On Writing

And a short little story

Back in December, when I asked you all to tell me what you wanted to hear from me, one person (hi Rick!) asked for some insight into how I write. In writerly circles I believe this is called “craft.” How to get over the block of the blank page? How do you channel a barrage of ideas into actual words and sentences? Just how much caffeine is necessary? Honestly, I’m often at a loss myself. My urge to write is forever at odds with the urge to do any number of other useful things. Right now, in fact, I’m torn between continuing this paragraph and going to the gym, which would be demonstrably better for my recovery and continued health.

<Goes to gym.>

OK I’m back. It’s now a day later and I’ve worked out, slept nine hours, and spent 40 minutes on hold with the reservations system for Olympic National Park. As you can see, my approach to writing lacks a certain systematic rigor. No “morning pages,” no getting up at 5 am, no 500-words-a-day benchmarks to hit. I’ve tried all of those things in the past, and the inevitable failure to follow through just made me feel ashamed and inadequate, states of being not exactly conducive to creative flow. 

I was relieved and validated when I came across this excellent advice from literary agent Anna Sproul-Latimer, who runs a Substack called “How to Glow in the Dark.” I recommend reading the whole thing, but, in summary, she says “stop making things that you actually WANT to do – like writing – into chores.” She has a lot of other useful advice about how to make the things that actually are chores – paying bills, scheduling dental work – less tiresome, but the key bit is this, in capital letters:

Or to bastardize an example from orthopedic rehab: follow the pleasure/pain principle. In order to heal (write) do what feels good; if it doesn’t feel good (getting up at 5 am), don’t do it. It will just set you back further.

This strategy worked for my broken ankle and it’s working towards keeping this newsletter going on a loosely weekly basis. I don’t keep a content calendar, or have scheduled publication dates and times. I do keep a running list of ideas in a Google doc, some more fleshed out than others (“wrong bra,” reads one current undeveloped entry), and if I’m stumped I turn to that list for inspiration. Often, the entry takes the form of a lede. These come to me often and I’ve found, over many years, that if I have the right first sentence, I can write the right first paragraph – and the right first paragraph eventually leads to the second, and so on. Thus, another entry on the list states: “For a long time, the chicken stayed in Kenosha.”

Often, though, I don’t need to turn to the list. Something I hear or see or experience sparks a connection and, when the time is right, when it gives me pleasure – like right now – I sit down and hash it out, sentence by sentence, attaching description to reflection to association.

For example, a story:

My head’s been in the 80s lately, thanks to the back to back publication of two books about the indie rock scene of the day: kranky records cofounder Bruce Adams’s You’re With Stupid and Poster Children bassist Rose Marshack’s Play Like a Man.  I’m at an age now when many artists and writers in my peer group have achieved a certain success, or at least stability, that allows them space to reflect and to write a memoir. These are far from the only two out there, but both capture a cultural moment that feels more strange and precious by the day. I took this moment of my young adulthood for granted then and only reflecting upon it now see as unreplicable, shaped by both evolving technologies (Fanzines! College radio! The .. internet?) and the paradoxical understanding that our music and art were both absolutely correct and utterly irrelevant.

Into this nostalgic headspace a friend shot me a message the other day. He was home sick and, picking up a copy of my college boyfriend’s band’s first album, was tickled to see my name tucked into the thank-you’s on the back jacket. The message made me laugh and, also, reminded me of the link between that record and where I am today.

In the spring of 1988 – my sophomore year of college – I started to suffer debilitating panic attacks. The first one hit while we were driving back to Oberlin from NYC at the end of spring break, and was probably triggered by too much truck stop coffee – and when we finally got back to school I made whoever’s car we were in take me straight to the ER. But despite the doctor’s assurance that no, I wasn’t dying, the panic attacks continued for weeks upon weeks, sometimes several in one day. After a while I was not exactly functional. At one point my mother flew out to try and take me home, but I wanted to stick it out and, with the sweet support of my friend Suzannah, who had the fun task of forcing Xanax down my throat as I lay fetal on the floor, I did somehow manage to crawl across the finish line of the semester. And then, with the unerring wisdom of 20-year-olds everywhere, I decided to drive to Chicago with my boyfriend’s band. They were going to remix their first album with Steve Albini, and play a show, and I’d never been to Chicago before, so it sounded … fun?

I have vivid memories of the car flying over the Skyway, the flaming gas plumes of Hammond and Whiting illuminating an industrial moonscape oddly glamorous to my eyes. Once we got into the city, though, I was lost. I was dropped off at the apartment of some recent alums of vague acquaintance with the promise that my boyfriend would get in touch later, and then whoosh, they were gone. For the next few days – More than one? Less than a week? – I crouched, paralyzed. Was I in Lakeview? Wicker Park? Hyde Park? No clue. All I remember is sitting in mute confusion, chain smoking on the brick balcony, fearful my body might betray me before these strangers, waiting for the phone to ring. The concept of a cell phone, of immediate communication with anyone anywhere in a strange city, was so preposterous as to be inconceivable. 

One of the recent grads registered my anguish and in my hazy memory made it his charge to make sure I ate and slept. He joined me on the balcony to talk about school and about what I might be doing for the summer, and suggested possible excursions – perhaps I wanted to go to the Art Institute? – and when I declined he was kind enough to point me toward the corner store, where I could buy more smokes. 

Eventually, of course, the phone did ring and I was given directions to a club to which I was duly dispatched in a taxi. I remember nothing about the show, only that it was dark and loud, and that afterward I trailed along with the band back to Albini’s, where I was politely if unenthusiastically received as an additional house guest. I don’t remember being angry, just relieved and a little deflated, my great adventure in the city having gone so south so fast. The next morning — after Albini failed to wake us up in time — my boyfriend rushed me out to O’Hare and, after choking down more Xanax, I flew back to Seattle and promptly dropped out of school.

As first impressions of Chicago go, it was pretty grim. Hardly premonitory – who knew I would go on to live here for 28 years and counting? But my struggling brain did manage to take some snapshots that remain vivid all these years later. The moonscape of the Region’s dying industrial base; the brick balconies that I now take for granted, a ubiquitous feature of Chicago’s residential architecture. The dingy, sodium-vapor-lit street outside the club that, Google tells me, was on Clybourn, just a little bit down from the bougie Salvation Army I now frequent on the regular. And the kindness of the recent grad, who I still see around from time to time. At some point this past decade I reminded him of this strange interlude, and thanked him. He just grinned and shrugged, as if to say, of course  – why wouldn’t I be nice to you?

Because that’s the thing: I had no idea what to expect from men, or boys, or from myself at the time. I don’t blame Jon, my long-ago boyfriend, whose own memoir of the era mentions this trip but not my shadowy presence. We were all so young. He was self absorbed. I was a mess. 

At the time, I thought I was done, a failure, and that I would likely never see Ohio, or Chicago again. But this story has a happy ending. I got some therapy, and the panic attacks faded away. I enrolled at the University of Washington and stayed in Seattle through the fall – and Seattle in1988 was a very fun place to be. I got a part-time job at the third Starbucks in the world, and shared a tiny attic apartment with Krista, and then when she went back to Evergreen Erica moved in, and she was working at Sub Pop and her boyfriend worked at Fallout and everywhere, the scene was exploding. I did well at the UW, I made some money, I went to 9,000 shows, and drove down to visit Krista every other weekend, and I slowly regained the self-confidence Oberlin – with its rich New York art kids and intimidating junior Marxists – had chipped away. And when I went back in the spring of ‘89 it was good.

This story could go on and on, off on 300 tangents until I land back in my Chicago present, but I’ll just leave it there – an anecdote that maybe offers a little insight, sparked by a funny note from a friend. In this fashion, I was startled to discover the other day, I’ve written 30,000 words since July.

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Thank you for reading! One last note about writing: with this newsletter I’ve given myself (obviously) permission to be discursive and drafty. I usually hit publish as soon as I’ve done a quick proofread, denying myself the chance to second guess and revise. Don’t let the perfect, enemy of the good etc. I’m not holding myself to professional standards here, or deadlines, and that’s a privilege. But it does still take some time, and if you’d like to support this project as it evolves, consider becoming a paid subscriber? I’ll make it worth your while, I promise. Someday soon I’ll even finish the story about the chicken.