Tag: Reading

Writing

Build back mediocre

Amanda Gibson

Until today, the most recent photo on my instagram account was of a book hanging out near some jazzy tulips in my yard. As it’s February in Chicago… it’s clearly been a while since I posted that. Bookstagramming, reading, writing, and any other form of creativity (let’s also lump “feeling joy at all that didn’t come from a pint of Jeni’s Brambleberry Crisp” in there as well) all disappeared for me this winter. Or at least they hibernated somewhere very deep and inaccessible.

I know I’m not alone in this. So many people, creatives and non-creatives alike, have suffered from languishing, malaise, depression—whatever we feel like calling it—throughout the pandemic, but especially during this second winter of isolation and amplified anxiety. When we write or read, we feel what characters are feeling; it’s what makes the experience so thrilling. But I’m spent, emotionally, like so many others, so the thought of consuming or transmitting more emotions… does not appeal. It’s why I’ve re-binged every episode of Great British Bake-Off this winter. No feelings. Just CAKE.

With spring (ostensibly) around the corner, there’s the promise of pandemic restrictions and fears easing up again, and possibly a lifting of emotional burdens, opening us up to be those lightning rods for creativity again. But after two years of near-emptiness, how do we come back from that? How do we return to the activities we once loved, when our dusty insides have been closed off from them for so long?

Paralysis has been my response to that question. To-be-read piles towering ever closer to the ceiling, unvisited Word documents, cobwebbed social media feeds. Can’t do it. Won’t do it.

But I recently read Mike Schur’s new book, How to Be Perfect, which is a highly accessible guide to basic moral philosophy, brought to you by the creator of The Good Place. One of my favorite messages from this book is the idea that we will constantly fail at being morally “perfect,” but we have to try because even though no one will ever get there, that the point of perfection does not exist, trying gets us closer. Closer to the idea of the person we want to be in society, closer to the other humans ambling around beside us, closer to ourselves.

Try, and fail, and try again, and fail better.

So I am writing this post to try, to actively do, and to fail myself a little closer toward creativity again.

Reading

Review of Glennon Doyle’s feminist memoir “Untamed”

Amanda Gibson

Glennon Doyle’s Untamed was my Book of the Month Club pick for May, and I’ve been delaying writing a review for it because I have mixed feelings about it, but those are the important ones, so here it is:

I loved the beginning. She drew me right in with her short essay-like chapters about feminism, marriage, and motherhood. I could relate to so much. Then there were parts in the middle where she sort of lost me for a bit. She spent a lot of time repeating the same tidbits of self-exploration. And I love me some self-exploration, but eventually, I need out of my head and your head and back into an actual scene.

There are several chapters that focus on religion and spirituality, and as a sometimes-agnostic/sometimes-atheist, I resisted those at first. But she also presents religion in the most accessible way I’ve ever seen it presented—comparing God/spirituality to a liquid and religion to the glass that holds and confines it. This stirred something in me since most of us who have bad tastes in our mouths over these subjects are opposed to the rules and prejudices inherent in the institutions of religion, rather than spirituality itself.

There are some preachy this-is-what-you-should-say-to-your-children-and-to-everyone-else moments, which occasionally rubbed me the wrong way, but there’s also SO much good advice in here. My favorite takeaway from this book is the concept of “sinking into your Knowing,” which is the place where we find truth inside ourselves to do the next right thing (cue the Frozen 2 song).

She also delves into the concept of the perfect woman, who is beautiful, smart, funny, the perfect size, perfect wife, perfect mother, perfect friend, and who has all of her perfect shit together. But this woman doesn’t exist, Doyle points out. We’re all scared and lonely and suffering and sweaty and misshapen and longing. So when we aspire to be this mysterious perfect woman, we’re all just chasing ghosts.

Finally, Doyle explores racism in a way that is especially appropriate right now, pointing out that’s it’s not enough to simply say you’re not a racist—you must recognize the poison in your own blood that was put there by living in a racist society, and then actively root it out.

This book felt important. The kind of book you realize you should have read with a highlighter. So I may return to reread it some day and do just that.

Writing

Writing over fear

Amanda Gibson

It goes without saying that this has been a really, REALLY hard time for basically everyone on earth. We’re all stuck, literally and figuratively—moored in our homes, the progress of our lives halted. I recently wrote about losing my job due to the pandemic, and the relief I felt from the simple act of putting words on the page made it clear that writing was the only thing that would keep me sane through all of this.

But I knew I needed to work on something new—something completely different from the multiple manuscripts on my laptop that have racked up dozens of rejections over the years. Those, in my mind, were symbols of the same sort of thing I was currently experiencing: stasis and failure.

I knew what I wanted to work on. Romance novels had been calling to me for a long time. The first book I ever read with explicit sex in it was Judy Blume’s Wifey, which I stole from my mom’s little library when I was about fifteen and read with the door closed, hiding it under my bed whenever I left my room. There was a lot I didn’t understand about that book at the time. But one thing that hasn’t changed between then and now is the instinct to read such books in private. Ebooks have made it a lot easier to read these lascivious tales when and where we want, no closed door or stuffing-under-the-pillow required. But if anyone were to ask me (pre-pandemic) what I was reading on the train, I still would have had a smooth lie ready to go.

I don’t think I’m alone in my puritanical upbringing, my childhood devoid of any discussions about sex or sexuality. It’s a fairly standard American thing—being raised on abstinence, carrying this odd shame with us into adulthood, discovering various forms of sexual entertainment, enjoying them, but never uttering a word to anyone about it. I’m not sure what the actual fear consists of. Am I afraid people will think I’m less intelligent or less morally upright if I admit to enjoying reading erotic literature? Or is it just a lifetime of shapeless anxiety tsk-tsking me inside my head?

Regardless, I’ve spent a good amount of time thinking about what I want to do next, and how I’m afraid to do it. But then, last month, the incomparable Janelle Hanchett hosted a virtual writing workshop in which she was asked about how she overcomes her fear. Her response was simple: I’m still afraid. But I have lost faith in fear as a reliable guide for my life.

It was everything I needed to hear.

So, because my fears are often so unreliable, I’m writing romance. And there is sex. And I will be afraid of what people think. And I will do it anyway.

Because the greater fear I have right now is what will I do if I don’t write it? What will I do while I wait to see what’s next? And how long will I be waiting?

I want light, and fun, and no way to back out of it if I panic (which I will). So I’m serializing my first adult romance novel on Wattpad and will—hopefully—be updating it with a new chapter each week.

Read. Enjoy. Share, or keep it to yourself. No shame either way.

A Terrifying and Beautiful Place:

http://www.wattpad.com/story/219627349