Writing Diary 02 | Assurance, January 23rd

Welcome to The Writing Diaries, a recurring series following the life of a writer—when I write and how I do it, with mixed results, momentary clarity, and the truth of creating amid the chaos of life and living.

Tuesday, January 23

8:34 a.m.

I think this is the week that Deborah Levy changed my life. I knew they said she could do that, but I didn’t realize it could be true for me. This is what I’m thinking about as we are late to drop the toddler off at school and I am rushing around the house, the same way I am always rushing around the house. My mind is caught up in Levy’s use of metaphor, how she retells life in the same way it is lived, yet with so much fluid meaning and consistent symbolism. But there’s a trickery to it. Nothing is forced, and everything in her reality seems to connect so seamlessly with her mind. Personhood and existence are somehow equal.

I think to myself—too harshly maybe, while picking up clothes and tossing them in baskets—that the symbols I return to in my work are shallow: water, birds, motion, the body, THE SUN. They are predictable. But I also think: what else is there that connects us?

9:05 a.m.

The baby is sleeping in the back seat of the car as I read the first few paragraphs of a piece I’m working on aloud to my husband. I am grateful for him—he listens to my stories and gives me feedback, lets me tell him about my inspirations, the books I’m reading. His opinion is invaluable to me, and often he sees things I do not see.

I have been thinking, though, that I need readers who don’t know who I am. People who don’t know all the small details of the things I struggle with, who won’t be so inclined to place me at the heart of my stories, even if I am always there. “I’m in every one of them,” [Levy] says, referring to her characters, “including the cats and including the horses.” My mind turns to the idea of autofiction, that it might be called a ‘bad genre,’ belittled by those who don’t write it. “Free therapy,” I think they’d say. Hmm.

9:46 a.m.

These days are, very fluidly, messily: mothering, minding the home, writing in my notes app, reading, not losing my shit at anyone. This week, it’s all I can do but think about Deborah Levy’s Living Autobiography in three books when I’m not reading them. Since I don’t have the same physical time to write, I am trying to trust that the things I’m reading and living are contributing to the greater picture of it all. I am taking life slowly and taking big, deep breaths while I watch other people walk their dogs.

12:16 p.m.

The baby has refused her second nap and so I’m eating leftovers and letting her play independently while I work on my Daily Inventory, a practise I read about through Summer Brennan’s "My Year of Writing Dangerously." “The goal will be to trick yourself into a year of writing abundance,” she says in another post on the topic. I think of this as journaling with a little more intention—whatever that means?

Brennan describes it like this:

In my inventory journals, I break my life down into categories, loosely inspired by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—the body and its upkeep, my emotions and personal life, my creative life, my professional life, my logistics and responsibilities. I try to check in with myself on each level.

I like the idea of tricking myself into writing. More trickery.

2:59 p.m.

I get an exciting email back on one of my submissions. It’s from a small publication that I’ve only learned of recently through one of those websites that post all the literary magazines accepting submissions. I talk to my writer friends about it, wondering what they think and would they send their work there too? We talk about how hard-won a “yes” is in this industry, and through our chats on Instagram, I learn a few interesting things about other peoples’ perspectives:

Special things go special places and I don’t compromise on that.

I have a list of places I want to publish, only those will do.

Use this excitement and good news as momentum.

9:53 p.m.

Will these diaries always end with me reading in bed? Probably. After two hours of downtime with my husband, watching old episodes of Rupaul and Schitt’s Creek, snacking on chocolate and grapes and Earl Grey tea, I return to Levy. I consider if I should read this one slowly, but I want to know what happens next in her life—she’s going to Paris!—and there’s a stack of books still waiting to be read.

I will leave you with the last line I earmarked in Real Estate:

It seemed to me all over again that in every phase of living we do not have to conform to the way our life has been written for us, especially by those who are less imaginative than ourselves.