Recently, a woman I admire said to me: Give yourself permission to be the writer you want to be.
Writing has felt like a former best friend I’ve grown apart from lately. When I’ve sat down to write this newsletter, thoughts have been disjointed and distracted as I marvel longingly at those who send endlessly prompt editions, apparently never faulting on a good idea or the discipline/childcare to find the time to do so. I long to write another book but I don’t have anything to say, and I am losing my nerve on telling the types of stories I once thought I could. When Wild Hope was published it gave me confidence that I could travel to far-off places, find interesting people and tell a good story - but nothing shrinks your world like having a baby, logistically, existentially, practically. Maybe I’ll be one of those reporters who takes the baby with them. That always looks so romantic on TV (thinking specifically of Anna Kendrick In Love Life discovering the old artist with a buggy in tow) but, alas, of course, I now know how utterly anarchic it would be to try and conduct a two-hour interview with a toddler scaling furniture and trying to eat cat food.
I’m also trying to find a way to make writing pay but what does that mean anymore? Celebrities and those with large social media following, or those chosen by publishers in self-fulfilling prophecies by way of a six-figure advance they guarantee they get back, are, for the most part, the only writers who make any money. My writing is of almost no monetary value anymore. Newspapers and magazines pay freelancers very little. I have some, but limited experience in commercial content writing, I certainly don’t have regular clients. I write occasionally for charities. But, regretfully, I didn’t learn to pivot or adapt or adopt or other buzzwords someone more successful might use. I didn’t start a podcast in 2012 or begin writing about AI in 2016.
Writing is my only skill. I worked very hard to get to a place where people would pay me to write - and they have - but there’s no money any more, at least that’s how it feels, for the types of words I offer, and I can’t seem to find the right words, or the ideas, anyway. Maybe that’s why I’ve been writing privately lately - in my diary, in notebooks, on my notes. Because I’m trying to get back to something, back to when writing wasn’t trying to make a living, but instead writing was making sense of living. And maybe that’s why Writing About Women is a bit stuck, as I am, unsure of what it is and what its purpose is, as I am.
I’m currently in an internal battle over how much I write about motherhood. I want to write about other things but those other things don’t come they like did. And when I write about motherhood, which I really enjoy doing, I get the biggest response so is that what people want to read? Give yourself permission to be the writer you want to be. If only I knew who that was. One that got paid? One that got read? One that was bold and more honest? One that had something concrete to say and a regular on-time newsletter? I used to react and respond, write 800 angry words on the news of the day. But now, and I say this almost as a whisper, what’s the point? The hottake phenomenon of the twenty-teens is, I’m glad to report, over. I want to hear from people in the field, not from a journalist behind an Apple Mac and a flat white using the plight of [insert oppressed minority here] to cultivate their brand. I have been guilty of that. Turns out that those clicks are pretty hollow. The instant angry retweet might satisfy your dopamine cravings but it doesn’t make you a better writer, thinker, or indeed, more employable in the long run.
But as I try to figure it out, I keep coming back to the same thing: I need to write. Even if I don’t know what. And to be as honest as I know how. So here are two moments, moments that felt like scenes from a film, the type that as they are happening I already know I will write about them. And at the moment, it’s all I’ve got. Of course, I’d love to pretend that there will also be a forensic analysis of the feminist condition next to a note-perfect picture of early motherhood that resonates with dozens of people followed by original reporting that reads like narrative non-fiction and could be the basis of an academy-winning film... but I don’t know how to find those things right now/anymore/if I ever did. Truth be told, I’ve never felt I’ve had that much control over the writing. I write something and then read it, to see how it turned out, almost as if I wasn’t involved in the process. Do I have to hope I find my way back? Trust in the process? I feel like the answer might be closer to buying a dumb phone and spending more time in the library. But I guess what I’m trying to say, - clumsily, excessively and in need of a very good edit (me and Taylor both) - is thank you. Thank you for bearing with me as I figure out what kind of writer I am.
Thank you, especially to my regular readers and supporters. You can become one here for just £2. And if you’re new, welcome. You’ve arrived just in time for my ‘I’m turning 40 next year’ era. Let the crises commence.
On with the show.
***
I’m almost horizontal, but not quite. Propped up as if on a sun lounger. Which is where I should be. But I’m not. I’m lying in the back of a Spanish ambulance, one seatbelt around my waist and one across my legs as if someone has declared me insane. Little A is on my lap and he is the reason we’re speeding down a motorway. One day you’ll be so excited to know we did this. But not yet. Now you’re still too little, too tired, too in need of a nap, as you cling to my finger, your large eyes under those camel lashes finding mine. You look confused. Why are we making this journey? It seems you’ve already forgotten that when I tripped and we fell, you bumped your head, hard, and then 15 minutes later you were sick. But I think you can sense that something is out of sorts, that I am, too. You don’t know that later that evening, when we’re home, and you’ve been given the all clear, and I’ve had a large drink, on a pad of paper in the hotel room, one printed with the words ‘For those memories both fleeting and worth holding on to’ I wrote ‘Your child has you. But who do you have?’ because when I was in the ambulance I realised it was no longer my place to feel scared and overwhelmed and lonely. You certainly won’t remember that you wouldn’t settle that night so we took you into our bed, and that’s when the relief flooded out, tears marking my face and the pillowcase, silently so as not to wake you.
***
We’re back in the sandpit. There’s the same thin blanket and overpriced coffees. A and J toddle around in front of us, periodically falling over and hitting each other with a spade. We start to talk about families. There’s that ease and openness again. Not to bear my soul or anything, she says. But. She tells me about the revelation she’s recently had about her mother. She laughs. I guess this is what we have to look forward to in our forties, all the shit catching up with us. I catch myself. I think of how blissfully unaware I was in my 20s, how spectacularly talented I was at compartmentalism, flicking a switch to turn off any feeling. It was in my 30s that the switch stopped working. If only I’d had a whole extra decade of denial.
I sense she’s only had the first part of the revelation, the type she's managed to avoid for so long. This part is the pulling back of the veil to reveal the thing - whatever the thing might be, and there are plenty of things that you can get to 40, or at least 38, without realising. I don’t tell her, feeling like a seasoned veteran with a 10-year head start in confronting familial truths, that this is the easy part. It’s the second part, the following realisation, that is much more shocking; the realization you just have to live with it - whatever it is: an addiction, a narcissist, an irreplaceable loss, an unforgivable betrayal that reverted down the decades. I don’t say that’s the work - living with what you can’t change, living with the hardest and saddest of truths that have no resolution or solution. That speaking your saddest story, whatever Taylor says, doesn’t set you free but leaves you flat and hollow and heavy. That after the excitement of the revelation - which is where she is - the breakthrough, the realisation, comes the frustration that knowledge isn’t power; it’s a diagnosis with no cure. Instead, the sadness just sits, a leak from the ceiling into a bucket you simply have to find a way to keep emptying. Some days it feels like the whole world might cave in. Other days you almost don’t hear the dripping. It’s funny, I think not for the first time, she’s just like me. But perhaps we’re all the same. We’ve all got holes in our hearts we don’t know how to fill.
She always wears bright, neon colours. Like the colours in her artwork. She lives so fiercely as herself. Trying to live freely, each day, in the best way she knows how. Isn’t that the best thing any of us can do? I told her I passed my driving test and she suggested a day out, me, her and the two little ones, to build my confidence, and she said there’ll be no need to be embarrassed by my shaky driving in front of her. We send the little people flying down slides, giggling in delight. She is currently trying to make her daughter more independent and I want that for my son so I cautiously let go of him down the biggest slide, as she does with her daughter, and she promises to catch him at the bottom. He is wild with the thrill and I am grateful for all she is bringing out of me.
Some great things
A Flat Place by Noreen Masud. This book has dream quotes from everyone from the New Yorker and the New York Times to the FT. And it richly deserves them. A beautifully written memoir, quietly devastating on what it is to live with complex PTSD and how that connects to and is made sense through some of the UK’s flattest landscapes. I’ve never seen such a quietly powerful description of the reality of profound trauma. There’s no great resolution or overcoming. It’s ongoing and every day. And it is painfully and beautifully rendered. Winning awards left, right and centre, I was transported.
Lauren Bensted’s incredible piece of writing on finding herself with life-changing surgery four weeks after having her son.
No one buys books from Elle Grinnin’s substack is a hell of an eye-opener as to why you’re reading whatever book is on your bedside table. It is a fascinating insight into the publishing industry.
Miquita Oliver. I love Miquita Oliver. Not particularly when she was on our screens on Sunday mornings (She was great but I wasn’t fussed), but this version, the one who has been through a lot (some of which she has talked about; bankruptcy, drinking, a bad partner), the one who seems so unlike the many desperately boring people who get so much air time these days. And she wears her scars with vulnerability and honesty but without the self-indulgent endless Insta captions, which is rare for someone so beautiful and funny and cool. She has just turned 40 and I’m a signed-up member of the fan club thanks to her recent ‘comeback’ via documentaries with her brilliant mother, Andy, her podcast with her mean girl best mate, Lily Allen, and her skipping initiative in London schools (I bought a smart rope because of her until I realised my post-partum body was just laughing at me and I was weeing everywhere).
Thank you for reading!
Until next time
Marisa
Marisa. Don't you dare stop writing! I wish I had written to my children. They are now teenagers and the Dear Darlings 'letters' have yet to materialise. But how I wish I had written to them over the years for them to read later. Of course, it's never too late... Your writing is a ray of sunshine in my inbox. I know I'm going to read something good. Thank you.
I'm not sure what you should write, but I know that whenever I see your newsletter pop up I get excited to read it, no matter what you've written. You could write way more of anything and I, for one, would be very happy!
I am also trying to get back to a time when my brain worked quickly, and I had ideas (my son is nearly 2 and I have yet to sleep through the night since his birth). I've never been paid for my writing (I have an entirely different career), but I too feel like I need to write, and want to be read. I started a newsletter in 2020, when my mom was dying of cancer. I stopped when I got pregnant, and didn't seem to have a single creative thought left in my body. I'm slowly getting the creative thoughts back, but now the problem is time. When to write? And about what, in those very limited minutes.
You have articulated exactly how I feel about the return to writing post-partum, even though I can't relate as a career writer. Maybe we can take my mom's advice: "Oh Dominique just write - write anything! Just keep writing!"