I don’t know how to write an essay. I mean that I actually do not know how to write an essay. I thought an essay was something you wrote in high school. Pick a subject. Try to not directly plagiarize the article you found to copy. Restate the thing in the last paragraph. Essay. Done. I don’t even like the word essay. It reminds me of having to write the most boring fucking thing possible about a subject I barely know because it’s due in the morning. The first time someone said hey I read your essay to me, I thought it sounded like an insult. My shit wasn’t that boring was it?
In truth it was that boring. Or that pointless at least. I was just telling stories. No reason behind it at all but I wanted to get published and Granta wanted cult stories. I had a cult story. Done.
I read a lot of essays now. Have to. And I want to because I’m still trying to figure out how to write an essay. I know the types I can’t do. The hard cut to research. The hard cut back to the interior. The pretty sentences. The pretty words in pretty sentences. The reference to something I’ve gotta google. The hard cut to reporting. I can’t do it. I just get fucking bored and quit. I weave shit together like cats set loose in a yarn factory. It’s a goddamn mess and I can move things around a little, try to shade it in. But if I cut all my detours, all my, “since we’re on this subject…”, there’s not going to be much left.
Maybe that’s why the thing people say to me more than anything else is “I don’t read much but…” I vacillate between thinking maybe I should be insulted and so, I write in adhd apparently. That tracks.
Mostly I just know something hurts. So I drive around or do acid and look up at the stars until I hear a song that hurts right, right in that spot. Then I try to write a thing that hurts like that song. I hack away until a paragraph becomes a second paragraph and turn it in like a fucking wad of yarn with some post it notes crumbled up in it and hope for notes. Eventually I’ll smooth it out enough that I think I said what I wanted to say. But I’m not reading my own shit the same way you’re reading it. I didn’t play the song for you. And we’ve got different spots. I won’t ever know if it worked.
Your spots aren't my spots, true. But for two of the students in the class where I taught your book, your writing sung exactly to their spots and they, and I, loved you for it.
I hope that some day you are able to write from a place that doesn't hurt. I hope that you somehow accept that you are who you are, and that plenty of us are good with that. I hope that you can just "tune out" all those negative people that upset you on twitter. There always has been and always will be jerks. Maybe, if you can learn to like yourself more, become more confident in your abilities, and listen to those in your life that know you are a good person, perhaps you can listen to music that hits your happy spot. Music is such a vital part of my mental health. It lifts me in times of discontent. It allows me to refocus and reconnect with a happier version of myself. Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber is positively food for the human spirit. True, it is a bit sad, but also just so beautiful that it makes me appreciate being able to just spend some time floating in it's magic.