Last week, my website briefly stopped working. The BOOKS disappeared, which is a real needle in the eye. I like to have an identity outside of being an author, but the fact is, that's a big part of my identity, and when the books evaporate, it's unsettling.
Though of course the books did not actually evaporate. They're still right here, on the shelf. In real life. Fixing my website made me jumpy. I remember when the internet felt more fun and free. Spending the day restoring my books virtually and patching potential security holes felt neither fun nor free. It felt like making a complicated recipe in a dark alley while footsteps approached. I wanted to go back to writing longhand in a notebook.
As a writer, as an artist, your take on the world is what makes your art strong. You need to preserve your ability to see the world through your own special pair of glasses. The internet is a tricky place for something as complicated and fraught as the creativity process. The anger and cynicism of the internet is contagious and can kill your idea, or at least make you rethink it. Don't let anyone stick a needle in its eye until it's strong enough to take it. Protect your creativity by not telling everyone about it. Sharing the process can be great -- I love comparing processes, because we're all so different and there's so many different ways to get from a blank nothing to a work of art. But as soon as you share about your creativity-in-progress on the internet, you invite the internet to have a say in it, before it's ready. It's not theirs until you decide it's done and ready to be sent into the world. Your creativity cannot be crowdsourced, because it comes from inside you.
There was a time when the internet felt more necessary, and some of it is still necessary and convenient, but all-day necessary? No. I am no longer interested in hot takes or breaking news. I accept the fact that I will never have time to listen to all the podcasts or read all the articles that might interest me. Suddenly it is way more important and interesting to stare out the window and lean into uncomfortable boredom. The modern world is trying so hard to get in the way of my creativity.
I was driving a few days ago and saw a man running for exercise on the sidewalk. He was going fast, in a noticeable and impressive way. "Look at that guy," my brain unhelpfully said. "He looks like a running machine. You'll never be able to run like that!" Yeah. Thanks, brain. I know. But then I came to a stop light and glanced in my rear view mirror and noticed the man was now walking slowly. He had been doing one of those all-out interval sprints. My point here is: much of the internet is people running really fast for twenty seconds but pretending they could keep going for hours. You see someone else having success, but you don't know what else is going on. And it doesn't matter! I'm all for celebrating each others' success, but it doesn't make sense to compare yourself.
When I show up to the 6 am spin class, they often say something along the lines of "celebrate the fact that you showed up this early in the morning, for yourself. You showed up for you." How much of logging on to the internet is showing up for you? What is it you want to do? Do you want to write or do you want to be good at social media? Me, I want to write. So when I show up for myself, I'm sitting in my writing shed and writing. Sometimes I'm very uncomfortable with how bad the writing is, with how hard it is, with how much of the time I'm staring out the window, not sure what to write. But you know what? I'd rather write a terrible draft that I can work on revising, than write a hot take on Twitter. There was a time where I wasn't so clear on that, when being visible on social media felt important. It's not, not for me, at least. Writing books is often hard and confusing. No one clicks a heart on my terrible draft. There's no instant validation.
You'd think that after a year of me yelling, "Social media is stealing your creativity! The internet is a needle in your eye!" that I'd be better at this, and yet: no. Last week I started in on a messy draft of a novel, and kept getting distracted. Sometimes in this situation I turn on Freedom, but this week I decided I needed a clearer break, so I took one of the notebooks that I bought for myself during my kids' school supply haul, and am writing the draft longhand, away from my computer. I'll let you know if that leads to anything revelatory.
And always remember: me writing a draft, me getting a book deal, me having a book come out, those are all me running really fast for twenty seconds. What you don't see is me sitting on the couch in my writing shed groaning about how I forgot how to write and I don't know what to do next.
I know how hard it is to do this. I know how hard it is to sit in the quiet, in the discomfort. I know what it's like to write the first half of a sentence and then stare at it, wondering what comes next. But I also know that I never, ever get to that place of flow, that river of inspiration, when I let myself get distracted, when I'm pinballing from one task to the next. The only way for me to get in the flow is to start by being incredibly uncomfortable and unsure. I know how easy it is to hop onto the internet, just to see. But we need to remind ourselves that we're trying to be creative here, and the contagion of outrage and broken neurons doesn't have any place in our creative process. I've said it before but it's worth repeating: it's ok to be unreachable for a while. It's ok to check email once a day, to check Instagram every other week, to check Twitter every other month, to check TikTok never. It's ok to protect your creativity.
I got to see my friend Ruth this week, and we forced our dogs Leroy and Cosmo to become friends. They were into it. Our book, Rick the Rock of Room 214 is out in two weeks, on August 30. PLEASE BUY IT (or tell your library to buy it).
I will be in person at Print: A Bookstore on release day, August 30th, at 7 pm, with Alexandra Penfold, to celebrate both the release of Rick the Rock of Room 214 and Alex's newest book, All Are Neighbors. It will be awesome and I hope you can join us! Both of our books are great beginning-of-school read-alouds, and if you can't be there in person, you can order from Print and we'll sign them for you.
If you're in Brooklyn, Ruth will be at Books Are Magic on August 30th at 11 am, with Thyra Heder. Ruth will be reading Rick the Rock and Thyra will be reading her new book, Sal Boat.
(A particularly ambitious person might concoct a Rick the Rock storytime road trip, and see Ruth at 11 and then drive up to Maine to see me at 7, which would be a pretty great Tuesday, honestly.)
Thoughts and Links
I have been waiting for YEARS for Lisa Wyzlic's book about a head of iceberg lettuce who thinks he's an iceberg. Hit that pre-order button, folks.
Pardon me for linking to something on Twitter, but this life hack of treating yourself and your home like you're your own zookeeper is a helpful mindset shift, and too good not to share.
I learned about Hurraw! from Amy Spalding's excellent newsletter, and oh WOW do they make good lip balm and hand cream (my favorite is the Lemon Balm Coconut Pulp). I am particularly into the Coffee Bean lip balm. It smells exactly like coffee, and the tube is a satisfying oval shape. If you hate coffee, pick a different flavor. Maybe you'll try one of these old-school slider tins.
I love Phoebe Wahl (that's a link to an unlocked illustration essay in the NY Times called "The Joys of Swimming While Fat").
This orzo lentil salad was a perfect summer meal for me: weirdly delicious, easy to make ahead, and great for lunch the next day (or for bringing to a picnic? lake house? probably? I didn't do any of those things with it).
I think it was KJ Dell'Antonia's newsletter that gave me this tip: fill a glass 1/3 of the way with cold brew coffee, fill the rest with Silk Dark Chocolate Almond Milk. It's so good. I'd pay $6 for it at a coffee shop, probably. (Yes, I'm still, two years later, drinking this coffee soda, but about once a week I have this almond mocha instead, for variety.)