When my kids were little, we put these industrial light-blocking blinds in their rooms, in order to get them to sleep. I guess it was like putting a little blanket over a bird cage. Especially here in Maine in the summer, when it’s still pretty bright at 8:30 pm, and I was ready for them to go to sleep (mostly I was ready to go to sleep myself) and so I’d pull the blinds down and say, “see? It’s dark.”
Now they are teenagers and I guess it’s no longer cool to have generic industrial old room-darkening blinds. My 15-year-old ripped hers out, got new curtains at Target and installed them herself. And then she convinced me that I should make new curtains for my 13-year-old as a gift.
So a few months ago, the 13-year-old and I went to the fabric store to pick out curtain fabric. I’m glad I brought her because I never would have picked this particular fabric. Green floral for one side, a muted blue-and-white tie dye that looks sort of like clouds for the other. Do you want fringe? Sure, yes. We got tasseled fringe. And then a room darkening liner, because still, it is bright here for so long in the summer, which I’m not complaining about, but sometimes you want some control over the sunshine.
I made about eight tiny sample curtains to test out different ways they could go together. I had this pile of neatly-folded fabric in my room for weeks as I was figuring it out. When I was finally making them, after much consultation about where the tassels should go and how long they should be, I was struck with the thought of: no one else has curtains like these. These are one of a kind.
There is something very satisfying to me, thinking about my kid choosing exactly the fabric she wants. Choosing what suits her. In some ways, it feels like a rarer and rarer thing, to choose what suits you, unapologetically. (Reading Filterworld last month did a lot to convince me of the sameness we’re all told to strive for.)
How often do you ask yourself, what do I want right now? What suits me?
I think, also, when it comes to writing, we need to ask ourselves these questions. What book is calling to me? What do I want to write? At some point we might work with an editor to make it better, but the best books are the ones you write because you want to. You are this interesting singular human, and the more you lean into your own particular specific weird taste, the better you’ll be able to channel that into something good. What you make won’t be for everyone, but the more interesting / singular / specific it is, the more, somehow, it ends up being relatable. (Again, not relatable to all, but relatable.)
In the NY Times obituary last month of the actor M. Emmet Walsh, they quote him as saying, “People go and try to become the next Pacino," he continued, “or the next Meryl Streep or something — they don’t want that. They want something new, something different — they want you! And actors have a hard time figuring that out. So I had to figure out who I was and what I could do, that no one else could do.”
I think this is true of all of us! Readers don’t want you to be another author, they want you to be you. They want you! But that act of figuring out who you are, it’s not always easy. The only way I know to get there is to notice. Slow down, notice what you notice, see how things feel. Do you like this book, this movie, this curtain fabric? You pick up an acclaimed book and something about it bugs you – why? Notice it all.
As you know, I have been removing myself from social media and the internet, and noticing how that feels, too. Noticing what everyone else seems to be into, and noticing if those things seem interesting to me, or if they seem like marketing, something that we’re told to like because someone somewhere was paid to make us think we want it.
And so I surprised myself by suddenly wanting, very much, to see the solar eclipse on April 8. I knew the eclipse was coming and I knew we were a few hours from the path of totality. Honestly, though, you can’t expect clear skies in April in Maine (my kids had a snow day April 4). But then suddenly the weather looked clear, and I watched a video with an astronomer from the University of Maine who said the difference between an eclipse at 98% and totality is the difference between seeing a lightning bug and getting hit by lightning. And I was like: oh, heck yes. I don’t even understand what that means, but if I can find out, I want to.
It took us three hours to get to Jackman, Maine, and seven hours to get back, and it was absolutely worth it. I didn’t really understand until afterwards that the lightning bug / lightning thing wasn’t about the magnitude, but about the difference. A partial eclipse is still very cool. But it is a completely different thing from a total eclipse. That moment, watching through eclipse glasses as the sliver of sun gets smaller and smaller, and then suddenly – VOOP! – it’s covered by the moon and everything is dark and sparkling and everyone is looking around in wonder.
I’m not someone who gravitates toward crowds (or traffic), and it felt a little funny to go to this thing that we knew was going to be crowded and trafficky. I have been so introspective the last year or so, asking “what do I really like? Who am I?” that there were moments of wondering if I wanted to go to the total eclipse because I was supposed to. I’m not usually a YOLO and FOMO person, and driving to totality was potentially very much all of that.
You can be yourself, you can be one of a kind, and still join the collective. We were all there, our singular selves, and also part of the group experience. We all were cold and muddy, making sandwiches and accepting offers to look into telescopes. There were dogs and t-shirts and homemade bread with cinnamon butter. There were families who brought card tables and board games, kids daring each other to race barefoot across the snow, and polite lines at the porta potties. And then the partial eclipse started, and the energy of the crowd was giddy and cautious. We watched the moon make its steady slide across the sun, and we watched the light change and the shadows sharpen. The temperature dropped fifteen degrees. The sun was an orange with a bite out of it, the sun was cheese, the sun was a crescent, everyone was murmuring, “it’s a fingernail.”
And then we were in it, laughing and amazed. The dudes behind us started howling. Fireworks went off in the distance. The people next to us got engaged. We had all been sitting, but now we were up, all of us, no longer able to just sit and watch, we had to move, be in it.
I thought three and a half minutes of totality might seem long. What would we do during that whole time? But it was so quick. No time had passed and the corner of the sun edged out again, and it was weird light again and we needed our eclipse glasses.
I didn’t think I was going to write about the eclipse, because everyone is writing about the eclipse. But I already had the beginning of this essay written, the part about the curtains, about being you, being one of a kind, and there was something that kept nagging at me, and that thing was this: you have to be a person in the world. One of the complexities of being yourself is being you while everyone else is themselves, and we’re all pinballs ricocheting off of each other. I am so, so good at being true to myself when I’m all alone in my writing shed, breathing deeply and making intentional choices alone at my desk. But when I’m suddenly tasked with filling a cooler with lunch for five people, with where to set up chairs to watch an eclipse, with how to be in a large crowd of people in a muddy field, I can feel myself start to ricochet, to reflect off of them. Who do they want me to be? How do I want them to see me?
I breathe in, ground, come back to myself. It’s not easy.
You can predict the exact time of an eclipse years in advance, but you can’t predict what the weather will be until you’re almost on top of it. You can set goals and make plans, but anything could happen between now and then. And so why not be yourself. On the road trip between here and whatever is going to happen, honor your incredible self. Be amazed, be amazing. Be awesome and in awe. Believe in how unbelievably great you are. Choose what suits you, unapologetically, because even with heavy curtains, really, you can’t control the sun.
Help Wanted: One Rooster comes out in about two months, on June 18. Part of the story of this book is its long journey from first draft (2012) to book deal (2014) to publication (June 18, 2024!). If you see that timeline and think “why? how?” you’re in luck: I have a series of essays coming up that tells the whole story. It’s partly about how long it takes to get a book right, and also about how huge parts of the publication process are out of the author’s hands. Starting May 14! Once a week until pub day (and someone wins the book at the end). To pre-order a signed and/or personalized copy, order from Print: A Bookstore.
Thoughts and Links
This 200-year-old sweater has been waiting, unopened, undelivered (it was sent on a ship, which was seized during a battle). All I can think about is how much work that sweater looks like it took, and making it, and then thinking, “Sheesh, all that work, and no thank you note, no nothing?”
Cal Newport wrote about a scientific study about whether tweeting about things (scientific articles) increases engagement (citations). The answer: no. So go ahead and delete your Twitter account if you want to! It doesn’t sell books.
I’m happy to know that working with your hands is good for your brain.
Vibes and energy! Sand is conscious!
I made this crispy chick pea salad topping thing, and it was extremely yummy. I put them on beans, too (beans on beans on beans). And just kind of handfulled them into my mouth.
Books I read recently and loved
Disclosure: book links in this newsletter are affiliate links to Bookshop.org, a site which supports independent bookshops.
How does Thao Lam do it? Every picture book she makes is perfect. Including The Line in the Sand. In this wordless one, a monster drags a stick through the sand, creating a boundary. Can it be crossed? What if a BEE crosses it?
I finally got a hold of Wild Blue by
and illustrated by Laura Hughes. The sponginess between reality and fantasy is so perfect (and real! because sometimes fantasies are real) and kid-like.I Want 100 Dogs by Stacy McAnulty (illustrated by Claire Keane) is perfection. This is the picture book to read if you want to see how the text and illustrations can work together. And, the end made me teary (in a good way).
Oh my god, Julie. I'm crying. Just a beautiful, real post that captured so much of what I've been feeling at a similar juncture of life with my writing, my values, and my kids. Thank you.
A big YES to being ourselves. I think there's a really fascinating tension in human nature between want to be a part of something (the tribe) and wanting to express our unique essence. And that tension varies by person. There's no answer. We all need to find that balance for ourselves.