Nefertiti, I love you

Dearest readers and listeners,

Thank you for your patience as I pour heart and soul into the Nefertiti book while trying to avoid checking the news that is so very very bad and polarizing, making me doubt humanity and even hate (some of) my fellow man, while simultaneously finding great courage and kindness and community in unexpected places. It’s been a very private, quiet (too quiet!) and rather soul-wrenching time as I stay home from work for a year of sabbatical. Since June I have been reading and note-taking on all the Amarna things—a messy, crazy process. Goddamn but have Egyptologists spilled some ink on this period of time!

I started writing in October, and I am thrilled to announce that I have almost completed the first draft. It’s like a childbirth really. This part of the writing is always the hardest for me—it’s downright painful—and there is no pain relief except drinking, which I’m not doing anymore. Composing the first blush of story for page after page is when I feel alone in the dark, full of shame about my inabilities, cognizant of how much I haven’t read, upset at my lack of discipline and low energy. And I have reason to be afraid: as usual I am walking the line between scholarly precision and blowing it all up with decolonial imagination. Let’s see how it turns out. At least I’m delivering chapters full of crazy shit. At least nothing like this has ever been written before.

I have really painted myself into a corner this year, I must say. I need to deliver on two book contracts—a biography about Nefertiti with Nat Geo Books and a book about the ancient Egyptian harem (yes, the harem existed and in the way you don’t want it to have existed!) with Routledge. We won’t talk about the second book. It will be late.

The state of the world is not helping at all but is also helping quite a bit. I am trying to write about a time when everything fell apart 3500 years ago just as everything falls apart now in real time. Paramilitaries roam the Los Angeles streets messing with people, and I realize what it was like to get recruited to build the city of Akhetaten. I also recognize that we will all have to learn to speak and write and read in code—using history and allegory to speak truth to power—because soon we might not be allowed to verbalize what is really happening. The ancients knew such power dynamics in their bones. These horrible realities help me to enter an authoritarian past cognitively and emotionally. So… hurrah?

Writing a first draft is terrifying, demoralizing, just all around scary AF. I’m probably two days away from completing that first draft and sending it away to be dissected and analyzed for further improvement. Wow am I glad this drafting process is almost over. The next part never seems quite as daunting to me. The chunking of labor happens through editorial decisions and deadlines, not from my own control on discipline or schedule. I also tend to get fired up and energized when editors criticize a particular opinion, making me back up a point with more evidence or a tighter argument. When editors critique my organization, I am usually nothing but grateful, happily moving things around so that they will make better sense to the reader. I’m much better at second and third and fourth drafts. I find the process meditative. It’s like embroidering. I can get lost in the crafting of words. I can’t get lost in the emotion of the story. Once someone else has read it, I’m not alone anymore.

But writing to the empty page? GAAAAH, bleh, yuck, vomit. I have to hide away in my hidey-hole. I can’t see other people. I can’t talk to other people. I need to have no appointments ever. I bite the shit out of my nails and cuticles. I’m an emotional mess. The loneliness is horrible. I take breaks watching Instagram recipes interspersed with videos of arrests and protests and bombings and dismemberment. How very strange.

So this is just to say thank you for your patience with me. Now that I am coming up for air, Amber and I will release another podcast. And we will do some more recordings too. I am so happy to be entering community again soon. Please hold the door for me… :)