Freewriting

acts of willful self-delusion

Hi, this is a short essay about writing, free for everyone who subscribes. If you want to support this project as a whole, consider upgrading your subscription to paid. Either way, I’m glad you’re here. xoxo

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I’ve been plagiarizing, taking great lines other people write and acting as if they are my own. Expect everything then the unexpected can never happen, I casually say. I didn’t write it but pass it off as if I just came up with it on the spot. So I come off as someone with a great mind. But what I’ve said is from The Phantom Tollbooth. A week later, I adapt a Frank O’Hara line for a poem a friend and I write together. I steal things my friends say and put them here. In a romantic sense, it could be that a part of them pours out of me when I write. I’m cheating again—that’s Joni Mitchell, not me. I’m being careless. I want to get caught. That’s not my line either. 

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I see someone post about having writer’s block. It’s a phrase I resent because it implies that people can write on a regular basis and that the temporary obstruction is a blip rather than the enduring state that I seem to be in. I would like a lobotomy, I tell my roommate as I fill a glass of water so I can take an aspirin.

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At the Zoo, the monkeys hang out on the rock sunbathing. I’m jealous because I am morbidly sweaty. What I would like to do is swim around with them, but I’m not sure they would know how. Or they might attack me. What would it be like to be a monkey, I ask. Would I still have the same problems? Or would I have monkey problems? I’m trying to be cute. Ben doesn’t indulge this. I assume that I would have the same problems if I still had the same brain I have, but the thought experiment ends when one sniffs the other’s ass. 

We walk to the red panda enclosure. Someone says, that must be a cat. I make eye contact with the guide who attends the Pandas. She says in a rehearsed but friendly voice, This is a red panda. She pulls her headset mic away from her face so her laughter isn’t amplified across the pagoda. But apparently, its name is a misnomer. Red pandas are actually raccoons. The female red panda’s name is Joni. I tell the guide that it’s a great name for a red panda, though I’ve never really thought about what would be a good name for a red panda. 

The problem is I can’t think of a name for the main character of my novel. I’ve gone through three already. None sound quite right yet, effectively all misnomers. I would give her my name but then I’d have to confront the fact that the character is me even though I will be otherwise adamant she is not me. Maybe Joni would work. I look up the most popular girl names from the 1990s. For good measure, I look at the years 1994 and 1996, not 1995 when I was born, to further separate myself from my fictional non-self.

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There are a number of things people can do to cure writer’s block. The most surefire way would be to abandon the notion that they should write at all. 

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Both good and bad writers write for free. I read an article critiquing the downtown publication Byline for not paying their writers. The argument is that no one should work for free, and to write for free means that you are in the privileged position to do so, i.e. having some wealth independent or otherwise. I agree and disagree. I do write for free, but I don’t necessarily believe I can afford to do so. Reading this critique mostly gave me indigestion. Because being a writer is an act of willful self-delusion—a phrase my therapist praised me for coming up with—most of us write for free under the assumption one day we won’t have to. 

I know the point of the piece was to criticize the truth that Byline probably could pay their writers, based on the author’s speculation of the editors’ family’s wealth. This seemed like a marginally unfair assumption. Writing with your friends is an act of intimacy but to some this is called “nepotism.” I shouldn’t read think pieces when I’m in a bad mood. Anyway, it’s hard to argue with someone who is a good writer. And I don’t particularly have many aspirations to climb the downtown ranks. Every opportunity is predicated on who you know. So far I’ve enjoyed reading some of the pieces Byline has published. I also know that I am not in a place to bite any hand that feeds me. Given the chance, I would probably write for free for them. 

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Sasha emails me the German word for listlessness: die Antriebslosigkeit. Literally, to be at a loss of impetus. I read her email in bed after being woken up by my neighbor. I have lost the impetus to do anything and it’s not even tomorrow yet. I know how tomorrow will go. I’ll wake up too early, drink one cup of leftover coffee, make more in the French press, become far too jittery, spend the day hovering around what I should be doing (writing). Instead of doing that, I’ll make up a list of insane errands to run or accept a last-minute invitation from a friend to read in the park then spend money I don’t really have and go on to have the most beautiful day on record.  

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I text Charlotte that Neptune is in retrograde. Meaning that there will be a period when we are no longer confused. Neptune is in the fifth house for both of us. We will be creative! Now is the time to write the novel! We make a pact to write 5,000 words over the July Fourth break. After I text this to her, I lie face down on my bed and take an evil nap. 

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When I think about my main character, I wonder how unlikable she will be. It likely comes from the fact that I am ultimately suspicious that I am unlikable. Besides, the characters I like best are normal women who double as pedestrian agents of chaos. Tuned blank by their own desire to wreak havoc. A superior once told me I could cause more trouble. It occurred to me she was right, but also that I wouldn’t know how. Recently, because I didn’t want to do something by myself, I apologized to a friend for being difficult after throwing what in retrospect was a mild tantrum. My blood sugar was low. What unlikable narrator would apologize for being difficult? Apparently mine would. 

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I am beginning to think I am only dramatic under certain conditions, but when I repeat current events to friends, it’s the stuff of Russian novels. Or I suppose it is. I’ve only read Nabokov.

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A while ago, I received a critique from a reader that they “kept waiting for something to happen.” I thought of replying to the comment, well, I’m waiting for something to happen too. The comment reminded me of feedback Andrea once received about her own writing—what else could I expect, for you are just a girl. She had the email framed.

I felt a little guilty being annoyed with the one person in a long time, although a perfect stranger, who has perhaps given me fair feedback. There’s a line in a Christian Lee Hutson song that I’ve decided captures the spirit of the summer—just kiss me or kill me if that’s what you want. I’m manifesting. Because then I’ll have something to write about. Or I’ll just keep talking and saying nothing.

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I’ve taken the week off to throw myself a DIY-writing retreat. In preparation for the week, I’m publishing this essay because I am devoting the next seven days to the novel that I have no idea what it’s about. I fear the more people I tell about the writing retreat, the more I’ll have to hold myself accountable. It’s a motivation-driving fear. Which is why I’m telling you about it. My privilege wells up again, like the mysterious bug bite that I’ve been sporting on my forehead the last few days. I have the privilege to take a week off to write. I have the privilege of being without a deadline. I have the privilege of possibility. And like all the privileges I have, I’ll probably squander it.

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Anytime my Substack comes up in conversation around a certain friend, he becomes my spokesperson. You should subscribe, he tells strangers and acquaintances alike. They will navigate to the subscription page in front of me, to my mild horror—do I have to pay, they will ask. Before I can say they don’t have to, he will say, you should.

This kind of advertising is helpful as I am both modest and self-deprecating, which makes the prospect of writing for free for the rest of my life a likely outcome. To have my friend believe my writing is worth money is ultimately funny because he doesn’t read it. It’s too uncanny for him to see his own appearance. Some of my friends have told me it’s flattering, like seeing themselves on television. I probably would be unsettled too if I had to read my writing as someone who is not me. If I had something to tell him, he believes, I would just tell him. It’s a good rule of thumb that I’ve shared with anyone who asks what my “process” is. I can no longer publish what I haven’t yet worked out in my personal life on the internet. It’s bizarre to even have to conclude that, we live in bizarre times where we all overshare and unlike animals, feel no shame about it until someone makes us feel like we should. But you’d be surprised how this is a lesson I’m continuing to learn. If you’re reading this, which I know you aren’t, I give you a pass to pass on reading the novel, too.

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I repeat myself often. On this platform, in writing I don’t publish, and most frequently, my mistakes. Once I read that one of my favorite singers thinks she writes the same song over and over. Thank God someone is brave enough to admit this. I think I’m writing the same song over and over. Sometimes I forget if I said something out loud or just thought it. I am scared of being one of those people who tells the same story twice. It’s clear to me that I should stop theorizing and just try to live my life without trying to remember everything that happens so I can eventually write about it. Stop making wild declarations at parties about the nature of love and the aesthetic. I ask someone if they think they are worldly, but what I really want to ask is if they think I’m worldly. The conversation turns out to be very interesting. I forget most of it. And then again I know there’s a lesson in making a mistake multiple times until it no longer becomes a mistake. There is joy in repetition. Which I also stole from an events email sent out by a club in Brooklyn.