Living as a writer

I’ve been scrambling to reorient myself towards slow, open-ended creativity and idea generation.

Graphic novel negotiations are ongoing and uncertain, and in the meantime I’m reading a ton of books, and trying to draw and write every day, with the goal of generating ideas for picture books/a middle grade graphic novel, and ongoing ideas for gag cartoons/comics for the New Yorker. Every day that I step away from my desk without a fully formed book pitch, or a stack of finished cartoons (read: every single day), I am terrified. I am not good at being an artist in this way. Book-making by definition is a super long, solitary process and I wish I could just let myself cook without the anxiety of constantly needing to visibly produce.

So, I like listening to interviews of writers and creatives, in the hopes that I will absorb their wisdom.

One of my favourite podcasts, Longform (fascinating interviews with writers and journalists) recently aired its last episode. There are too many favourites to list, but two completely opposite-in-tone interviews that come to mind are:

• Patricia Evangelista on reporting on the drug war in the Philippines. I’ve listened to this one three times because it is so haunting, explores themes that are so germane to this moment about the worst possible consequences of letting despots rise, and I was so captivated at the steadiness with which she spoke of trauma reporting.

• Michael Schulman on writing the New Yorker profile of Jeremy Strong. Hilarious.

Anyway, to fill the void, I’ve started listening to City Arts & Lectures, which I only recently discovered. Some amazing talks!!! A couple have really spoken to me these past couple of weeks.

• Roz Chast - the GOAT. Despite all of the gag cartoons I’ve made, it’s still inconceivable to me that my workday could consist of letting myself sit and write down ideas for hours and hours, and that my workday the next day could be coming back to those ideas and seeing which ones would translate into cartoons (something that Roz talks about doing). Because I’m a sack of anxiety, all of my cartoons tend to come out fully formed at 2am the morning before a deadline - and I think: that’s great, because then i’m only thinking about cartoons during the “dead” period of the night when other more “important” work doesn’t need doing. But isn’t cartooning my job? Shouldn’t I be letting myself, I don’t know, spend time on it, like my heroes do? Sigh.

• Cord Jefferson and Percival Everett. Enjoyed this so much. I wrote down one line, about how it’s incumbent upon us to consume the art that we make as if it is serious, if we are to produce a better future.

• Ottessa Moshfegh, who said this about inspiration and living as a writer.

Where does [inspiration] come from? Like, how do I know that I’m supposed to pay attention to certain things because they’re going to be the breadcrumbs that I will follow that will end up at, you know, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation.” How do I know that? Why do I have those instincts? I have to believe that there’s some greater power, whatever. Whether it’s like something in my soul or something in my subconscious, something that I can’t control that’s greater than me. 

But also I have to work really hard and I have to be up for it, you know? And being up for it means like making sure like I’m capable. That means, well, it means practicing. Like I really believe in practicing. Practicing writing. But also like practicing using my mind. And that’s why, that’s where I think you get into living the life of a writer. You can’t live the life of somebody else and then go home and be a writer. A writer is constantly collecting, learning, testing, observing and, so in essence, all of those micro-decisions I make on a daily basis become my work. You know, like, should I turn left or right? Well, I dunno, the light is really interesting over there.

This might be the best encapsulation of what it means to live a creative life that I’ve ever heard, or at least the one that resonates the most with me at this second. The more I try to spend my time creating original work, the more I feel like I have always only permitted myself to live as an artist part-time. There’s something in me that is so scared of the open-endedness and the lack of promises that a creative career presents, that I will do almost anything to feel “productive” (ie: chores, groceries, meagre paid assignments) and to avoid the deeper creative work that can often feel like i’m spinning my tires (ie: doing writing exercises, drawing, reading).

I think the fear is also in the fact that I would LOVE (!!!!!) to be doing this all day, but I simply do not believe that I deserve it. But geez. If not now, WHEN? Who is going to stop me? Literally no one. There is no other time. I’m allowing myself to believe this.

After listening to the Ottessa Moshfegh interview, I ran into Ikea to pick up a shelf. I was about to leave, but then I decided to go back in and do a leisurely tour of the fake living rooms and bedrooms on the top floor, because, i dont know, the light was more interesting up there, and maybe there was a cartoon idea lurking. (It’s a start.)

Do you have any tips to share about how to set milestones as a creative person, or otherwise combat the VOID? Why don’t you….

Some Yumi Sakugawa affirmations, which save me every single time i see them!

To close out: a journal comic from France.

xo Zoe