around no one
Like everyone else in my demographic, I've been listening to the new Fiona Apple album on repeat for the last few weeks. It's good walking around music, and I do a lot of walking around these days.
I've also been kind of arguing with myself about whether or not to write about it, because a) it's already been talked about so much and b) I haven't read read or listened to any of that stuff. I have this thing where if I really love something I can't engage with other people's thoughts on it: it feels invasive or redundant or just deadening, like their opinions will dilute mine somehow. When something really really speaks to me I like to keep it as a space for myself, my own private experience, instead of making it part of the Integrated & Informed Take Ecosystem that is the rest of my brain. Which is fine as a personal practice, but then do I really have to subject you to my uninformed thoughts?
Apparently, yes. Because last week I was on the phone with my therapist, crying about writing. (What! Else! Is! New!) I'm having a hard time with a draft; I'm having a hard time with the fact that Look is out now, and while it has had a totally lovely reception, it hasn't, I don't know. It didn't do enough. What's enough? Enough is enough to convince me that the work I put into writing these books is worth it.
Enough is Fiona: "I want what I want and I want you! To love me! Youuuuuu!!! To love me!!!"
The song is actually at least in part about sex-- while I'm in this body I want somebody to love and I want you-- but these days I'm alone with my writing, so that's what it sounds like it's about to me, the talking to myself I do all day long. I know a sound is still a sound around no one.
I think that's part of the problem: I'm isolated with my roommates and my kitchen and my walks and my work, and every day it feels like the world is asking me, casually, elbows on the counter, lollingly indifferent: So, this is your life. Is it enough?
You know. Some days it is. Other days it isn't. The days I look at sales numbers (yes, I know, don't do this, thank you, I'm aware) are days when it feels like: maybe it's enough for me, but it isn't for anyone else.
And the thing, of course, is that I like my work. I find it absorbing, engaging. It fills otherwise empty days, and I go to bed tired and happy. I don't want to do anything else.
What kind of person enjoys spending that much time alone, obsessed by a project that doesn't matter to the rest of the world?
I am very resistant to calling myself an artist, and always have been. It sounds so self-serious and somehow also frivolous. I'm an artist. Hah! Have you seen me? I'm just typing into a Word document in sweatpants! I'm just a girl who makes things up!
My therapist is the daughter of a famous musician; everyone in her family is a musician except for her. (She always wanted to be a therapist! Can you imagine??) Anyway she was like Zan, this is what being an artist is, you gotta just get used to it, and for once I sort of saw what she meant. Being an artist is wanting to make your stupid projects so much that you will keep making them whether or not anyone else cares if you do. And then wondering if that makes you a sociopath, and doing it anyway.
Or at least that's what it means to me. The years spent repeating a sound is still a sound around no one. And then the part where you put it out in the world, and do what you can to disguise the fact that you're still hungry for approval, marching around the world with nothing more to say than I want what I want and I want you to love me!
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Truly I am very lucky to get to talk to other writers about how they think about all of this stuff. Most recently it was Rufi Thorpe for Hazlitt. I love Rufi's books so much, and I love her take on what writers are even more: "You’re like a therapist with no morals, and no obligation to help."
Also, Sarah McCarry is serializing The Darling Killers, "a very bitchy murder novel about young adult writers" on Substack and I could not be more excited.
& lastly, I am indeed gonna teach a remote fiction-writing workshop this summer! Eight Mondays, June 1 through July 20, from 3:00-4:30 pm PDT. Every week we'll have a brief conversation about a craft element-- character, plot, pacing, etc.-- but the bulk of the class will be spent discussing people's writing. Everyone is welcome, whether you're just starting out with fiction or have a novel draft you want feedback on. Cost is $375 and I'm happy to talk payment plans, since I know this is A Stressful Time in everyone's bank accounts. Let me know if you want in!