Weirdness and Rage
On NOT writing and being stepped toward
Hello friends,
I was livid yesterday.
Snowed in with my small kids, I lost all my writing time. And sure, there is magic to roaming the neighbourhood with my 3 year old, snapping icicles off the undersides of cars, the baby strapped to my chest keeping me warm-ish. But not writing really fucks with me. Not writing settles in my joints and fogs my brain. Too much not writing (did I mention yesterday was our third snow day of December?) makes me feel fundamentally off.
The world gets glassy.
I’m impatient.
The racked up exhaustion from sleepless nights with the baby suddenly crashes down on me.
And it is good: this weirdness and rage.
It is good when my need to write becomes un-ignorabale.
Because not writing is always the path of least resistance. The world provides ample obstacles, work and weather and children, and no one is coming with a snowplow to clear my way to my desk. It would be so very easy not to write another novel, so I thank god that not writing feels so damn hard.
Friends, I ran to the cafe this morning after the babysitter arrived, light-footed despite my lack of sleep. I’m here, at last, thrilled to be alone with my mind and my laptop and you.
Thank you for being here for me to write to. Your light beckons me toward the page.
Thank you especially to all of you who subscribed since my last letter, and to all who commented and re-stacked1 it.
That piece, on grief and the privilege of aging, garnered more responses than anything I’ve ever posted here. I wrote it hurriedly and slightly guiltily, stealing time from my novel, never expecting it to strike such a chord. Bear with me while I hop into my time machine to carry all those responses to my lonely younger self…
It’s twelve years ago. A mentor asks, out of politeness, how my brother is doing in hospital and visibly steps back when I reply ‘He died’. We are standing side by side on a floral carpet. That indelible step confirms my worst fears: that my grief is something ugly, dangerous, distasteful.
The flurry of activity around my last post was the opposite of that moment. We can talk about loss and be stepped toward. Grief can be connective, and in that way joyful, as well as isolating.
Next time I’ll get back to my series on friendship in life and in literature. New friends, you can find prior installments below.
All my love,
Anna
Especially lovely Clover Stroud whose re-stack helped the piece find lots of people. Clover is so generous, and there’s a luminous generosity to her writing.