When I was young—somewhere in my twenties, stupidly impressionable—a man told me I could be a great writer if I stopped watching TV. He also advised that I stop buying bestselling novels. Walk right past those, don’t even look, he said. And the next time I entered the Easons on O’Connell Street, I made sure to not even glance. I forged right ahead, past the top ten, past the display tables, to the escalator and ascended two floors. In the public bathroom at the back of the music section, I took a shit I’d been panicking about all the way across town and the relief was like someone rich had paid off all my debts. I bounced out of Easons and headed to a writing class, where this man, my advisor on all things related to greatness, would be waiting to teach me some more things. I learned that in order to really write, my life would need to look a lot different to how it then looked, and that it would need to be a great deal less pleasurable, at least in the medium term. That was a long time ago. For what it’s worth, I didn’t give up TV or bestsellers. In fact, I have steadily increased my intake of both over the intervening years, and I am not a great writer.
Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt is a novel so charming, heartbreaking, and beautiful I felt depressed after finishing it. I marked many lines and passages, one of which rang a tiny bell in my mind:
“And don’t expose your brain to low-quality art forms because there will be a certain measure of pollution.”
It was my enthusiastic readiness to accept this advice, delivered by a fictional character, that made me pause: I’ve been given this advice before. Almost 20 years ago. And I didn’t take it.
I’ve just finished a draft of a book I’ve been working on for eight years. It would have been finished much sooner but I watched so much television. I read so many silly novels. I had a baby, the ultimate brain pollutant.
January 5, 2018
Intentions for 2018: 1. Move to New York. 2. Get a job I actually like 3. Finish my book. 4. Overcome my deep fears. 5. Stop worrying.
May 11, 2018
I’m preoccupied with the things that I’m not: I’m not a writer. I’m not an artist. I’m not a homeowner. I’m not a pet owner. I’m not a mother. I’m not at home. I’m not by the sea. I’m not writing my damn book.
August 20, 2018
Work towards making life meaningful, make it a daily habit. Because right now, I’m living as though TV were my purpose in life.
February 5, 2019
I haven’t really “worked” on my book for the last year. The two “chapters” that follow the B section were half-assed, cobbled together during periods of hardly any writing at all last summer and fall. Those were fallow periods, I said so myself very often. And now I expect the anemic fruits of my bare-minimum labor to constitute two-thirds of my “book.” I want something to magically appear with little or no effort on my part.
I’m trying to patch and paste everything together and pray it holds. I always do that. I try to convince myself that the hard work has been done in a flash of genius so that I didn’t even notice it happening and ta-da! It obviously doesn’t work that way, but I don’t know how to do the hard part, the work that’s going to make all this come together and exist as an actual book. The hard work has been skipped and I’m cruising on half an ass.
February 27, 2019
In Running in the Family, Ondaatje fictionalizes stories about his family when faced with a wall of unknowns. So: take B’s notebook entry and write a scene imagining what comes after.
March 7, 2019
Sebald says that you should find an existing text, or a pattern within a text, and write through it “so that you write out of it and make your work a palimpsest.” I don’t have a reference point, a text I’m trying to emulate. It’s funny Sebald said that because his books would be impossible to write into/through. Easy to imitate, for sure. But not to follow as a guide.
Sebald fans (mostly men) on the internet are so annoying. Anyone who calls their artistic idle [sic] “the master” should be ashamed of themselves.
September 18, 2019
In this new day-to-day reality I feel content most of the time, happy tired, and I have no desire to strive for anything other than what I want in that moment. I don’t have ambitions now. The book can wait. Writing as a stick to beat myself with can wait. The baby is about 2.5lbs now and thudding away in there.
April 4, 2020
I’m grateful that I have Elliott during this time to give me something beautiful and real to focus on. Writing would seem hollow, I think. I’m a little bit glad I don’t have time to lie around watching TV and loathing myself for not writing.
May 30, 2020
Working full-time while Adam works full-time while we both try to take care of the baby is proving impossible. It is nothing short of a crisis. All day every day we are trapped and desperate and stressed and tired and there is not enough time.
April 25, 2021
I am trying to be something. To make anything of myself so that Elliott, when he gets older, can say proudly “my mom is a _____.” Writer? Not if the last two years are anything to go by. Patchy diaries are all I’ve got. The book is dead.
March 10, 2022
I get a lump in my throat when I think about the totality of my failure to write a book. My absolute failure to become anything I might once have been. I wrote like crazy that time I was prescribed Klonopin for sleep. I wonder if I could get on that again.
May 16, 2022
I have a new keyboard, mouse, laptop stand, quiet, and a sunny spot to write in. I have my manuscript in front of me. Sarah says it’s a book! She believes I can do it. Let the record show that today was good.
I never took any advice when I was in my twenties, but I am more open to it now. We watched Barbie the other night. I won’t make that mistake again, I thought afterwards, getting ready for bed. I won’t expose my brain to low-quality art forms.
Next month will be the last Old Diaries of 2023, and then I have to decide whether to keep doing it. Should I keep doing it? I need to earn some money, and work on edits, and be a parent, and watch a bunch of shows I’ll forget the plots of the second they finish, so you see my predicament.
Yours,
Helen.
This really hit home Helen. Loved it ❤️
Totally see the predicament but also these are so delightful!