The Emily Gould essay has got me thinking deeply about first-person writing, and it’s made me very self-conscious about it. The closest metaphor I can come up with is, if you loved ice cream, and then you watched someone binge on ice cream until they got sick, and it made you never, ever want to eat ice cream again. I almost never again want to blog the words I, me, or my, even though I’ve done it many times in this paragraph.
I think most of our brains have a gate between the part that thinks and the part that thinks about our thinking. Most of us mostly live in the part that thinks. But my brain’s gate has always been permeable. Years of therapy have helped break that gate down, although I was like this even before therapy. I am often too aware of my thinking, to the point where my thoughts pile up and trip over each other, and I can’t articulate anything because while I’m formulating the words, new thoughts are already forming about what I’m saying. I form counterarguments almost as soon as I form arguments, preemptively judging myself and my arguments so nobody else does it first. I’d rather hit myself with the bludgeon than let someone else do it.
That’s one of my problems — I often think there’s someone with a bludgeon when there isn’t.
So my thinking gets very self-referential and I start to feel like I’m living in a schematic drawing of my life instead of just living. There are other people like this. I used to think it was just me.
A person cannot make a living writing these days. I’m trying to realize that. I’ve long known it. But it’s even more true today, when anyone can have a blog and share their thoughts about anything — their life, politics, culture. The barrier is lower than it ever was. Unfortunately, writing is something I love to do. The only thing I love to do as much as writing is learning. And you can’t make a living learning.
There are people out there who are content not to be ambitious. They’re happy with their lives. They don’t have grand expectations. I wish I were like that.
But wishing is futile. Perhaps there’s a way that I can be like that. I don’t know if there is, but maybe.
FYP FYP FYP!
The difference between you and emily gould, and why people are so annoyed with her:
You’re interesting.
She’s not.
She thinks she’s interesting.
You don’t.
Really, that’s it. It’s my opinion that the animosity toward her piece comes not so much from what it is- lots of very interesting essays about someone’s life experiences have made very pleasurable reading in the NYT magazine- but from what SHE is.
You’d hate her at a dinner party. You’d despise her as a roommate. And if a friend of yours started dating her, you’d dump the friend if he didn’t dump her.
She’s that girl. The one from college. It’s your friend’s birthday party, and you weren’t going to go, because it’s been a hell of a week, what with your grandmother’s house catching fire, and your dog (he was rescued by the SPCA after a hit and run) had to get fitted for a new wheel because he’d outgrown his old one, and that plane that crashed through your living room narrowly missing you sleeping in your bed, but what the hell, live! You’ve got alot to celebrate! And all your friends are so happy you’ve made it, and saying thank god you’re still alive!
Then she backs you in a corner as she holds her wine spritzer and starts saying she can’t decide who she should be with- her old boyfriend, who’s really nice but doesn’t appreciate Her Art, or this other guy she’s sleeping with, who’s like, European, or the married professor she’s also sleeping with, because only he really appreciates her mind.
I think you actually can make a living from good writing. In a sea of average to lame prose and content, the really good stuff is so refreshing and such a pleasure to read that people tell their friends about it. Joel’s book is a good example. I bought it to be supportive and then found myself unable to put it down. I immediately bought a half-dozen copies and shared it with other people. It probably takes a good business mindset to craft the right mix of writing assignments to have it provide a sustainable living, but I do think it can be done.