The essay I've been trying to write for four years
and other creative ups and downs
I've been feeling like a fraud.
If you've been following this newsletter for a while, you know that a small part of my creative life is visible: this newsletter and my mini podcast about the reading life. The larger part of my creative life goes unseen: the novel I'm writing, the ideas I explore but don't end up sharing, and (recently) my time on the ice that's just for me.
Living as a writer, no matter what that looks like for you, takes a certain amount of audacity. Right now, I'm roughly 40,000 words into a novel no one asked me to write. There would still be countless new stories in this world if I never finished mine. I'm neglecting projects that are (at the very least) public commitments in favor of a novel that might never reach readers.
And yet ... I keep showing up. Because I love it, because I have to, because my characters are real to me and I can't leave them stranded right before the Midpoint of the story. Stories are always tugging at me like 2-year-olds demanding attention and snacks. It's hard to have anything left for this newsletter space, as much as I love it, when I've left everything I have for the day on a page that maybe no one else will ever read.
I thought I was going to write a very different newsletter for this week, something that was easy and formulaic. I carved out an hour of time to sit down, and this is what happened ...
I couldn't force that "easy" newsletter. It was simpler somehow to write these much more difficult words, opening my heart for a moment to see what spills out.
I hope you're continuing in your own creative work, even if you sometimes despair that no one else will ever connect with it. Here are a few things that have been fueling my creative energy and encouraging me to show up to the page. Let's find some inspiration together.
The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays by CJ Hauser
I love, love a memoir in essays. It’s such a sneaky way to tell a larger story, that teasing out of unremarkable moments from a life, showing how they led to what was cataclysmic. A well-written essay goes down easy, right before it puts you on the floor with some piercing truth.
The Crane Wife is that kind of read. Don’t miss the very first essay in the collection, titled “Blood: Twenty-Seven Love Stories,” which tells stories from the author’s life and her family members’ lives in sometimes sweet, sometimes searing vignettes. I also loved “Mulder, It’s Me” (for obvious reasons), and as a writer, I treasured the reminder in “The Lady with the Lamp” that art takes time. “I will try and fail to write this essay for the next eight years,” CJ Hauser confesses.
For my own writerly confession, I’ll tell you that there is an essay I’ve been trying to write for four years. It’s about when I was depressed and the music Sara Bareilles wrote for her Broadway version of Waitress saved me, and it will be a very good essay eventually when it stops being very bad. Reading this remarkable collection gave me a glimmer of hope that it will someday come to me.
For fans of Mary Laura Philpott and Kristi Coulter.
Treasure (album) ~ Hayley Westenra
I plan to babble about this longer in a future newsletter, but I once loved classical crossover music until one day I didn’t anymore. I’m not sure exactly why or how that dormant interest waited some 15 years to be reactivated again, but lately I haven’t been able to stop pulling out all of my old classical crossover CDs (think: Charlotte Church in the early years, Celtic Woman, and Sarah Brightman’s Time to Say Goodbye) and hunting down UK imports of the ones I didn’t get around to buying years ago.
If you need something for your commute that’s calming and lovely, the (longer) UK version of Treasure is a bit harder to find but very worth it. “Le Notte De Silenzio,” a duet that hits that sweet spot between classical and pop, and Westenra’s warm, true take on the classic hymn “Abide with Me” are worth the price of admission.
*with a deep sigh of resignation* ~ Instagram
After years of holding a handle and not using it, I’ve finally caved and decided to try the Instagram thing for real. I do my best to minimize my time on social media because too much of it saps my creativity, but no social media at all means I’m missing out on inspiration and key connections with creatives I admire.
So far, Instagram is much quieter and much less political than Twitter (formerly my app/drug of choice). I’ve been enjoying brighter colors, gentler insights, and less mental clutter in this new creative space. I can curate a feed about writing, animals, yoga, books, and any other interests, and I get to see fun pictures from family members’ and friends’ lives. If you’d like to find me in a space where I appear to be more outdoorsy and put-together than I actually am, feel free to follow.