âOh my gosh, Iâd love to but I have to write!â
âYouâre too sweet for thinking of me, but Iâve got this short story Iâm working on and I just canât get awayâŚâ
âSounds great, would it be OK if I brought my notebook and worked on a little essay while weâre having coffee?â
At some point, stung by the low single-digits number of friends who signed up for FORD KNOWS, or who will probably ever read my first novel when it is published (âYou? Wrote a novel? Oh lord, here we goâŚâ), I realized in a new way an old truth among writers which I had obviously already come to accept (Nobody cares) but has given me fresh peace:
Writers are basically word parents.
Everyone knows someone who gets married, has a baby, and is never heard from again. You donât hate them, they donât hate you, itâs just that theyâve emigrated to a distant planet and theyâve got a new life now, a new language, new friends, new concerns you donât share, and thatâs totally, absolutely OKâSO great to see you! Off to college* yet? No? Still in preschool**? Ugh.
*published **unagented
Itâs so OK and so great that you donât even feel the need to say âWe should get together soonâ to these fast retreating procreators, because you know you wonât, and you know theyâre happy with their choices, and you know you prefer not to deal with the perpetual distraction of small, screaming, overly-energetic narcissists and their enablers.
I happen to run in circles where kids are not the norm, lots of singles and childless gay couples with dogs, so the rare birds who have kids take themselves off to this new realm of parenthood, thank god, and get on with the enterprise of population replacementâa necessary if overindulged serviceâout of sight and out of mind.
Itâs not the parents, of course, toward whom I have looked with some consternation over their not signing up for my newsletterâparents have an obvious but distasteful excuse.
Finally it dawned on me that it was I, me of all people, that had traveled to new environs in which many of my friends could not join me, the land of written words, and stories, and talking about written words and stories, which to wordless friends must feel as exotic as minivans, and probably as quaint as pots of ink and quill pens.
In fact, recently a dear friend introduced the droll term âEdwardian lady novelistsâ which we now invoke to disdain anything too outrageous or crude, and it took me quite a little while to realize that though he was being almost entirely ironic, I actually AM an Edwardian lady novelist deep down, and all the irony in my employ of the term was entirely self-referential. (It is only occurring to me now as I write this that he might have been slyly remarking on the preciousness of my vocation without as much irony as I assumedâmore later!)
Such is my new Substack adventure that I could theoretically write about something so dear to my friendsâ hearts as French bulldogs, and yet it would ring in their ears with an accent and inflection too strange to endureâ
Why call when you can text?
Why write, when you can talk?
Why novels when thereâs âDrag Raceâ...?
Ah, meâthat other kind of strange species who runs off into the blue and, rather than have the good taste to drown myself in a pool, has the audacity to return and insist on demonstrating alien customs and mementos as eccentric as so many breathing regimes and henna tattoos.Â
In short Iâve concluded I really canât blame them for ignoring my âStackâ and other literary maneuverings, though while I am engrossed in the daily care and feeding of my words, which require so much of my attention, I do hope those friends who prefer to remain wordless will not in turn blame me for my distraction.
But asking them to care very much about my writing would be like asking me to babysit your three-year-old:
âWhat do you mean Mommyâs never read The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume 4 at bedtime? What about Volumes 1 through 3, or 5âŚ? No? Lies!â
âWhatâs that? Whatâs that you say, child? WHO is Buhbinia Poof?â
âI really must have a word with your parents.â
THREAD: âWhat we talk about when we talk about âSong of Myselfââ
SoM, v. 15 | â(Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer youâŚ)â | AUDIO