Writers & Lovers

On end-of-year aesthetic burnout.

Alain Delon & Marianne Faithfull in The Girl on a Motorcycle (dir. Jack Cardiff, 1968)

Hi there, sailor. I’ve been thinking about this quip from fellow North Carolinian diva Eliza McLamb’s recent newsletter:

To be completely honest with you, I have somewhere to be at 10, and I am writing this at 9. Most of my posts on here do not go through more than one round of edits (if that). Most of my posts are written in just one or two sittings, published as soon as I’m finished writing the last line. It makes sense to do this on a platform that is increasingly marketing itself as a kind of social media, because most people are not making their livings off of it, and because publishing on Substack alone grants no kind of prestige. Save those edits for The Paris Review.

Thank God someone said it. I enjoy Substack, but you’re incentivized to prize quantity over quality, and I find it detrimental to the art-making process. This is not to say that I’m throwing everything at the wall and sending work out without adequate care, because many of the things I write necessitate robust research and editing, but rather that many essays are not reaching my personal quality threshold. It usually takes a few weeks for me to write, edit, and mold a story to its ideal shape.

Again, in the words of Bourdain — writing is not cleaning squid. It is a luxury. But even luxuries can ask much of us, especially in mental energy. I would be hard-pressed to find someone writing a phenomenal, jaw-dropping, let’s-get-you-a-Baillie Gifford-level essay every week, let alone every month, on this platform. Many times, I sit down to write and roll my eyes at my preciousness. It’s not that I don’t know how to phrase something or tap into some creative afflatus; it’s that I have nothing to write, and I can’t taste anything juicy in the fruits of that labor. This is my long-winded way of saying: Sometimes I’d rather say nothing.

That’s a hard place to be in when, again, you’re on a platform that asks you to observe everything and be vociferous in your assay. I have received and read newsletters, as I’m sure you very well have, criticizing everything from a particular shade of Chanel pink; to long-forgotten books and films and trends that are now “discourse-y” on TikTok (a platform I seldom visit and is soon dying); to fleeting culture war commentary that will be forgotten about in mere days; to a million different I’mjustagirlist disquisitions. It’s constant and screechy, and none of it is novel. And if you’ll allow me to be mean for just one second — the reason we see these pieces gain traction is not because of the quality of the prose but despite it. It is incredibly easy to write in this “would’ve done numbers on Tumblr" parlance, which needs little research, edits, or CQ’ing before hitting PUBLISH. Like any social platform (which I guess Substack is now), there is strength found in numbers. Keep posting, and eventually, the preciousness will pay off.

I find a similar difficulty in dressing. The easiest option, much like above, is to copy-and-paste outfits from mood boards and saved folders, change a few things to make said outfits personal or subversive, and watch the kudos come in, whether on the street or online. Things of quality — that is, outfits pulled solely from your brain, outfits that require you to think and experiment and fail and try again — take essential time. All of us fear running out of that time, and that milky trepidation shows up in the way we write and dress. Occasionally, it is easier to take a copy-and-paste approach to dressing in the same way that, occasionally, it is easier to write a half-thought essay to keep your creative muscles flexed. I take no umbrage with the practice at all — it’s especially justified in how this platform moves, what it means to be a writer and a business, and, too, if you’re busy with deadline work at other outlets. It’s the whole reason I’m writing this newsletter in the first place.

I seldom write about my personal life, mainly because I believe that privacy is an increasing extravagance and I am protective of my heart — but I will tell you this: I am finding these difficulties everywhere. I’m tired (though not “burnt out” just yet — when that happens, it registers on the Richter scale). I’m restless, hungry, and unable to be satiated. I question my worth often. I have a very big project that I get to announce somewhat soon, but I’m not sure exactly when, and I’m nervous. I am turning 25 in two weeks, and I’m wondering why I’m not where I want to be yet — with my career, living arrangements, finances, body, all of it. I had a panic attack for the first time in years earlier this week. The seesaw tilts in double-time: worry, wonder, worry, wonder, worry, wonder, worry, wonder. Where gratitude should live inside my brain instead lies confusion, that pesky bedfellow. I sit down to write and forget all my words. My sentences are entropic, my points meandering. I lose myself in it all (and not in a good way). My clothing is confusing, too; outfits that don’t make any sense, with a sweater that doesn’t fit anymore or the wrong pair of shoes or a hazy fabric color that washes me gray against the winter sky. The confusion slows things down; I am losing so much time. This happens to everyone when they turn 25. But does it? Or am I lost inside my own head? Can anybody do me a favor and pull me out?

Several years ago, I had the pleasure of reading Lily King’s lovely novel Writers & Lovers, which gets at this itch: how do we balance the demands of art and life? To be a writer and have adequate leisure time is a common goal but an increasingly difficult one to reach. King’s protagonist, Casey, is working as a waitress at an upscale Harvard Square restaurant while she writes her novel, and she’s fearful about the next phase of her life. King writes with such vulnerability and heartache, the prose totally unadorned, crystal-clear:

I tell them the truth. I tell them I am thirty-one years old and seventy-three thousand dollars in debt. I tell them that since college I’ve moved eleven times, had seventeen jobs and several relationships that didn’t work out. I’ve been estranged from my father since twelfth grade, and earlier this year my mother died. My only sibling lives three thousand miles away. What I have had for the past six years, what has been constant and steady in my life is the novel I’ve been writing. This has been my home, the place I could always retreat to. The place I could sometimes even feel powerful, I tell them. The place where I am most myself. Maybe some of you, I tell them, have found this place already. Maybe some of you will find it years from now. My hope is that some of you will find it for the first time today by writing.

That is the thing that keeps pulling me back into stasis — that art-making can be a particular type of anchorage. It is a risky act, and yet, with enough practice and compassion, it allows for wondrous stability. I am writing through the turmoil of this moment not because I think it will provide me with any divine answers about living but because it is the only thing that brings me any serenity. Writers are lovers, rebarbative ones, really, but lovers all the same, because only a lover could live inside their head and not go mad. I am trying to do the same.

Anyways, if you have SOMETHING TO SAY — a pang of recognition, a story you’d like to tell, a kind word — I’m opening up the comment section for everybody. I’d like to hear what you’re thinking about.

See you on Friday. ꩜