I Still Do

Hi friends,

I have two events this weekend — one virtual. I hope to see some of you!

Story House Ithaca

Story Night: an open-mic storytelling session on the theme of books, hosted by me!
Saturday, August 12, 4:00–6:00 p.m., Liquid State Brewery

Outwrite DC LGBTQ+ Literary Festival (Virtual)

Panel: Queer Stories: Writing Our Way Into Belonging
with Neema Avashia (she/her), Jeffrey Dale Lofton (he/him), and Curtis Chin (he/him)
Sunday, August 13, 12:30-1:30 p.m.

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What a weekend it’s been! On Friday night, my friend Chris Holmes of Little Whale Productions screened his short film Yahweh’s Sea Glass as a fundraiser for our local independent cinema. Not only is the film brilliant and hilarious, it was also the entry into my decade-long friendship with Chris and his wife Pam. They invited me to play a small role as a nihilistic art critic, and I had so much fun, I basically never stopped following them around. After nine or ten years, it was a real treat to see the film again.

Then on Saturday, Chris and Pam renewed their wedding vows after twenty years of marriage. It was another extremely joyous occasion and one that brought me a new, and welcome, writing challenge, because they asked me to officiate. It turned out to be the most meaningful writing assignment I’ve ever had. It brought me such happiness to celebrate with them and their friends and family.

Chris and Pam

Aside from — but nevertheless related to — vows, another thing that’s been on my mind this week is something the actor Aubrey Plaza said in this interview, about how she looks back after she completes a role:

My favorite part of the process is being in production, and actually doing it. Anything after that always feels like a letdown to me. The movie, even if it’s a good movie, is never the movie that was in my mind while I was making it. I have such a big imagination which I think most actors probably do. In my mind it’s like I know exactly what it is but then when I see it I’m always like, “Alright. It’s that now.” I feel like I try to not focus so much on the aftermath of any of it, but it’s hard not to, because I just have such a fun time doing it. It’s really hard and tricky to get caught up in the success of the movie itself because it has nothing to do with the process of making it. I have a hard time separating those things sometimes.

I know I’m not alone in relating very hard to this sentiment. I’ve felt this way about everything I’ve written. It never lives up to the shiny idea that first moved me to put pen to paper. Somewhere along the way — usually about halfway through — I worry that it’s veered off course, that it looks more like some misshapen facsimile of my idea than the original. It’s become the Platonic shadow on the wall, not the thing casting the shadow. Anyway, you get the idea.

Coincidentally, soon after I started drafting this letter, I paused to cook dinner and listen to an interview with David Sedaris. He spoke very openly about writing, and he shared this wisdom from George Saunders’s book A Swim in the Pond in the Rain:

So this moment of supposed triumph—I’d finally found my voice—was also sad. It was as if I’d sent the hunting dog that was my talent out across a meadow to fetch a magnificent pheasant and it had brought back, let’s say, the lower half of a Barbie doll. . . .

This is a big moment for any artist (this moment of combined triumph and disappointment), when we have to decide whether to accept a work of art that we have to admit we weren’t in control of as we made it and of which we’re not entirely sure we approve. It is less, less than we wanted it to be, and yet it’s more, too—it’s small and a bit pathetic, judged against the work of the great masters, but there it is, all ours.

This idea is striking such a strong cord with me at the moment because I’m a little beyond the halfway point of my novel-in-progress, and this fear that it is less than I wanted it to be is starting to prickle. Every morning when I sit down to write, I think, Is this going okay? Am I still on track? Is it still the book I set out to write? And the truth is I have no idea, but I plow ahead anyway.

Whenever I reveal to people that I write novels, they ask the same question: Does it get easier after the first book? And they’re always surprised to hear that my answer is no. Every project brings its own challenges and triumphs. But the one thing that does get easier is that I now expect this feeling to show up — the lower half of the Barbie doll. From the outset, I know that at some point, the work is going to disappoint me. I’ve accepted that this is inevitable, but it no longer frightens me the same way. Because I understand that something larger is at work.

Each story pulls me where it pulls me because my subconscious needs to follow. The real work that’s required of me when I get to the middle of a project is not simply to write, but to trust. To continue through the ups and downs and see it to the end, to the thing it wants to become. On an ongoing, almost daily, basis, I have to recommit to it, say “I do” again and again, not only to the work but to my writer self and my belief in the creative process and the idea that once so excited me. It’s a huge commitment to make, years of one’s life to one project.

So why do I do it? Because, like Aubrey Plaza, I truly love the process. And whatever comes afterward — the finished book, the reaction to it — is out of our control. And maybe that’s just the way it’s meant to be. Maybe it’s beautiful just to admit that there it is, it’s all ours.

Wherever you are in your process this week, I wish you happy writing.

Yours,

Jen