One of the hardest parts about writing prose, I feel, has to do with time.
The slippery axis of time is the source of some of my stickiest craft problems. When a story doesn’t travel linearly from an inciting conflict through mounting tension to resolution, what path does it take? When writing about my own experiences, is its narrator the “old” me, or the me of right now? What defines that gap between these two selves, and does that gap get muddied the longer I’ve spent devoted to the same writing project? What to do with plot points that double back and oscillate towards the conclusion I’m still living out?
Focusing on a story’s telling (or on narrative voice) is one way I gain my bearings in this muck. That’s also why I love essays so much. The capacious container they provide allows me to keep tugging at questions without getting too hung up on the chronology of my experiences.
But even in an essay, the craft of orienting readers amidst the turbulence of time-travel can be fine-tuned, detail-oriented work. Sometimes it requires letting go of narrative smoke and mirrors in favor of simple explanations, or even reminders about something you’ve already told a reader. Here’s one formula I use: “The winter I was 18 [TIME], I lived in a poorly-insulated three-story Victorian with 13 other punks [ORIENTING DETAIL]. My social life and political analysis were in-house affairs confined to a 2400 square-foot closed-loop circuit [STAKES/SIGNIFICANCE].”
To find that narrative clarity, I sometimes sound out the chasm between the characters I’ve been in the past, and the writer I am today. Getting space from who I’ve been can help me notice my own plot points and find meaning in them. It also makes it easier to turn my past-tense self into a character that readers can see and understand, exposing details and dilemmas that are as embarrassing and absurd as they are obvious and essential.
I recently learned that this presumed distance between the self that is a character of one’s writing, and the self that is its writer or narrator, is basically a truism of memoir writing. (Makes sense for a genre defined by chronological re-tellings of your own narrative arc.) But I don’t think it’s necessary to write about your misadventures through a disembodied, atemporal narrator who is slick, distant, and invisible. Some of the most exciting things I’ve ever read make records of their own messy process of construction and/or wear traces of unresolved dilemmas. A few of my loadstars include A Bestiary by Lily Hoang and The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. It can be narratively enabling to deflate the gap between self and narrator, and to permit a blurred and muddy narrative time. I’m always into interrogating any narrative scheme that relies upon artificial, present-tense invulnerability, or anywhere else insight is forced too quickly for the sake of a story, essay, or other kind of art.
But hanging out in a messy and unresolved story isn’t super comfy, and especially not when I’m convinced I should have already cleaned it up or put it behind me. This discomfort takes on a particular signature when fear of aging gets involved.
Now that I am 32 years old, I have an occasionally terrifying sense of catching up to the generic, archetypal “Adults” I’ve observed from afar for as long as I’ve been alive. In actuality, getting older has mostly been good to me. I’m better at taking care of myself, and sometimes clarity—the kind that gives writing strength and structure—feels both easier to grasp and easier to let go of. I don’t feel like I’m straining to make sense of my life and then clinging onto every shred of sense-making. But the notion of aging freaks me out, and there are a lot ways I don’t feel up to being an adult yet.
A lot of these reasons are pretty quotidian, like still not knowing what kinds of clothes I like wearing or where to find them, or how to store my belongings, stop leaving little stacks of paper around my house, or plan my week. (A lot of these are more ADHD-specific challenges than matters of “maturity”—but more about that in a future letter!) More significantly and tenderly, though, I am disappointed by painful expectations about what I should have accomplished as a writer by now. Maybe some part of me takes comfort in those everyday details of my underdeveloped domesticity, because the allure of developing into a mature, responsible, self-loving adult is often overshadowed by my attachment to being precocious—the kind of person who achieves early, easy success, and who gets published well before they’d be expected to meal plan and promptly put away their laundry. I dwell in obnoxious math about how old some of my favorite writers were when they published their first book. According to that measuring stick, “precocious” is a category I’ve already outgrown, which makes me want to run back into the shell of my 20’s.
The conflict between my urge to write insightfully about the past, and my desire to stay young, creates cognitive dissonance around my writing. The older I get the better I’m able to do the former, but I get sticker shock about the number of years I’ve been alive. The expectation that I should have already published a book feels maybe less absurd than it did when I was 24 and first got infected with it, but ultimately it’s no more accurate or fact-based than it was then. Books take as long as they take to be finished, and from there, published. This looks different for different books and different writers, and is also subject to all kinds of contingencies (unjust and otherwise). Dwelling in comparison about publication does nothing beneficial for my writing, but it is a highly effective way to psychologically punish myself and feed self-doubt. I have gotten a lot better at steering myself away from those pointy edges, but I sure scraped myself up a whole lot before I realized what was happening, and it’s totally still a sore spot.
When I was at AWP, an annual writer’s conference, last month, I overheard fellow attendees discuss how long it was taking them to finish their first book with a hint of familiar lamentation. This topic was also discussed in affirming, reassuring ways in some of the panels I sought out. In a panel about literary “imposters,” Denne Michele Norris described her first book’s slow path towards publication in this way: “Everything got bigger and better because I took my time.” Being at AWP made me notice how hungry I am for that kind of reassurance and to see my dilemma as normal. It made me think about how for so many of us, these urgent, imposed timelines define our relationships with our projects, which makes it too easy to feel like time is running out to be who we want to be.
I’d originally intended to not collapse literary analysis with self-help in this letter, because giving voice to the stigma surrounding age and accomplishment feels itself helpful and exciting to me, and not something that needs to be dressed up too much. But I realized that those narrative puzzles I described earlier (the challenge of locating the narrative “now” of my writing project) overlaps very literally with fears dredged up by getting older. It’s more than a metaphorical connection when cultural assumptions about aging limit the spaciousness and complexity, and define the kinds of conflicts, which narrators and actual humans are permitted past a certain age. When I buy into these assumptions, I am limited in my range as a writer. They have rudely butted into the narratives I write, and compacted the writing process with unnecessary pressure to be somewhere or something I’m not. These assumptions also play into too-tidy interpretations of my past-tense self and people I’ve encountered along the way, ones that don’t allow for the nuance and paradox they deserve.
One way I’ve found to deflate the pressure is finding role models that better match my own unique situation. I find it comforting when I learn that writers I love finished their first book when they were my age, or one or two (or more) decades older than I am now. And it’s not just about the numbers, but about what their lives looked like when they were writing themselves into the writers they became: potentially unglamorous and quotidian lives where working day jobs, housework, and taking care of family were more urgent and omnipresent responsibilities than drafting and revision. That’s probably why I’ve been on a George Saunders kick, who spent years working a boring office job and writing his first book Civil War Land in Bad Decline while en route to middle age. I’m obsessed with the updated author’s note at the end of that book, which tenderly, hilariously, and thoughtfully describes the era of its composition. (By the way, I’m still building up this collection of role models, and will happily take recommendations!)
These real-world examples of other writers’ trajectories help me imagine the shape of more spacious storylines, instead of arbitrary timelines in which accomplishment past a certain age is impossible. They help me imagine myself as both a character who is alive and evolving, and a writer/narrator who drives my story forward in interesting, unique ways.
While I do sometimes need to get narrative distance between who I am now and who I’ve been in the past, closing the distance between the story I’m currently living and its telling opens up another kind of breathing room. Maybe not everything wants to be written from this close up, but it feels good to remember that anything can—and that some things have to be.
Culture list
A short list of things I’ve recently read, watched, or listened to that have nourished my thinking, imagination, or both!
How to Slowly Kill Yourselves and Others in America by Kiese Laymon: I loved this essay collection by one of my favorite writers. Fitting with the theme of this letter, I alway learn so much from Laymon about aligning stories and questions.
Two episodes of the podcast Between the Covers: this interview with Sabrina Orah Mark about Happily, and this interview with Elissa Washuta about White Magic.
Still slowly savoring The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. There are so many little gems of sentences and phrases to be found inside, like this passage: “Millers, who are wind thieves, make good flour from storms.”
Quick update on Writing in Unknown Shapes
Writing in Unknown Shapes is a course for ambitious writers working in ambiguous forms. For the past few seasons I’ve offered the course every fall and spring, but this year I’ll be offering it just once. I’m still (re-)calibrating the course format, and am now looking forward to re-launching it, with dates TBD. I love teaching this class and want to make sure I open it back up when I can be fully present and engaged.
If you’d like to sign up for the waitlist, you’ll receive early notice when enrollment opens. Hit reply to send me any questions about the course, from the logistical to curricular—I’m happy to answer!
Offerings
Writing in Unknown Shapes — A course for ambitious writers working in ambiguous forms.
Experimental Practice podcast — Conversations about cross-genre and interdisciplinary work, culture, writing craft, and creative practice
Practice Space — Drop-in guided writing sessions — On hiatus while I sort out my health/energy, but I look forward to writing with you again soon!
Follow me on Instagram — I’m there sometimes!
Read more Essence of Toast — Archive of past letters