![]() ![]() I do not know how one becomes the type of person who makes her bed, but I have a sneaking suspicion it begins by making my bed.How do you use taraddidle in a sentence? Is it possible to make a Gin Ricky thats also a metaphor for the American Dream? How can you tell your Faulkner from your Franzen if you havent actually read either?Īllow me, the to expound on the most important (aka white male) writers of western literature. And to keep writing for as long as I can and hope that while I’m doing this, while I’m working on propelling myself forward in the career I’ve chosen by constantly working and constantly improving, that I also become the type of person who makes her bed. And so the only thing to do now is to write another. ![]() My life did not change after I achieved the self-imposed milestone of writing a book. We don’t become writers to burn our manuscripts when we complete them like paper-and-ink mandalas: we write for other people to read our work, to communicate something to the outside world. Writing is not always enjoyable, and truth be told, I do not always write because I’m an artist who simply cannot but help to express herself creatively and who by putting pen to paper achieves the closest we mortals can to experiencing the bliss of Nirvana. There are a lot of things you should do because you always enjoy doing it: watching Netflix. But that advice feels incredibly disingenuous, not only because it’s glib, but also because it’s not always true. And that’s true: there are much faster and less masochistic ways to achieve all of the above (side note: if anyone has any invitations to glamorous parties, I make a great plus-one.) The advice I feel I’m supposed to give is, write as if you’re just writing for yourself, because you love telling a story. It feels as though here should be the place where I say, if you’re planning on writing a book to become rich or to become influential or to go to glamorous parties, don’t do it. Who can wallow when you get to see a new cover design? Or do an interview? Or plan a book party where you get to be the center of attention? Like a new relationship or a new pet, a new book is a gleeful distraction for one’s own miseries for a brief period of time. “We don’t become writers to burn our manuscripts when we complete them like paper-and-ink mandalas: we write for other people to read our work.” Or rather, my shit having been figured out would be a thing for the passive voice: by the time I reached the goal, my shit will have been figured out. I could figure my shit out once I reached it. It had been, until recently, the mirage in the distance that remained a hundred paces ahead of me, comforting in the knowledge that until I reached it, I didn’t have to have my shit figured out. era (Before Book), whenever I conjured the hazy glowing image for my future, I had a goal post to in order to orient myself with my surroundings. If anything, I am slightly more unanchored than I was before: back in the B.B. ![]() It made me proud, yes, and it made me a little bit of money (less, trust me, always less than people imagine, especially when tax season comes around), but I am still the same messy, procrastinating, nervous, usually sad person I was before I completed what had, up until that point, been my lifelong dream. ![]() The miserable truth is, writing a book did not change my life. The evening ends with a literary salon where Donna Tartt and Chimamanda Adichie and Michael Chabon and Lauren Groff and I listen to classical music and drink wine and laugh in my well-upholstered sitting room. The jam on my bread would come from berries in my garden (I can keep a garden not just alive, but thriving)and I end the day with a long jog at twilight that I go on because now I’m the type of person who just loves the way jogging clears my head and not the type of person who feels like throwing up a lung approximately four minutes after she convinces herself that going for a run was a good idea. When I was a Published Author, I would wake up in a bed with clean sheets and a 1,000 thread-count, and, after a breakfast of homemade bread and tea, would make my way over to a solid walnut desk, a fountain pen on hand ready to be lifted and help reveal my genius to reveal itself. A curdled skin of soy sauce still dots my kitchen table. Post-book Dana still has take-out rotting in her fridge that she couldn’t afford to pay the $3.99 delivery fee on, but did anyway. I wrote a book, but I am still not the type of person who wakes up early Sunday mornings, tucks her hair behind a bandana and scrubs the bathroom like a cheerful, Pinterest-y Cinderella. My bedroom did not magically become cleaner, or receive more natural light. I still go to bed mentally cursing the pouch of fat that has taken up residence beneath my bellybutton that ends up laced with the red marks of too-tight jeans. I did not lose 15 pounds after writing a book. ![]()
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