Put on your hard pants and your travel jacket: Life is coming for you
I’m starting to do normal things. I went to Ikea the other day, not on an urgent mission (which is what all my shopping trips this pandemic year have been) but because I was idly curious about whether they might have nice pillows. Such a trip—somewhat frivolous, mostly exploratory—had been absolutely unthinkable since last March. During the pandemic I had gone into stores when there was no other option, mostly to get supplies that were household essentials, but this marked the first time I’d done so just because I felt like it. It was kind of a thrill, and kind…
Read everything from Susan Orlean — and more.
Upgrade to Medium membership to directly support independent writers and get unlimited access to everything on Medium.
First: Scream into a pillow. Second: Look away.
There was quite a dust-up on the World Wide Interwebs the other day when a writer bashed a reviewer for a cranky review of the writer’s forthcoming book. Actually, to be accurate, it was a four-out-of-five star review, which most writers would consider enthusiastic. Much of the angry response was not directed toward the reviewer but toward the writer, who came off like a spoiled brat, a diva. Most of all, the writer violated the unspoken pact between creators and reviewers. Creators get to have a big, wide public distribution of their products, and reviewers get to say what they…
The ones I see in real life, the ones I only text, the ones I wish could have been at my wedding
One of my hobbies is thinking about friendship. I marvel at how complex they can be, how many gradations of relationships can exist that can still dwell comfortably in a general category of “friend”. To me, romantic relationships are simpler: You’re either in it or you’re not. Friendship feels infinitely nuanced and more undefinable.
Technology has complicated this even further. It used to be that you had a friend, full-stop. You talked to them on the phone and saw them in person. I suppose there were the occasional penpals, and the summer camp friends who you reunited with for six…
This year has been emotionally costly; can we reinvest?
To begin with, let me say I have been lucky, lucky, lucky during the pandemic. I’ve been able to work with almost no disruption. I’ve been healthy, and my family has been healthy. Now we’re vaccinated. Most of the people we know have made it through this year in pretty good shape, which is, of course, a miracle not enjoyed by lots of other people. So relatively speaking, we are very fortunate.
That said, this year has sucked. I’m only beginning to realize some of the ways it has sucked, now that things are loosening ever so slightly. Last week…
How did I do that? And will I ever do it again? Yikes.
One of the least pleasant sensations in the world, for a writer, is the feeling that you can’t remember how you did what you just managed to do. For me, it’s particularly true about coming up with story ideas. Every time, every single time, I have finished writing something, I am sure that this is my one and only time of landing on a good idea and executing it successfully and that I will never, ever repeat it.
Part of the problem is I can never quite remember how I got the idea to begin with. I suppose that’s not…
There isn’t even vocabulary for our pandemic emotions
Sometimes I think I’m okay. Not great, but not terrible: I feel a little bit normal, a little bit comfortably ordinary. It’s usually when I’m doing something at home that hasn’t been affected in any way by the pandemic. Yesterday, I weeded my garden for a while, and I felt whatever that feeling is. I don’t have a word for it, really. When I rifle through my vocabulary to describe it, I often land on “okay” because it feels the closest to the emotion. Level. Steady. Regular. Functional. Okay.
Weeding my garden helps me feel okay because it’s exactly the…
You never know what you might find while emptying a house
- My wedding ring from my first marriage. I had no idea I still had it. The friend who was taking stuff to Goodwill for us found it in a Ziplock in a pile of stuff. Now I once again am confronted with the question of what to do with it.
- A Tiffany pen. I must have bought it to give as a gift because I would never indulge myself with such a fancy pen. Evidently, after I bought it I couldn’t bring myself to give it away. I didn’t open the box or use it; I just… kept it. Found…
But this isn’t a column about running, it’s about writing
Some years back, I decided I wanted to run a marathon. I had just started running and could squeak out two or three miles at best. I’m not sure what made me think I could ratchet that up to twenty-six miles, but I was determined. I bought new shoes and a book that promised to get me across the finish line.
I always enjoyed running, but I mostly enjoyed having run — that is, I loved being done with a run and knowing I had done it. I was less enthusiastic when I anticipated a run. Every time I’d think…
It grows as you use it, so don’t worry
When I first started writing, I imagined that I was dipping my pen into a finite pool of creative ink. I thought creativity — in my case, writing — was something akin to a natural resource like petroleum: Limited, precious, unrenewable. It made me nervous. I sized up every assignment I was offered with that scarcity in mind. Was doing this story worth depleting my supply of creative juice? Would it be a net gain, considering that I would be spending a rare commodity on it?
I’m not sure where I got this notion. I suspect that it was partly…
Once you slip out of your own skin, it’s kind of wonderful
Because my son is the new kid at a new school, joining mid-year a small group of students who’ve been together since September, he and I have been talking a lot about that special circle of hell known as Feeling Excluded. There may be no human emotion more universal; no experience more exquisitely painful and awkward. So I can’t help but wonder how I ended up in a career that forces me to experience that feeling over and over again.
What does a journalist do? We poke into other worlds and linger and observe, eavesdrop, sidle up to strangers, ask…
Susan Orlean
Staff writer, The New Yorker. Author of The Library Book, The Orchid Thief, and more…Head of my very own Literati.com book club (join me!)
