and at some point, I'll be looking into getting published. It’s a lot. It’s exciting! And I hope we can keep each other company throughout.
Other things you can expect: links I like (of course), cat pictures (naturally), and weird intersections of tech work and word work (but only the good parts, I promise).
In the meantime, here are some things I've written or liked.
- All I Never Wanted on Deviation Obligatoire, my travel blog, about vacationing close to home, writing, family stress, and a thousand other things.
- I Miss Drinking, Deviation Obligatoire, something a bit different than it might appear at first.
- The Pendulum and the Rest of the World, Deviation Obligatoire, about what it means and how it feels to start emerging into the world again.
- Never Say You Can't Survive: Twelve Ways to Keep the Fun of Writing Alive, one of my favorite installments of a series of essays that will become an OMG ACTUAL BOOK next month. Charlie Jane Anders's advice came to me at just the right time, and maybe it'll bring you wonderful things too.
- Rusty's Electric Dreams, an inbox zine that's given me a lot of joy for the last few years.
- How to Write a Book When You Can't Write a Book, an excellent nuts-and-bolts approach to writing and revising while living under quarantine pressure. I recently devoured her Will Darling trilogy - excellent, gripping distraction during a hard week of job interviews.
And finally, a sentence I've written recently that I liked: "A generation or two for things to mutate and recombine, to reference and deference."
I leave you with this sign I saw in Half Moon Bay when I took a late-quarantine trip back in April. It's what I tell myself lately, and I'd like to tell you too.
Thank you for joining me on this maiden voyage. I hope you stay. 💖