Look what you made me do
Let me do some new tricks, some old and then some new tricks, I’m very versatile.
I opened up my notebook to find this:
For the uninitiated, these are Taylor Swift lyrics, or rather an alphabet soup of Taylor Swift lyrics mixed in the brain of my almost seven-year-old.
I’m not annoyed that my Grownup Important Stuff (GIS) notebook is marred with kid scribbles (yeah, it’s not the first time.) The girl is writing. That’s a good thing.
She’s writing someone else’s words, maybe stuck in her ear, maybe because the lyrics carry the aura of an older, cooler, more knowing it-girl. The act of transcribing is a way of capturing those traits, a kind of channeling.
Or perhaps I’m reading too much into it.
Reproducing text—lyrics, quotes, prayers, etc.—has a funny way of making it ours. Consciously or not, it’s a method of being in dialogue with another person. Sometimes, that other person is ourself.
Today I considered posting some cryptic quotes because I haven’t felt like writing anything new lately. However, I’m not a cafe chalkboard or a human epigraph. I mean, I’m just a girl, my apologies/What I've become is so burdensome…
Ugh, sorry.
The truth is, I’ve been writing quite a bit, but I haven’t felt like sharing. I don’t want to engage. With you. And isn’t that the cardinal rule of content? You should be moved to like, comment, or even share my post—to engage with it in some way that indicates you’ve been inspired, informed, or educated. That engagement is turned into metrics, those metrics into a kid of grade, which Substack provides in the form of an open rate, subscribers, and more. And that, my friends, is how many of us define success.
And therein lies the rub. I want to be engaged in my own process, and sometimes, that doesn’t involve you. To write to your audience, you have to first write the part of yourself that needs to discovery something within your story. You have to copy the lyric stuck in your head in bad handwriting that on one is meant to read.
I see your eyeballs already shifting to another tab. There’s a lot of competition out there, and I am not Gypsy Rose Lee singing in “Let Me Entertain You” and I peel off my metaphorical gloves and do an emotional striptease for you.
But that’s what writing in 2024 feels like. Let me do some new tricks, some old and then some new tricks, I’m very versatile. (It’s no wonder the theater kid to media person pipeline is so strong).
Engagement, when I’m writing, is that feeling of getting a story lodged in your brain,. The writing doesn’t just happen when you sit down at your desk—the world around you becomes fodder for the narrative unspooling.
Let me explain:
In my current work-in-progress, I had just written a chapter that featured, prominently, a Singer sewing machine from Athens. I wasn’t sure if the scene worked. The next day, I went to a cafe where I’ve never been, where a friend suggested we meet at, and there on a shelf with items from Greece was a Singer. (Yes, the owners happen to be Greek, I got a latte with honey, highly recommend).
As I ordered, the Singer was staring down at me. I felt the weight of it, the design of it, the style of it—a reflection of a time when machines of any sort were meant to last a lifetime, rather than be replaced by another poorly made product from Amazon six months later. It reminded me of why this object was so important to the character in my story.
Am I entertaining you yet? (I won’t tell you the sexy parts, but this story is not just about a sewing machine). I don’t know if you care, but I did. I devoured the magic and serendipity of it all. A kind of literary beshert—the idea of things being preordained or meant to be, which is very much what this work-in-progress is about. It all made sense, when nothing else does.
I cannot tell whether I’m trying to avoid the inevitable: to fully devolve from journalist to content creator, to write for eyeballs instead of hearts and minds (not that these lofty ideals were ever totally attainable) or just hungry for symbolism and engagement with a force that will direct me down the “right” path. I wonder if simply crave the boundaries of a dogma—religious, political, spiritual—that provides some kind of boundaries, or if I’m simply looking for excuses not to give up.
What I do know is that the unexpected is key to engagement. And here is where digressions that don’t adhere to algorithmic attention-grabbing come in: there must be a kind of urgency propelling you forward. A need. A random Singer in a SoHo cafe.
Because you’re in control, and also, what is meant to be will be.
Odds and ends:
My friend Mya Guarnieri wrote about the DR’s lesser-known rivers and springs
Because of the snow and my moodiness, I’m going to make Leah Koenig’s oh-so-cozy and comforting chicken with rosemary and potatoes tonight.
I really enjoyed this essay about moms and motherhood
I just started Vanessa Chan’s The Storm We Made, and it’s got me hooked.
My daughter’s public school is raising money through a readathon! Support new readers here!
I’m looking for a job (again). I’ve found this newsletter helpful if you’re in the market too!