About Letting It All Hang Out
This Monday, my editor sent out the first blurb requests for my novel Small Kingdoms, which is scheduled to be published next June. I was cc'd on the requests, and their appearance in my inbox invoked equal parts excitement and anxiety. Because to me, this marked the moment when the gun was fired, signaling that the race towards publication had begun.
Anxiety takes the human brain to unlikely places, and in this instance it took mine to a scene in Nicole Holofcener's 2001 movie Lovely & Amazing. In it, beautiful Emily Mortimer stands naked before Dermot Mulroney, playing the sleazebag she's just slept with, and asks him to tell her everything that's good and bad about her body. He's initially hesitant, but then he gets into it, nitpicking her physical appearance from head to toe. It's an extraordinary scene about confronting and making peace with insecurity, and I think about it, for no real reason, every few weeks or so.
There is, of course, good reason I'm thinking about that scene now. I'm not sure whether I'm Emily Mortimer or my book is, but either way, putting a book (or any creative project) out into the world is a radical act of letting it all hang out. How will people react to it? Will they react at all? Do I want them to? Those questions take me to another scene, that of my friend Lauren's cat presenting his stomach to be rubbed, and then swiping me with his claws when I oblige. Pet me! Fuck off!
At the beginning of March I went to Baltimore for AWP, an annual writing conference. There were about 15,000 people in attendance this year, and as I walked to the convention center each morning I realized I could tell exactly who was going there too. Not because they were wearing conference lanyards, but because we all looked alike even though we looked nothing alike. There is just something about the way writers carry themselves through the world; we look like people who spend a lot of time in our heads and venture out of them somewhat grudgingly, and with a not-insignificant amount of trepidation. We want to be petted, but on our own terms.
The thing about writing is that even when it's difficult or emotional or not going well, it is cozy. It's just you, probably wearing soft pants, and the little world you are building. Because you are the ruler of that world, it is entirely under your control, and there is nothing more cozy than that. But then, if you are so stupendously fortunate that someone wants to publish your book, you must reckon with the fact that whatever control you thought you had is gone, an illusion created solely to be shattered. You're standing there naked, waiting for Dermot Mulroney to tell you what he really thinks.
And honestly, that's fine. It's the way it should be. I wrote this book and now it's done and taking its first steps into a world I did not create. But no matter what happens, I get to go back to the page and begin again. And what could be better than that?
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What I'm consuming this week:
Reading: Joy Williams's 1990 novel State of Grace. Southern Gothic gloom par excellence.
Listening: While I was walking the dog this morning I heard someone playing "Hesitating Beauty" on their car stereo so I immediately put it on. It's my favorite track on Billy Bragg and Wilco's Mermaid Avenue, an album full of favorites.
Watching: Ford v Ferrari. Actually a very good movie despite relegating Catriona Balfe to the world's most comically stereotypical Long-Suffering Wife role.
