Lolling
in the lull
Welcome to the Sunday post.
An open letter to Substack (link below) was published this week by Marisa Kabas. I’m in support, and because of Substack’s lack of direct response I’ll be exploring possible other platforms for Mommy’s El Camino that I hope to have solidified by March 2024.
A question I keep returning to in the last few weeks has been: how do I want my “writing life” to look? The “new year” is as ever another opportunity to act with a sense of renewal, though of course I could say, How do I want my writing life to look? on any given Wednesday and look at that day or the next as the day, the start of renewal. So it’s not a question I’ve just been returning to in the last few weeks but one I’ve returned to for, oh, about thirty years, and this is a time in my life when I already have a sense and a structure to my particular “writing life” but it’s faded in the last few months.
January 2024 will begin with a new tattoo on the same day as a meeting in which some details of a dream I’ve had will be ironed out. I also want it to begin with freshened commitments to my projects—a book of essays, a novel, a teleplay, and Mommy’s El Camino—and the first thing that comes to mind is I need to protect myself for/from myself. With the ongoing realization that I’m slowed down significantly every year where writing is concerned between September and December, I wonder about formalizing it in some way, agreeing with myself to focus on new writing from January through August, and then just give in to the molasses months that follow, maybe just revising or deeper reading than the front end of the year.
I’m thinking of the times I say no to things, being open so very little and so carefully to avoid overwhelm and burnout. As I composed a ‘no’ email, I mentally blocked out the months and their respective commitments. And then I wrote that I’m booked up until June 2024.
In this moment I have nothing particularly urgent working me up to write on any given project. A lull. And it’s good. I was firing on all cylinders for a time—for three consecutive years—and then there was an uncomfortable lull, and then the pandemic began. And what if the “lull” becomes more comfortable. I can remember the overwhelm from before, how caught up I was in publicity for my three books, saying yes all over the map. Now I lull. I loll. I trust that despite my refrain of no I’ll be asked to do things again in the future and in that future I’ll be as conscious as I am now of balancing the attention outward to the attention inward and within the sphere IRL right in front of me.
As I wrote this all out I came up with some of the reasons for why I think my essays are where they are (unfinished, or finished but not sent anywhere, or living only in my head) and the reasons were simple. One of the reasons was in the form of a question that turns out to be the crux of an essay I’ve been struggling with.
Last night I dreamt I was in a large white room. There was little furniture and lots of space. There must have been windows because it was well-lit. I understood that I was to design the room to my liking. There was no one else to advise or consult with—it was my big nearly empty room and I had a tall bookshelf, books to shelve. There was no closet, and I envisioned the clothing rack I’d use. Did I want a curtain? It didn’t matter—I was mostly excited by the spaciousness and the prospect of arranging.
Reflection of where I’m at with writing? Harbinger of things to come? Yes. Yes to all of it.