Year Two

An anniversary review

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Today is this Substack’s anniversary: two years of writing these regular weekly, then bimonthly posts. The first year was easy. I remember going to a session on Substack writing and recommending that writers simply repurpose pieces they’ve already written, just as I have excerpted my memoir about my father here.

The tone of that reply now embarrasses me. It sounds insensitive. Often I feel that way after something I’ve published here too. Most anniversary posts tend to be triumphal but I’m going to start with some regrets.

Perhaps that mood began this week, when I read Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files, a series of letters from fans that he answers online. In the latest, he offers:

Do you ever regret things you say on Red Hand Files?
ALISON, MANCHESTER, UK

Yes, all the time

Cave has written 341 of those pieces now. I’ve published 80 posts here, and yes, I have many regrets. Mostly I wish I could manage my own tone better, without sounding whiny or complacent or self-pitying. Or pretentious.

Let’s add oblivious. When I stated so confidently that writers could post excerpts of an existing work, did it not occur to me that eventually I would run out of pre-written material? I have. I have also sometimes cannibalized the hundreds of blog posts I wrote for my website, when I regularly shared close readings of art and literature while I taught essay-writing. Still, the challenge remains: what to write about week after week?

What’s it all about?

Since I ran out of excerpts from Daddy-O, I have been trying different angles here. Some art round ups, some reading lists, some travel and conference pieces, some posts on the writing process itself, on specific paintings, on genealogy. All of these overlap with my memoir and with my daily work. But is that enough to keep this going? That may be useful to me, as a way to practice my writing chops and think on the page, but is it useful or interesting to any of you?

Do I know what this newsletter is “about”? Have I figured out what my memoir is “about”?

As I write this I am at the first of two writing conferences I’m attending back to back in November. For the first I’ve swapped manuscripts with four other writers and we’ve been asked to begin our workshops by going around and saying, in one sentence, what the manuscript we read is “about.” I like that prompt, and can’t wait to hear what people think my memoir is about— because in fact I am not sure. I thought writing this newsletter would help me figure that out.

Once I said that to a friend, who had read an earlier version and he said, “of course you know what it’s about. It’s about understanding your father.” That doesn’t seem good enough.

How does it work?

When I taught essay writing I sometimes used an essay by Matthew Goulish called “How Does a Work Work Where?”, one of his 39 Microlectures. It’s a wonderful conceptual piece about what we mean by work, and how his work as a writer overlapped with his grandfather’s work on a General Motors factory assembly line in the mid-twentieth century. In the essay Goulish asks three questions: what is a work? what is work? and what is where? He examines a Caravaggio painting, the repetitive motions of factory work, and the experience of being inside a car. He concludes:

We do not need to find a way into a work, since the work is already inside.

Instead we realize a work and its harmony with our point of view. Then it and we

begin to work, and the play of work begins.

Here, my work usually begins with fragments. I copy and paste bits from other longer essays into my Substack Posts/Drafts folder. When I need a new post I skim those and consider “finishing” one, or fleshing it out. But usually I don’t feel like working on any of those. They don’t fit my new mood or the moment.

Here are some of those misfits, or rejects, left wilting in that folder:

• a long piece about names and branding in early advertising (an outtake from when I removed most of my grandfather’s design career from my memoir about my father’s art)

• a long piece about teaching a classic T.S. Eliot essay alongside a contemporary one by Suzan-Lori Parks

• a piece on my parents’ experience in couples therapy that I am afraid crosses professional and ethical boundaries so I haven’t shared

• a fragment of literary analysis on Maxine Hong Kingston and family secrets

• And a piece called Finale that ends the memoir, which I don’t know how to time. It reminds me of Agatha Christie’s Curtain, a book she wrote to publish after her own death and to kill off Poirot. When to call it quits?

I keep all these bits though. Maybe I’ll change my mind and re-work them.

After two years of this, what have I learned?

Invariably, these anniversary posts are about lessons so here’s my stab at mine.

It’s about discipline and continuity.

There’s value in steadiness and practice. That is what makes me tolerate the mistakes and regrets that inevitably follow any effort. Going through the same motions again and again is how we learn.

It’s about voice.

I’m not sure I’ve achieved this yet, even after all these years of writing. I want to develop a supple and thoughtful voice, both knowledgeable and self-critical. Those are the voices I find authoritative— that allow in doubt and gaps. Maybe I could be funny too. I haven’t really tried that.

It’s about community. That’s a cliché here but true.

What I am most grateful for is the steady stream of readers who have stuck with me, often from the very beginning. You. Who read this regularly and often comment. I much prefer conversations in the comments to reposts and likes, though those are gratifying. I treasure any interaction with real readers— proof of life!

What, then, is success?

I don’t have great metrics to share for this milestone. My very first post, called First Thoughts, had eight readers (!); my subscribers have grown, but very slowly and the total is still low. Sometimes that bothers me and sometimes I know that I don’t do any outreach, so what do I expect? I don’t like to hang out on Notes because I haven’t found a way to be myself there. I don’t spend much time on other social media either. That’s not a moral position, just a default.

Measuring success has come up often in my posts, especially around my father’s career. One of the posts I most regret is this one in which I question my father’s success “on his own terms” and how that phrase makes me feel sad instead of satisfied. It seems greedy and grasping to want more than that. Success “on one’s own terms” seems already like a lot. Today I’ll claim that for myself: this Substack has been a success for me.

Thank you, dear readers, for your company and your patience on this road! I will have a more typical post next time to report on my two conferences. In the meantime, tell me: if you write a newsletter, how do you produce your posts? or, how does your work work?