Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of August 28, 2022
Has five years of successful therapy taken away the burning need to write?
Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of October 17, 2021
An unfinished manuscript can haunt you like a ghost. An unpublished book can devour your brain like a hungry zombie.
I was Trying to Write Something About the New Year but I Wrote Whatever This is Instead
I think about writing, “I think about writing nothing ever again, because what’s the point in it,” but that isn’t true; I never actually thought that, it’s just a thing that enters my head as something I could write. It’s the sort of thing someone might think, probably. Not this someone, though — no, probably, I’m too convinced of my own worthiness as a writer to ever consider simply not writing. What would be the point in that?
On Writers and Saints
I’m not a perfect person. I make no claims of sainthood. Here, if you like, is a litany of some of my faults: I’m an arrogant, know-it-all bitch. I’m stubborn, often to a fault. I hold people to extremely high standards. I’m inclined to fits of pettiness, and I tend to hold grudges basically forever. Despite having spent years preaching to my students constantly about how there’s no shame in needing help, I’m lousy at asking for it for myself. I don’t have much interest in privacy. I will brook almost no opposition to my right to do as I fucking well please.
Christmas is a time for giving, being with family and friends, and hating every other asshole out there in the shops and on the roads also trying to spread joy and share in the Christmas spirit. Similarly, Hanukkah is a time for Jewish people to desperately try to feel relevant during Christmastime.