Finding joy in writing

I used to be a lot less self-conscious about writing.

There’s something in the act of growing that invites self-consciousness. Kids are notoriously unselfconscious, until they aren’t, and it’s one of the most endearing things about them. They may take an action to elicit a response, but it’s simple, direct. Basic math, not calculus.

As we get older, we get more practiced in how we present ourselves to others. It’s not a gut response anymore. This means no tantrums, but also less full-on belly laughs. It means, more importantly, manipulation – of your image, of yourself, a growing dexterity with how you are perceived.

One of the challenges of growing old is reconnecting with the child inside you – this is what helps make life livable when losses come and the body fails. Living in the present moment, being open to others, being direct and vulnerable, these are things that you can forget how to do quite easily. You lose the knack, and then, if you’re lucky, you find it again, intentionally.

The same progress occurs for creatives. You start knowing nothing but that you love the medium, usually when you are younger, and as you grow older you become more and more concerned about the “right” way to do it. Not all of this is bad. I do think there’s something to learning an artform – I’m not arguing against it. But at some point, structure becomes a cage, and the audience in your head becomes faceless and critical, a cold wind on the fragile green of your ideas. You cannot live always thinking about what you should be doing according to someone else’s definitions.

I am intentionally trying to become less concerned with those things.¹

At this point, it’s a matter of self-preservation. A couple months ago I had a post go semi-viral on Bluesky. I could feel the urge to become obsessive. To dissect what made that post work, and try to make more of them. To throw myself on the wheel of the internet and let it tear me up.² It’s a natural impulse. But it’s not the place I am in my life right now. To be clear, I don’t think that folks who craft their social media more intentionally are doing something bad. Self-consciousness is not per se a bad thing. It’s just another way of doing things. I think there is a fundamental difference between making content and making art. I also think that they exist on a spectrum together, and that the lines can blur in your heart, especially when there is money involved. Especially at a time when so much of the world is about bobbing along atop the raging river of more – more information, more stimulation.

You can write for the imagined reader, or you can write for yourself. What I have found, at least at this point in my life, is that when I write for the imagined reader it takes a lot more work to make something I also enjoy. It’s not that I can’t do it, or that I wouldn’t potentially enjoy doing it at another stage in my life. It is that I am old, and stretched thin.³ Butter scraped over the metaphorical too much bread. The shifting sands of the publishing industry and the general sense of overwhelm I think everyone in the US is currently experiencing are not helping.

Inside me are two wolves. One wants to set crazy goals and revamp my career and do mad things where I somehow publish ten books in the next five years and become famous and renowned and have my face on Vogue or something.⁴ The other would like to keep writing, but also work in my garden, and bake cakes, and hug my baby.⁵

In this chapter of my life, I must be the second wolf. Or, to come back to my first metaphor, the child chasing butterflies, skinning knees, sunbathing, the lazy summer child dreaming abstractly of future glories that do not really shine more than the glory of the here and now. And if that means that I still make stories in the face of my own insignificance, I will consider it a success. I want to find the joy in writing for a while longer, instead of complicating it. I have the opportunity to do that, because writing is not my primary source of income. And while that frustrates me – that I must spend so much of my time on other things – that’s also a blessing. Life is short, and I imagine when I think back on my fondest moments, they will involve the people I love.

And perhaps, if I can capture the love, I will remember what it was to write from the heart, and not the head.

1. Clearly, since I’m writing about it in a public forum. ↩︎
2. If you are visualizing a medieval breaking wheel you are visualizing correctly. ↩︎
3. I should clarify that I am not actually that old. I’m being a little hyperbolic right now, because it’s been a long two years. Or five, take your pick. ↩︎
4. This is the wolf that catches all the elk by being delusional about the fact that it can take down elk. ↩︎
5. This wolf catches mice and takes more naps. ↩︎