Not That Kind of Writer

Ella Marcantonio
Nov 7 · 6 min read

I’m supposed to be a writer. But here’s the thing: I haven’t read a proper book since I dropped out of grad school in 2009 and the most creative thing I’ve written in years is not-particularly-artistic sales copy. When I tell the Lyft driver I’m a writer (which, side note, has taken me years to be able to say out loud), he smiles at me in the rearview mirror. His eyes light up playfully as he tells me how much he loves JD Salinger. This, of course, is my cue to launch into an apologetic monologue. With apparent levity about my shortcomings plus the appropriate amount of deference, I let him know that I’m not that kind of writer.

Actually, mid-monologue, I remember a more recent adventure with Holden and the Glass family. I guess the last time I read a proper book was the winter of 2013 when I was living at a Zen monastery in the California wilderness. I was depressed and anxious (turns out your humanness will find you, even when you run away to a Buddhist monastery with sincere hopes of escaping it). I had no clear idea of what came next. But there was one thing that had become painfully clear: Buddhism wasn’t fixing me fast enough. I felt cornered by years of unfelt emotions and a lifetime of expecting myself to be or do better than I was. Despite all the earnest chanting and clumsy bowing, despite all the teachings about the nature of suffering and the quiet companionship of the other monks, I needed some special help remembering that I wasn’t alone with my uncomfortable humanness.

So, when running away from my life and playing dress-up in heavy black robes failed to cure my angsty aloneness, I turned to my old friend, Holden. His cynicism and distrust in humanity were immediately comforting. What a trustworthy and down-to-earth guy. The heaviness of the world got in him and he was too sensitive to handle it. I related to his feelings and they soothed me.

Yes, Holden’s depressive missives did a lot to take the pressure off me. But it wasn’t just the murky angst that I found so healing. The thing that made it all bearable was the tender humor of how alone and different and bad we all sometimes feel. And how seriously we take ourselves and our feelings. Salinger offered the same sweet reminders he always has: that humanness is necessarily intertwined with humor and pain, connection and isolation, hope and despair. He reminded me that I’m not supposed to escape or transcend this ungainly human state, but that I can try to make some kind of peace with it, even just for right now. And finally that the work of making peace with my discomfort actually ensures my belonging to the human race.

Sitting in the back of the Lyft, I reflect that this is what a real writer does. A real writer doesn’t just write for the sake of word count and keyword densities and search engine discoverability. She writes to really write, to tell the truth, to say something beautiful and important, to take the pressure off the parts that feel like they don’t belong. Of course, I want to write like this, too.

I want to be one of those writers who cares more about the aliveness of the creative process than she does about the end result. But I’ve never been a particularly patient or truly humble person. I want life to come easily all the time, easily and perfectly. I want my prose to be witty and evocative, to capture not just my exquisite sensitivity, but my dark sense of humor and native intelligence. Not to mention the appearance of humility. And forget the painstaking rewrites, toggling back and forth between a word doc and an online thesaurus, trying to find the word I think should have materialized effortlessly the first time around. That’s right, I see you, Millennial Perfectionism. And how good of you to bring your regular traveling partner, Entitlement. You two go a long way toward explaining why I haven’t written “for fun” since I was a kid.

You see, I have friends who are real writers. When I hear about their successes, I’m at once inspired and cripplingly self-conscious. “How old was she when she started writing?” I’ll ask myself. I try to keep my face neutral as I do the mental math to figure out if I could, given time, actually write something meaningful. If I start now, could I maybe be a real writer by the time I qualify for senior discounts? Possible, but not likely, I conclude.

So once more, I explain my reasoning to Dimitri as he drives. I point out that search engine optimization pays the bills. I try to clarify that the kind of writing he’s thinking of isn’t the kind I do. Sorry, good sir, but I’m not writing the great American novel. And no, despite my daily outrage at the state of our world and an anxious belly full of dread, I’m also not writing a meaningful political treatise that captures the unexpressed anguish and, let’s face it, scathing judgment of my generation. Nor am I creating a meme to that end.

But as I recite my lines, something doesn’t feel right. This time the words don’t quite feel true. I guess that’s because the truth is I do have something to write about, something to say. Don’t worry, though, it’s not going to be oppressingly positive or sentimental or, god forbid, cheerful. I’ll just settle for true. And the truth is that I have studied my own sense of alienation. I have paid careful attention to my irrational hope that, without any effort on my part, I will be rescued from personal responsibility and normal human feelings. And I have tried to investigate these ideas with tenderness, sometimes even a sense of humor. I have lived in a body and mind weighed down by the heaviness of wanting it to be otherwise. And yes, I have soothed that insistent, self-conscious dread with bed nachos, streaming TV, and my scary pajama suit.

But here’s the part that always surprises me about vulnerability: maybe you actually want to see this version of me. Maybe you’d relate to the antisocial pajama monster the same way I relate to Holden. Perhaps you’re longing to see the parts of me that I long ago decided were unfit for public consumption. What are these objectionable parts, you ask? They’re the stained pajama pants my best friend keeps trying to steal from my dresser and secretly set on fire. The unwashed and unbrushed frizz hair and crusty, morning-after acne cream. The congealed evidence of yesterday’s bed nachos. And then whatever their emotional equivalents turn out to be. (If I had to guess, I’d say crippling perfectionism, a lifelong sense that shame and judgment will improve the parts of me I don’t like or approve of, and probably a healthy dose of the delusion that freedom from responsibility is true happiness? But hey, I’m just guessing, folks.)

So, why am I writing like this for the first time in longer than I can remember? I have reached the tenuous conclusion that these unflattering parts have distilled in isolation for long enough. So, here I am, Dimitri, and all Lyft drivers of the world! I am going to be that kind of writer, starting today. These are my weird feelings and my dirty sweatpants and my bed nachos. And, yeah, I wonder about how this untidy collection of parts will be received, just as my best friend worried sincerely that the guy I was dating wouldn’t stick around once he’d seen my greasy pajama bottoms in action. But then I remember that, years later, that guy and I are still together. And even more importantly? Now he has his own pair. I guess me and all my messy parts are here to stay. And you’ll be hearing from us a lot more often in the future.

Written by

I like words and stories. I like how art helps us reflect on and process the messiness of being alive. And there’s nothing I love more than a floofy pup.

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