To publish or not to publish
Lilly opines on the question that lives rent-free in every young writer’s mind.
There is one cliche that has been repeated to me in every writing workshop I have ever taken: Write like your parents are already dead.
I’ve never been great at that, despite the fact that it’s half-true.
I started calling myself a writer in high school, when I realized that whenever I was having a tough time or wanted to figure out a problem, my first inclination was to write down everything I was thinking. Soon after, I took my first creative writing class — but what I hadn’t considered was that I would have to actually show other people what I was writing. I immediately discovered a language of occlusion I didn’t know existed inside me. I took the class every semester for the rest of high school, but I wrote with a new goal: to get as close to what I was experiencing without ever having to say it. I got the same comment over and over again. Get to the point. Say what you mean, and not an approximation of it.
I tried, but I never got close. What if someone in my life found out what I wrote, and was hurt by it?
. . .
By the time I started college, I had already spent a few years self-identifying as the World’s Biggest Loser. Not because I had perpetually frizzy hair and pimples on my chin and was bookish and pretty much terrified of speaking to anyone who didn’t speak to me first (all true), but because at that point I had also become an expert at losing people. One by one, incarceration, expired visas, family feuds, dementia, and death had separated me from most of my family. I defined myself by my so-called independence in retaliation.
When I left my childhood home, I packed up everything I could fit into a cousin’s sedan and abandoned the rest. Most mornings, I woke up and felt paralyzed, like someone had rounded up everything I left behind and dropped it on my chest. To get out of bed, I had to squirm out from under the weight of all the things I convinced myself I no longer missed. The solution, of course, was to write about it. I did so almost compulsively — in the margins of my lecture notes and handouts and used paperbacks and crumpled napkins. I told myself that these would all be notes for a brilliant book of essays or memoir or auto-fictional novel one day. But most of them ended up as trash at the bottom of my backpack.
. . .
The first class I took as an English major was a prerequisite called Introduction to Literature. My professor had decided to focus our class that year on the language of trauma. It was a subject that I ate up gluttonously. We collectively lauded the rawness of the works we read — written by survivors of abuse and war and abandonment — and talked about how real writers feel beholden to no one but themselves, to no truth but their own. We talked about honesty, and the courage it takes to write about what makes others uncomfortable, to go through the alienating process of sharing details that were supposed to be left private. I wrote papers about writers who had been through unimaginable pain and came out alive, successful even. I wanted to own all of the loss and pain and shame and solitude like they did. In this class, my concept of “real writing” firmed up: It is a craft one does alone, and, if you can hack it, the work is worth the solitude.
I was convinced I was most of the way there; I was alone already, after all. But I still didn’t want to say it out loud. I feared that to acknowledge all the lack I was feeling was to make it permanent. And to share the story of my life that I had been telling myself then felt like betraying the privacy of the few people I had left. I was a confused and angry person, but I still never wanted to hurt anyone.
. . .
When I was at my first newspaper gig — a post-grad internship at a paper in Alaska — the stars somehow aligned to bring bestselling author Susan Orlean to the same place where I was, the same small Alaskan town, for an artist’s retreat. She was giving the keynote speech at the retreat the day after I arrived, and I was covering it.
During the Q&A that came after her speech, she cautioned the attendees against over-editing and holding work hostage. She posed the question: “Are you a communicator or are you a navel gazer?” I wrote this down and underlined it aggressively, almost ripping a hole in my notepad. Maybe this is where my story could end, I thought. Maybe, if I could just get all of this down correctly, this will be the start of my success.
. . .
On many occasions, I feel as though I am a writer in the same way that a car whose engine only works in fits and starts is a car.
And I wonder: At what point did I start to associate the very way I experience the world with success or failure?
I have spent half my life dreaming of doing it, but I cannot write like no one is reading my work. Or should I say, I cannot publish like no one is reading my work. Orleans' message stuck with me all these years, but it seems to not have gotten through to me.
Perhaps this is my cowardice speaking, but I’m starting to think that at this point in my life, this may not be as bad a thing as my writing teachers warned. At the very least, I made it through the formative years of my writing career unscathed by the first-person industrial complex. I also was forced to find other ways of healing, which took some of the burden off of writing and allowed me to actually enjoy it again. Young writers are conditioned to worship at the altar of Publishing. Through this mindset, I feel like some of the magic of writing gets lost.
In the meantime, something surprising happened. Instead of losing people, I started to gain them. My internal narrative shifted. I began questioning whether or not it would actually do me any good to publish career-defining work about my loss. I still don’t know, but I do know that for now I’m happy, and I’d like to take a step away from the loss for a while.
At some point in the writer’s journey, you’re supposed to talk about how writing “saved you” or “set you free.” I don’t know if this is what happened to me. Writing certainly made me. It brought me to Melinda and to Boston and to Alaska and back again, and it’s what I’ve done for tens of hours a week for my whole life. But people talk about writing with mythic undertones, and in a lot of ways it's just the way my mind processes things — and maybe this is not something I can fail at, even if no one ever reads another word I write about myself.
With a day job in content and and endless list of false starts on personal writing projects, I’m probably farther from being what my younger self considered a “real writer” than I’ve ever been, but I’m also starting to reimagine what this word — writer — means on my own terms for the first time. That seems like a solid next step.
And if I’m going to mine my life for an essay, it won’t be for a media corporation trying to find a viral moment; it’ll at least be for my own damn newsletter.
Hunter-gatherer corner
What we’ve read and DMed each other about lately — our internet bounty is below!
“Look What Taylor Made Us Do” by Tyler Foggatt - The New Yorker — How can I say this in a way that doesn’t make me sound like a giant hater… Even though I love Taylor Swift’s music, something about the way people have been acting about Eras Tour is extremely cringe to me? But this piece was a sweet look at that cringe sisterhood, and Swift’s Vegas residency level performances. — MF
“Succession’s roots were in theater. That’s why it was great.” by Alissa Wilkinson - Vox — My colleague Alissa Wilkinson correctly calls Succession “a show that reminds us why we watch things in the first place.” I will miss the show and its dialogue, which was rich and multi-faceted and just so smart and fun and dramatic in all the best ways, maybe forever. — MF
Why Not?
Why Not? is our biweekly list of recommendations. Think recipes, gift guides, podcasts, clothes, and anything we consider to be generally chic. Have a suggestion? Let us know!
The Neapolitan Novels - Elena Ferrante — I don’t remember the last time I ran to the bookstore to get the rest of a series after reading the first book. Finishing My Brilliant Friend brought me back to that, and I’ve devoured the rest of the Neapolitan Novels since. The books have almost an addictive quality, and the friendship between Lenu and Lila is unlike any other I’ve ever read about. As far as I’m concerned, this is required reading!! — LM
Following vintage resellers on Instagram — Melinda has gotten me hooked on filling my feed with vintage resellers hawking goods that threaten to max out my credit card with one purchase. But what can I say, it’s fun to window shop — especially when I can do it from the comfort of my couch. — LM
Watching old movies — I’ve been ushered into my old movie era folks! In the past few weeks, I’ve watched: All About Eve, The Philadelphia Story, I Love You Again, Love Crazy, and Casablanca — and I can’t get enough!! If you’re in Boston, seeing an old movie in 35mm at the Coolidge is a must. — LM
If you liked this issue, write us a poem! Tell us your thoughts in the comments or on Instagram (@lilly_milman | @melindafakuade), or send this to your favorite editor.
I know we never really spoke in high school - I thought y'all were too cool for me tbh - but I've really been enjoying reading your substack :) love all the recs!
I feel really seen in this one, thank you so much Lilly