Our teacher is running late, the distractingly beautiful former beauty editor emailed our group. This confirmed my suspicion that she and my teacher had a separate text thread going. She was, after all, distractingly beautiful. How could he not get her number? It's a funny thing, getting to know people over Zoom. It was our fifth and final session of writers' workshop, and I imagined the four of us finally meeting face to face. Flying in from four corners of the continent -- New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Chicago -- to celebrate the publication of our novels. The stiltedness of Zoom would evaporate. There would be no talking over each other, no lags between the joke and the laugh, which sometimes happened when meeting online.
Of course, we were years away from the publication of any of our novels -- if any of them even were to get published in the first place. All three of us students were still at the very beginning of the process of drafting our novels. Still in the stage, as my teacher put it, of learning how to write our novel. Each book, after all, has its own internal logic. Its own style, and pace, and cast of characters. No one book is just like any other, and the book itself almost has to teach you how to write it. "The early part of a novel," he explained, "is highly controlled, but it's only so you can lose control and surprise yourself later. You want what you write to be better and more knowing than you are." It was a new way of thinking about the writing process, for me, but it rang true. I remember writing my first novel, Spaghetti for Starving Girls, in that I don't remember writing it at all. In that it simply came to me. Flowed through me, as if being dictated by something outside myself. That is to say, I didn't know what I was doing whatsoever, but the book itself seemed to want to be written. I haven't reread it in years, and maybe would cringe now if I did, but the experience of writing it showed me how it felt to be dictated to. To feel so compelled to work on a project that I couldn't not. The novel, in that case, knew more than I did.
We talked at length in class about the very opening pages of the novel, as that was largely what we were working on. "The first twenty pages are both meaningless and meaningful," my teacher said. "It's all a matter of whether you can intensify the effects that you've begun with. Novels take off when they have a hidden philosophy -- an invisible sense of the author." This is the thesis we've been circling for a while now in this class. I've written about it previously, but it's underscored here: the novel as psychoanalysis. We've asked again and again, what is the point of a novel? What's the point when it takes years to write, edit, and publish -- if it's ever even published at all? What's the point when it's competing with all of the internet for readers' attention? Competing no longer with just TV and movies, but with TikTok and Reels and Reddit and Twitter and YouTube, et cetera, et cetera. Why even begin the insane undertaking of writing a novel?
"It's about getting further into the id," my teacher said. "Getting further into the unconscious. It's like psychoanalysis. You don't just lay down on the couch and immediately know your problems. This class is about learning whether you're on the right couch, talking to the right analyst. Have you created the right conditions for breakthrough?" This is where I begin to get self-conscious. Psychoanalysis, while fascinating, can also feel like mental masturbation. To lie on a couch three times a week purely for the sake of plunging further into the depths of id, ego, and superego. Could it be a simple exercise in narcissism? Is it a mark of self-obsession? Or by learning about the self, are we learning about the universal? I'm definitely interested in exploring more of psychoanalysis -- have read some Jung -- would like to read more. But why do I feel the need to broadcast the contours of my particular psyche to the world in the form of a novel? What's compelling me to publicize this theoretically private exercise in psychoanalysis? Broadly speaking, what's wrong with the novelist?
To be generous to the novelist -- to be generous to myself -- I could argue that yes, plumbing the depths of one's own psyche reflects a genuine interest in people and the world. Ultimately, we have access to ourselves and ourselves alone. Even that is limited. If anyone's psychology is to be studied under a microscopic lens, our own is as good a place as any to start. Writers, generally, are interested in people. Certainly, I feel interested in people. It's why we write. There's a genuine curiosity there. An anthropological approach to life, wherein I'd like to learn as much as I can about the people around me, as motivated by the writing as much as a desire to connect. Just last week, I went on a second date with a man who was so obviously gay, because I felt some pull towards him. Needed to know more. And yes, might even end up writing about him.
This fascination with people though is what makes me even more self-conscious in class. I see myself blush on Zoom as my teacher points this out. "A big chunk of your novel is your protagonist worshipping people. She idolizes the people around her." I'm turning red because, as established, he's reading me by reading my narrator. My work is a direct reflection of my own unconscious. This decision to have my protagonist so obsessed with people was partly that -- a decision -- and partly an organic outgrowth of my own obsession with people. I have a strong tendency to do what she does. To put people on the pedestal. To perfect them, in my mind. I can put too much stake in surfaces, maybe. In the early stages of getting to know new people.
Why did I take it so hard, for instance, when the obviously gay man called me to tell me he was pursuing something with someone else? Whether or not there really was another person -- man or woman -- he so clearly was struggling. To meet me -- to have me perceive him -- was undoubtedly triggering. I kissed him, even though our attraction was not a sexual one. Allowed myself to envision a future in which we were friends. In which he told me everything. I set myself up for disappointment by making him one of my subjects. An object of not obsession or limerance quite, but of interest. I thought about writing the story of our meeting more in-depth, and like I said, still might. I'd worry of course, that it's insensitive to him in some way to reveal him in this way. And yet, I won't necessarily let that stop me. This is the plight of the writer. This is my plight.
"It's interesting that when you grow up, you have the same basic problems you had as a five year old," my teacher pointed out. "With your novel," he said to me, "it's the naivete of the narrator -- the willingness of the narrator to take people at face value. It's both the strength and the weakness of your novel. Your narrator needs to invest more in other people's complexity." It bugged me when he said it, and bugs me now, putting it down on the page. It bugged me though, because I knew he was right. He's an incredibly smart reader (and I don't think it's idealizing him in any way to say so). I do see the best in people. I do tend to let people in, even when I shouldn't. Even when I know I shouldn't. My curiosity around others simply must be sated. But what exactly am I doing by idealizing these people? Maybe, as was pointed out in this class, I'm denying them their complexity. I'm seeing them in two dimensions because I'm seeing them simply in relation to me. I need someone to look up to, for example, therefore, you must go in the "perfect" box. You must become the version of you that I've composed in my head, or on the page.
The distractingly beautiful former beauty editor, for instance. Why do I insist on her distracting beauty? She didn't do anything to emphasize her physical appearance in class. She simply existed, and I've created a whole narrative around her. All because I was distracted by her beauty. "There's all this latent female competition that you skirt over in your work," my teacher said. He points this out because it's a missed opportunity. He wants me to lean into that. To "exploit the situations" that I've set up. Is this latent female competition in the Zoom room with us now? Certainly, the distractingly beautiful former beauty editor made me think twice about how I was self-presenting on camera. How I was doing my hair, my makeup. How I looked onscreen. Would I have cared as much if she wasn't there? And how about my portrayal of her, in these dispatches? She has the start of what could be a brilliant novel. Has a vast library of references to classic films and literature that she's citing in her work, with precision and style. And yet, I've somehow centered myself in her character. Centered my own distraction, rather than giving her a completely autonomous identity in my work. I've flattened her. My teacher wants me to channel this pathology of mine into the work, rather than excising it. "Could this jealousy towards other women be brought to more of a boil?" I hadn't thought of it as jealousy, per se. But I allowed him to put his finger on it. Maybe it was jealousy. So maybe I did think twice when I realized he had a private chat going with the one other woman in my class.
Perhaps I'm embarrassed by all of this because this is what it feels like to be seen. To be known. To be read. Read closely. After all, this is what I wanted, right? This is why I signed up for the class to begin with. I wanted a teacher. Wanted classmates. Wanted early readers. Wanted feedback on what I'd written so far. As a writer, I often find the parts of myself in tension with one another. Clearly, I want so badly to be understood. Why else would I even bother? To work on the novel, to work on Substack, on personal essays, on short stories, on these dispatches here. I could save myself the time, the ink, and skip it. Obviously, I would like, on some level, to be seen. Recognized. Would be nice for my novel to be published. To have some small degree of fame, in some small corner of the literary world. It scares me though, at the same time. Scares me to send my work to my classmates each week. Scares me to be read by readers who are really paying close attention. Who are psychoanalyzing me, as much as they are my narrator. Scares me to be vulnerable on the page, even here. To admit I was a little heartbroken by the gay guy I barely knew. To confess that I cared a little extra about how I looked on Zoom each week because of how my classmate looked. I want so badly to be onstage, then when I'm there, all I want to do is run away and hide. Perhaps it's because I'd like you to idealize me, the way I idealize you. Don't look too closely at the pathological contours of my id. Just read me. Applaud me. Give me five stars on Goodreads, and get on with it. But you're far too smart for that. Too discerning. You have taste, and preferences, and can see through to the darkness that lurks beneath the surface of my writing. You read me, you see me, and it feels both good and terrifying. This is the plight of the writer. This is my plight.
