Bravo, Pangolin.

Do I have to do more or is this enough?

There is this email that has been sitting in my drafts folder since July 7th. To be fair, there are a lot of emails in my draft folder—I write things and forget to send them, or remember later but forget that I already wrote a draft, and rewrite them, but less well, all of the stinkin’ time. But this one I have revised, edited, sought feedback on. It is, by all measures, good to go, and I am very aware that it remains unsent. But I cannot bring myself to hit send. I think it has something to do with a pangolin.

For the past few weeks, I have been attending weekly workshops, on Zoom, for writers on Substack who want to grow their audience. I had to drag myself to these workshops, like a child to synagogue, because I tend to buck against anything that has a hint of marketing or branding or really, structure to it. But I did want to grow my audience, I had been talking about it for months and months, actively strategizing, as much as my delightful, scattered little brain could, about how to do it, and here was the workshop series, and a community of people trying to do the same thing I was, and what a dum dum poopy butt I would have to be not to spend a few hours in this pursuit, I reasoned. “Be a grown up,” I told myself, “you ‘I already read the article, I don’t need to read the book, do I really have to take this medication every day, they’ll probably pay me anyway even if I don’t submit a timesheet, lazy-ass corner-cutter!’”

One part of me didn’t want to go, because, and this is a nice old song I like to sing to myself, I didn’t have to. Maybe they did, but I was better. More something-or-other or you-get-the-idea, than these hundreds of other writers, because, it is true, I have lived my whole life doing things like talking my way into intermediate screenwriting or poetry without ever having taken the intro class. But you know what happened in those advanced classes? I never put forth any effort once I got there. And of course, not putting forth any effort was also how I got there.

As it turns out, I am not better than other writers. Other writers are sharing truly brilliant thoughts about fast food and academia and alternative feminisms and being a man with feelings. Some of them have fewer followers than me, for no apparent reason, and some have many more, for very apparent reasons. And it turns out I do hate these workshops, not, necessarily because I can’t imagine putting this much effort into marketing myself, but because, as I predicted, I don’t want to. They say I need 10,000 readers to justify writing a book. They say if I search related topics on Quora and answer people’s questions with a link to my newsletter, I’ll be surprised by how many new followers I might get. They say I should wait to “go paid” until I have enough free subscribers that a 4% paid conversion rate aligns with my thoughtfully laid out goals.

all it takes is an apple and a key!

I have always loved an audience, and never understood why anyone wouldn’t want the most tickets sold, guests invited, laughs extracted. My husband is constantly reminding me to put the blinds down, as I parade around the house in my underthings. Once, in our 20s, the morning after an intense karaoke night, where I had taken my rendition of Blu Cantrell’s Hit ‘Em Up Style just a touch too seriously, he looked at me apprehensively and said “maybe you need to get back into theater…or something.” I was once, in my youth, faced with the choice to perform for a living, to try and perform for a living, or not. I really couldn’t imagine anything that would bring me more joy, but the horror of all of those sparsely attended shows, lines un-laughed at, auditions into a camera, was just too much to bear. What if nobody likes me? is a sentiment expressed in different ways by my cohort of writers trying to get their publications through the newsletter birth canal. But also, what if they do, then what will I be expected to do to sustain their adoration??

When I was in first or second grade, I wrote some kind of creation myth about how we got rain or something, for a school project, and entered it into a contest, which I won, along with a $100 gift certificate to the Wordsworth bookstore in Harvard Square. I was very proud, and managed to cleverly parlay the gift card into a purchase at a related store that did not sell any books. I bought a pair of silver earrings, shaped like a table and chair, and smiled deeply as they handed me my change in cash. Something in me felt that I had now accomplished everything I needed to become a successful writer, and now I should take it easy and properly treat myself.

The email in question asks my friends and professional contacts to “spread the word” (get it?) about my newsletter. Tell me who they know who knows someone who knows Busy Phillips or can get me on the Dax Shephard podcast. Can you help me by doing any and all of the following? In some drafts of it I have been more detailed, or more succinct. I have given templates that can be copied and pasted into social media, easy peasy! The email contains a very socially acceptable ask, something we all receive sometimes with obligation, but also often with excitement, made by someone who is putting herself out there, writing hard, and doesn’t want to do it for no one. 

It is the Jewish New Year, and for ten anxiety-producing days, we Jews ruminate on our many sins. As a child, I was always most scandalized by the mention of “gossip” as a sin, but in my old age, as I have very little to gossip about anymore, I often focus on excess and greed. How could I possibly want more than to write, mostly with joy and satisfaction, on a regular basis, with a comfortable amount of eye-balls on said writing and a reliable email from my dad’s childhood friend that always says something like “Bravo, storyteller!”?

There is another Jewish thing, for another holiday, this word “dayenu,” which translates to “it would have been enough.” When we sing it, it is meant as an expression of gratitude: “Just being taken out of Egypt would have been great, but then we got the Torah! Bonus!” But in my recent ruminations, I wonder if dayenu is really telling us “it should have been enough.” We had enough and we wanted more, kept wandering. We should have accepted all that goodness, more than most people ever get, instead of hungering for more more more. More special-ness. More comforts. A higher conversion rate from free to paid subscribers. Ok, I am obviously not talking about Moses anymore.

things i learned on the internets

I was very grateful, last week, to go on a retreat with my creative group, a random alignment of five women who have, in many ways, compelled me to write this year. There were heart-to-hearts and discussions about the importance of rest, and illicit substances, which sent me and one friend on a delightful conversation track, over the course of several hours, about the wonder of trees, how little everyday people (like us, only hours earlier) really understand about how amazing they are, and how we were uniquely positioned to publish a gossip-rag style magazine, devoted to trees and the silly facts of their lives, but, you know, for the people, despite the fact that we could, collectively, only name a handful of different kinds of trees.

Chris Pine, our chosen celebrity ambassador for “Trees Weekly”

Another friend brought her animal cards, for which we felt, from our collective experiences with them, a grave and holy respect. I am too high to ask them a question, so I pull one from the stack, free form, and get the pangolin. “Aaaww,” I say, “what is that again?” A scaly anteater, with a strong sense of smell. Solitude, it says. Follow your own rhythm. An invitation for you to examine how you use your own sense of smell in your own life. Okay, little dude.

Back at the retreat, another friend was discussing her work, and remarked that she wants her work to matter, and to do it at as large a scale as she can manage. I love this about her, and loved how she explained that she didn’t just think of the word ‘scale’ as an amount of people, but as a measure of how far into the future her impacts where going to be felt. I think this is beautiful and clear, like so many things about her.

And, as I listened to her, I had a thought that made me laugh out loud. I realized that, after years of outsized ambition, what my therapist and I have deemed “fantasies that stand in the way of improving reality,” I am now searching for the exact opposite—work that I care about, on the smallest scale that I can manage. One child assessment at a time, so my brain can really sink its brain teeth (that’s a thing, right?) in. One group of students to teach. One weekly rambling to many people I know, and, increasingly many I don’t know, not personally at least. I have always wanted to be famous, to have bold, impressive ideas that got me attention and respect. Until recently, when all I’ve wanted is to hug my thoughts close to my chest and slowly lower them down every once in a while to see if any are relatable.

Despite my frivolous response to my creation myth triumph, I often thought I would grow up to be a writer. And now, until I decide I have nothing left to write about, I am one. Whether I keep attending these workshops, whether I send that email, whether I network with other writers for cross-promotions, I will still be a writer. I want to learn how to work hard at something I am terrified to want so badly. But what if I am learning, finally, to actually try my best, for once, on a small scale? To show up and show up and do the work, not for credit, or a grade, or some very 90’s jewelry, but just to do it. What if “growing my audience” is not for me, not because I don’t want to be heard, but because getting used to my own voice is enough work for now?

I will write today, and I will write next week, and at this very moment, it is enough. If all of this is starting to sound a little melodramatic, remember that at least some of this writing, I hope, will be about how trees are “just like us.” I am putting myself out there, but not for no one. You are not no one. I, as I read this over for what I call “reasonable typo reductions,” am not no one. And I am not a pangolin. But I think I can now recognize the scent of my own bullshit. I’ll try not to let it stink up this little hideaway we’ve made together. I really like it here. 

-How big or small is your scale right now? Do we want any new readers, anyway??! Do you want to get in on the ground with Trees Weekly before it revitalizes the magazine industry??

Love you, boos.

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Also, this:

I have been reading Meaghan O’Connell’s memoir, And Now We Have Everything, and think it should be required reading for anyone who came out of a woman’s body. It is moving and also shocking to recognize my own vulnerabilities in her story, even when the details differ, like being told you look like a not particularly attractive celebrity and being like “oh, snap, I see that.” She manages, frequently, to cover both the pain and humor of person-making, often in the span of one or two sentences (“I had tried the breast pump a few times, recreationally, but not yet so as to explicitly buy time away with my own milk. The pump looked just like I’d imagine, like something you’d use to masturbate a farm animal”). Buy it at a bookstore that doesn’t sell your information to predatory strangers!