They say that if you do what you love you'll never work a day in your life. I think that whoever said that (and I'm too lazy to look up who did say it) was independently wealthy. Because I've found that if you do what you love for work - to pay your bills, to support you and your family - it will become just that: work.
I'm writing this from a raw, exhausted place. Writing a book is a beautiful, infuriating, inspiring, rewarding and punishing experience all at once. I can't imagine that many other large, years-long art projects aren't the same. But publishing a book, especially with a major publisher, isn't really a part of the artistic work at all - it is in many ways firmly seated in the antithesis of art: it is an almost purely capitalist enterprise. And for a few months, for the time surrounding what should be the most amazing and one of the most important parts of the creative process - getting that art out to the world and connecting with people while they connect with it - is completely subsumed by the business of bookselling.
The success of my first book made my work marketable. It made my art a business. A business that doesn't just pay my bills - it now is a part of metrics - investments and returns that other entities track and care deeply about. My work has a measurement of success that now is beyond and yet so much less than "does this fulfill me" "does this communicate what I intend" or even "does this pay my bills."
So few things that we create can last forever, but our stories can. All it takes is somebody to remember them, somebody to keep them, somebody to tell them. Books can, and so often do, live much longer than their authors. They can live as long as humanity does, perhaps even longer than that. There are books out there that were written 100 years ago that almost nobody knows about. And yet one of those books may well change the way we all see the world one day. So long as somebody or something has kept that story, it has that potential. How can one apply metrics to that. At what point to do we determine whether or not an immortal life is one well-lived?
Somebody somewhere is drunkenly scribbling a poem on a bar napkin. They are then crumpling it up and leaving it on the table with a $2 tip. The bartender who is sighing at the pathetic tip will pour out the dregs of the poet’s beer and place the glass in the bin. Then she'll scoop up the tip and the napkin. She'll open up the crumpled ball when she sees a bit of writing. She'll read the poem and it will break her heart. Her hands will shake as she pours herself a shot. She'll duck under the bar to down it quickly, so her boss won't see and remind her that she’s not supposed to drink on the clock. Then she'll wipe her eyes and take a deep breath before she pops back up to finish wiping up the drops of beer the drunken poet left behind. "What can I get you?" She'll say to the person who slides into the poet's seat. She'll go about her day. She'll go about the rest of her life. But she won't forget even a single word of that drunken poem. It will be as permanent in her memory as her social security number or even her birthday. Because it has explained to her why her mother never loved her.
That is a successful poem. And it's success will only be measured by the way in which the bartender works to ensure that her kids will never have to find a poem to illustrate the mother-shaped hole in their hearts. By the fact that in writing it and lifting those heavy words off of his soul, the drunken poet was able to sleep a little better that night.
I don't believe in the universe. I mean, I believe in, like, outer space and planets and stuff. I don't believe in "the universe" - the vague, omnipotent energy that is always trying to tell people things. I believe that we live in a world of luck, happenstance, and the natural consequences of our actions. And as all of that swirls around us, what we see of it is what we want to see, or what we're ready to see. But, "the universe" is easier to say.
So lately the universe has been reminding me of all the things I used to do around writing that I don't do anymore. That I haven't done for a long time. I used to write movie reviews. I used to be known for my movie reviews. I used to experiment with form in my essays, moving in and out of past and present and dream states. I used to sometimes include drawings and little charts in my writing. I used to teach. I used to write just to try things. Just to see if I could do it and if I would enjoy doing it.
Now this was absolutely influenced by necessity. Back when I was working as a full-time freelancer and each piece I wrote paid anywhere from 100-500 each. If you have to pay a mortgage and feed yourself and two growing kids - well, that's a shit-ton of essays each month that you have to turn in. You run out of “safe” ideas pretty quickly and around essay 5 or so of the month, you are desperately shaking out the weirdest idea in the back of your brain like it’s the last semi-clean shirt in the bottom of your laundry pile and you’re running late for work.
But in recent weeks I've been running into people who remember my movie reviews fondly, who tell me they miss The Establishment days, who took one of my writing classes and are still thinking about what they learned those years ago. And with each discussion I'm brought back to a place of writing joy that feels so distant from where I am now.
It wasn't all rainbows and sunshine. As a freelancer I regularly was behind on that mortgage and my car was repossessed after too many late payments. I spent a lot of nights trying to push away panic attacks over how I was going to keep the lights on. I was scrambling and working all of the time. But I was also in a wildly creative space that was really magical.
In all honesty, I can't remember the last time I truly experimented with writing. I can't remember the last time I wrote just to write.
After weeks of feeling confused and adrift, I was finally able to verbalize all of this a few days ago when I was having dinner with my partner. I cried over my pasta in the crowded restaurant as I realized that I have to find a way to reclaim my writing and my connection to my work.
In the days that have followed I've sat at my desk and said to myself that I was going to write and was met with fear and an empty word document. I don't have anything I have to write right now. When this happens, I often turn to others and ask "What do you want me to write about? What would be useful to you?"
But that's not the writing I want to do right now. I want to write for no other reason than it pleases me and I'm so afraid to try because I feel like if I do, I might realize that I no longer know how to.
Way back in the day, before any of the books, there were times when I'd be assigned a piece (or even pitch a piece) that I'd realize I really didn't want to write. I remember struggling with a particular piece that was overdue and that I really needed the commission from. It was a film review for a movie that I hated. Not because it was bad (even though it was) but because it was harmful in a way that I no longer wanted to legitimize with a review.
After days of my procrastination, my editor for the piece, Charles Mudede, called me to stress that I really did need to turn the piece in, as they were about to go to print. I finally blurted out all of my feelings about the film and how sick I was of having to navigate the ways in which BIPOC are erased and harmed by so much mainstream art.
"Well, write that." He said.
So I did, I wrote why I wasn't going to write that film review. I wrote what I had wanted to write every time I had been asked to comment on bullshit that we shouldn't have to discuss or debate anymore. It felt so good to write it. It was one of my most read pieces at the time. Actors and writers of color reached out to me to tell me how much it meant to them. How much they had been harmed as well.
Right now, in this moment, I don't want to write something because it will be useful. I don't want to write something because someone else wants me to or because I think people need me to or because the world is on fire and my ego tells me that if I don’t write about it, nobody else will.
I just want to write. And I'm scared to.
So I sat down at my keyboard today and stared and stared. I became so frustrated. All of the heartbreak and exhaustion of feeling like the things that I was really good at writing - the writing that was paying my bills and building a reputation that at times feels like a cage - was writing I didn't want to do right now.
"Well, write that." A voice in my head said.
So here we are.
This is FABULOUS. "Well, write that."
I loved this piece. It reminded me of a discussion we had in my English class in high school where the teacher asked, "Do you think a writer writes for themself or the audience?" It was a discussion I never forgot because as a class we couldn't answer the question but it got us thinking so much about the purpose and intention behind words. Thanks so much for "writing that."