Back by popular demand

making some confessions and talking about writing

Hello, world! I have some exciting news. Due to popular demand (well, due to the two people who asked me about it), my first novel, American Mary, is back in print! You can buy it here.

Some of you may remember that last year I serialized the novel on my Substack and created an e-book version, which I hosted on Gumroad. This year, after some gentle editing and the addition of some new passages, I decided to republish an official second edition of American Mary through Be About It Press, for those two people who had asked if I still had paper copies available. And if not just for those two people specifically, you’ve gotta admit that it is nice to hold a book in your hands, right? I only have one original copy left, and I appreciate the option of being able to print more copies if I ever go on another book tour. I think it’s a good book. It should have a physical form!

Many thanks go out to Tex Gresham for this beautifully reimagined cover design, and to Paul Corman-Roberts for providing a lovely introduction.

So, what was it like going through and making changes to a book I had originally written in 2015? It was a lot. Sometimes it was embarrassing, and sometimes it was painful, but a lot of the time I was in awe of a very real thing I had spent time on and created during a period of my life marked by addiction (to tobacco, marijuana, drama, and an unhealthy association with alcohol), tumultuous personal relationships, and severe underemployment.

In 2015 I was 29 going on 30, working at a job that I hated and was not very good at, barely surviving on my meager paychecks, most of which went to rent. Okay, so I did have enough money after paying rent to feed my daily weed habit, but I certainly wasn’t living large, and at the time I felt like I needed the weed in order to fully numb myself from trauma I was trying to escape and the sorry situation I had constructed around myself, so it wasn’t even like I was getting stoned to have fun. I was getting stoned all the time to stay in a perpetual haze of arrested maturation. Anti-healing, because healing would mean that I would need to confront the actions I took that got me where I was, as well as confronting the trauma, mostly from the aforementioned tumultuous personal relationships.

It was later in October 2015, when I decided to quit drinking. Actually it was less of a decision and more of a mandate I placed upon myself after an extremely cringey evening where I had way too much to drink and made a fool of myself in front of a bunch of people. Getting “California sober” (because I was still rolling spliffs every day, multiple times a day) was when I was able to start thinking about forgiving myself for any wrongs I had committed as well as address the transgressions that had been committed against me. And it’s also what pushed me to string together a concise narrative out of the short stories I had been writing.

Even though the stories in American Mary are fictional, they are based on actual events, and it was tough at times to reread them. Just like, these were large moments in my life and I’m so happy that I made my way out of them, but boy were they agonizing while I was living them. It was good to write about them at the time, and honestly I’m surprised I was able to stomach it. I think the 2015 version of me was writing these harrowing tales as a way to sort out my thoughts about them, but from such a disembodied place that it was like I was merely playing with dolls and typing out their movements and dialogue onto the page instead of spilling my guts. I think that’s pretty cool. I want to congratulate 2015 me for doing it, in spite of everything.

Editing is just something I like to do. I love editing. I love poring over something I’ve written and then hacking away at it to make it read better. To show more. To consider all angles. You might not get that impression by looking at the posts on this Substack, where the impulse to type something quickly and hit “publish” before rereading it several times is all too present, but it’s true when it comes to my longer works. I will “finish” a story or poem or whatever and continue reading it over and making changes because I just can’t help myself. Rereading American Mary was a trip because there were some sections I didn’t want to touch at all, they already felt perfect to me. And then there were others that I kept returning to and toying with.

With the novel I’m currently trying to get published, I keep telling myself it is done but then I’ll reopen the document and tweak it again and again. Part of it I think is that I just love living in that world that I created and I don’t want to let it go. Maybe it’s a kind of perfectionism. It will be done, but it will never be done. It can always be better, and I could go nuts revising forever until I forcibly stop myself. Do you do this, too? I like to think I’m not the only one who does this.

---

Do I write? Or do I clean the house?

These are the choices I lay out for myself when I find that I have some free time.

Here’s my typical scenario: My toddler is at my mom’s house. My infant is napping peacefully. I have—if I’m lucky—an hour to myself. How do I spend it? Should I pull out the laptop and do some editing? Hmm, maybe. But I can see cat hair on the carpet so it’s probably a better idea to get the vacuum and tidy up a bit. Plus there’s perpetually more laundry to do. I’ll clean now, and write later. I can always find a moment to write a blog post later after the kids are asleep.

Except when I do find that moment, I can’t be bothered to do anything more than wash my face and call it a night. I am tired and uninspired.

For a while, my infant started taking longer naps, like three to four hours at a time during the day. Had I been more motivated, this would have been a great opportunity to set aside time for writing, particularly when my toddler was at my mom’s house for the day. With my baby safely swaddled in the next room, I could have lesiurely gotten done whatever I wanted to do while she snoozes.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been motivated to do much other than rewatch the entirety of Six Feet Under while waiting for Nate to die and looking at r/fridgedetectives posts on Reddit on my phone after doing some maintenance chores (dishes, sweeping, laundry, food prep). But today? Today I am writing. At least I am writing this blog post. Editors note: I started writing this blog post two weeks ago. I am currently taking a walk with my infant daughter and while she snoozes in the stroller, I am using speech to text to write this post on my phone. Another editor’s note: another week has passed. I am finishing up this post while watching Hell’s Kitchen reruns on Youtube. I started with season six and it must have been filmed in the 2000s or 2010s because everyone is smoking and making fat jokes.

I am starting a new writing project. Or, I’m telling people I’m starting a new project. Right now it’s just scattered ramblings in my phone’s notes app, but it will eventually be something. I want it to be something. It’s something different from what I usually write. I have no idea when I’ll really be able to write it.

What I need is to schedule some time away from home, where I can work with no distractions, but I still feel unsure if I can do anything like that right now. At least in the amount of time I would want. The longest I can get out of the house and be alone are my two-hour gym excursions I’ve been doing twice a week while my mom hangs out with my infant and my toddler at my apartment. Two hours is the maximum amount of time my mom feels comfortable handling both kids, and I don’t blame her.

Some people can get up early, before anyone else in the house is awake, and use that time to write. Other people can stay up late. I know I used to love staying up all night on a weekend writing while the rest of the world around me was either partying or sleeping. I remember a factoid from Pop-Up Video that said Prince preferred working during the hours of 3am-5am because it’s when he felt most creative.

There is something special about the middle of the night. I know that one day I will be able to have that again. I don’t need to write in the middle of the night now. I don’t need to wake up before the sun rises to eke out some prose, wearily holding a hot mug of coffee and typing quietly lest I draw attention to the fact that I’m up and therefore available.

These days I’m getting ready for bed at 9pm and awake around 6am, when my toddler climbs up into my bed and cheerily greets me, excited for the new day. It’s a nice way to wake up, and I wouldn’t change it, even though some mornings I wish she could just curl up beside me and let me sleep another thirty minutes instead of giggling and kicking her legs into my torso to get me up and at ‘em.

I just read this essay by Elaine Kahn on the Poetry Foundation website, about her conflict with being an artist and being a mother, how she had defined herself with her writing before motherhood, but how having a baby shifted her desire and her priorities. I think I understand the sentiment. Compared to caring for your own children, so much else feels pointless and contrived.

When Zosia was a baby, I didn’t really write much at all. I would sometimes put together little poems while going on long walks with her in the stroller so she could nap, but I wasn’t dedicating any sort of serious time to the craft. I don’t think I was able to do that until Zosia was nearly two years old. Now that I have a whole brand new baby, I think I may be deluding myself about how much writing I’ll be able to do. Even if I did have more time, I don’t think I have the brain power. For now, it seems okay to just make notes, write when I feel inspired, and trust that there will come a day when the ardent desire and the capability returns to me and I can create again.