Testimony

It's Pizza Friday!

Hey there.

When I started this newsletter I had a newborn. I wanted to be writing but could only do it in short bursts. I wrote with the baby in the carrier, laptop on the kitchen counter, swaying to keep her asleep, giddily in love with my child and anxious about what would happen to my career now that I was a mother. I wrote two posts and then I was afraid to share my writing for a while.

Now I have a newborn again. Again, my baby is asleep on me as I write. I’m reminded of the frustration and tenderness of postpartum writing. All the false starts: the baby’s still hungry, the nap didn’t last long enough. And also, the warmth of an improbable person on your chest, the smell of their milk breath, the baby bird chirps from deep sleep. Because it’s my second time having a kid, the baby part feels easier. I know that the newborn stage is ephemeral. I have proof: My daughter will be three in June. She wants me to paint her nails, and she throws Magna-Tiles into the toilet, and she asks me when she wakes up, “is it Pizza Friday today?” So I’m more at peace with the sleep deprivation now, and the spit-up, and the diaper changes, because nothing lasts forever. That’s the good news, and that’s the bad news, too.

It’s Pizza Friday today and I’m at a standstill with my manuscript. It’s the fourth novel I’ve written. I’m about two-thirds of the way done and I don’t know what should happen next. I know that I’m paralyzed because I’m afraid that whatever I choose may be wrong for the book, and that may lead to this book being a failure, and because my last manuscript “failed”—i.e., it didn’t sell—I’m not emotionally prepared to let that happen again. The person in me who used to approach writing with blind faith also had a lot of early career successes, and she’s harder to find right now.

Isn’t that a bitch? Some people are motivated by failure. For me, when good things happen in my career, I want to keep going, keep riding that wave of success. But when bad shit happens, I want to shut it down altogether. I think, better to get out now. Unfortunately, I’m constitutionally unable to quit writing, which means I have to keep subjecting myself to the pain that this industry has caused me. It’s kind of like exposure therapy.

Maybe there’s a way to divorce myself from the external markers from success, and to instead dive into the pleasure that writing brings me. This is something I will probably always be working on. At a literary festival several years ago, another writer shared a revelation that has continued to stick with me. After she was published, she said, she realized, with deep disappointment, that there would always be something else to reach for. Better sales. A print review. A tenure-track appointment. A movie deal. Whatever. She learned, only after publishing her debut, that she had to find the joy from the work itself, because that’s all we actually have to ourselves.

I think this is by Ernst Oppler but I don’t know what it’s called. I found it in my photo roll. I saw it at the Jewish Museum in New York a few days after I learned I was pregnant with our second kid.

It’s true. Here’s when I’m happiest: 5:15 am, at the dining room table, and it’s still dark out, and I’m writing my morning pages. Everyone else in my house is asleep. I programmed the coffee maker the night before and I finish the whole mug while it’s still hot. It’s too early for the hypothetical criticisms by hypothetical strangers of my work in progress to slow me down or stop my from writing altogether. I just go. I worry about the quality later.

(This ritual is temporarily paused; the morning carrier nap at the kitchen counter standing desk has taken its place.)

I recently watched a video of Danielle Brooks and Fantasia Barrino on the press tour for The Color Purple. Brooks tells the discouraged young interviewer, “If we heard every yes that we wanted, we would not appreciate this moment.” She begins to cry as she describes how she had recently wanted to quit acting because of the “shit [she] went through.” She says, “we have to sacrifice and have some shit go down for the greater good.” I never thought of personal pain as service before. As testimony.

@itsjustttjoyHere is pt 3 of this interview 💜. It warms my heart that this moment, my pain their pain, this unexpected moment just from one question is reaching your hearts 💜knowing that its helped some of you reminds me i do have a purpose greater than what i see in front of me. Like danielle i wanted to quit my career last year in ents and give it all up. But God is doing a work in me and has been holding my hand all his time. Your comments are healing me. Thank you #fantasia #fantasiabarrino #daniellebrooks #thecolorpurple #daniellebrooksoscar #thecolorpurplemovie #thecolorpurplemovie #christiantok #fyp #fp #foryou #blacktok #fantasiapreaching #fantasiayounginterviewer

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So, here you go: two job losses and one unsold manuscript later, I’m learning how much sweeter a “yes” feels after a string of “no”s. And I’m learning that the best “yes” isn’t from someone else but from the work itself. It isn’t easy, but it’s all we have. And it won’t last forever.

Currently 

Reading Splinters by Leslie Jamison, a memoir about divorce and motherhood. I aspire to write with a fraction of the emotional acuity that she does. I am both listening to it and reading it on my iPad, depending on whether I need my hands or not, and Jamison’s narration of the audiobook, about the haze of early motherhood and miles walked with her baby in the carrier, is comfort and company while I walk with my baby in the carrier.

Watching Grey’s Anatomy, the perfect show for the sleep-deprived. It’s a feat of storytelling and junky-sweet. I hear myself saying things to my husband like, “Meredith’s mother got her memory back…but it won’t last!”