It's Input Season!

Weird moods, and the canon of Feminist F*ckups

Hi friends, it’s been a month. I mean that literally — it’s been a little over 30 days since I’ve written here but also wow, what a month!

First, Norovirus upended my household and writing schedule. It wasn’t that bad for each of us individually, but we all got sick at separate times, then surprise co-symptoms popped up later, so there were too many early pickups and days home from school watching bullshit like Ryan’s World. (Who are these families that turn their lives into YouTube channels?* I still feel weird posting pics of my kids on a private IG account.)

*Millionaires

Anyway, it’s crazy how a little bit of diarrhea can mess things up. I mean that in all the ways!

I don’t feel weird about posting my kids’ artwork, though. They save me so much newsletter production time.

In the margins of this boring chaos, I’ve been writing a rambling essay about marriage and feminism and motherhood and liberation and artistry but I’m not sure what I’m saying yet, so I’ll save it for another time.

I also get sick of myself

After a stint of talking and writing a lot, i.e., Output Season, I’ll shut off completely and switch to Input/Interior Season.

Ideally, Input Season is about reading more and giving myself a break from writing, but I’ll still sit in front of my laptop with a Thousand-Yard Stare and engage in negative self-talk until I finally just read a freaking Dilbert and go to sleep.

I’ve tried to embrace it as my process, but it’s also good old-fashioned depressive behavior that’s been written into my genetic code by ancient Italian despair, Anglo-alcoholic dysfunction, and 20% German-being-hard-on-myself. That’s a direct quote from my 23andMe report.

Mary Wollstonecraft also suffered these slumps (yes, I’m drawing a parallel to myself and the mother of modern feminism) and described them in a letter she wrote from the hull of a ship that was docked and waiting for the weather to clear. It was gray and rainy and she was sad about a lover who was actively negging her:

“All nature seems to frown — or rather mourn along with me.”

My Input Season also coincided with a rainy spell in New York, and the barometric pressure fucked with my sinuses and made my plastic boots feel like cement clogs as I dragged myself around the city.

Girls Gone Mental

Luckily, I did not feel alone on these days — I had Mary of course, (more on that in a minute) and it seemed other women writers, mostly at The Cut, were going through much worse:

One is spending something like $20,000 a year just to save her marriage. Imagine what Christo could have done with all those red flags!

Another thinks her husband is setting up fake accounts to post bad reviews of her novel. (The new advice columnist’s advice? “Snoop away! Invade his privacy!”)

And the twin viral sensations:

The finance expert who fell for an obvious money scam and possibly jeopardized her career by writing about it, and another writer who went on a manic-depressive binge-drinking, overspending bender, slept with her yoga teacher, and announced her divorce on Substack along with her Venmo link for personal fundraising.

And here I was just eating a little more ice cream than usual!

The latter is now the aforementioned advice columnist for The Cut, and the former went on a full-fledged media tour after her embarrassing money scam story was published. So maybe these are actually success stories?

They take the old tropes of untethered women making irrational decisions, share them in an age of radical honesty and vulnerability, and raise their professional profiles in the process. It’s like we’ve failed up from Leaning In and Girlbossing and replaced it with a Feminist Fuckup Economy. I like it!

Wollstonecraft, Woolf, and Plath would surely approve.

As I continue to fail at writing the next great Italian-American novel, I’ve found new inputs that help me feel more motivated and capable than frowny weather would have me believe.

In an effort to make this newsletter less indulgent for me and hopefully more useful to you, (whether you’re procrastinating on writing or something else) I’m recommending them here:

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders - (Rain again!) It’s a close read of short stories by great Russian authors that help fledglings glean techniques for structure and character building. Saunders also reframes onerous, creativity-freezing demands like plot points as “meaningful action.”

It’s a relief for character-first writers. I didn’t know this book existed until my husband bought it for me. A green flag that will never appear on The Cut!

1,000 Words, Jami Attenberg - I mention her every time I talk about process. This is another time. I read Jami’s newsletter and now its corresponding book like I read my horoscope: for a little hope, encouragement, and a good push in the right direction.

A Life of One’s Own, Joanna Biggs - This is where I found the Wollstonecraft quote, and other affirming/heartbreaking stories of women authors (Mary, George, Zora, Virginia, Simone, Sylvia, Toni & Elena) starting late, starting over, and the shitty conditions they endured and created their best work. I’m only two chapters in but it shook me out of The Stare and got me here.

And that’s where this one ends. See you soon.