I went around the house yesterday opening windows and turning over laundry from Labor Day houseguests, and the air that drifted through the house smelled of woodsmoke and leaves. In an instant, summer was over. (I know the New York Times beat me to that breaking story, but even so.)
I am a parent, so the past many days have been a blur of logistics. Haircut? Check. School shoes? Check. New jeans? Check. Wait, I have to pack snacks the first month? Okay, fine. We’re doing “trash free lunch” now? What does that mean? I’m going to pretend I don’t know that. What about nap stuff? Are we napping? Does anyone know? Can *I* nap?
I took August off from Substacking to spend time on the only thing that keeps me fully present, which is sailing. Maybe the strangest part of the writing life is how much time we must necessarily spend not writing. As a teen I was gifted a copy of Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, which at the time was way over my head. I seem to remember she spends a lot of time thinking about wood piles. My Dillardian pursuits are even more mundane. There’s a lot of pulling on ropes. I learned to varnish.
(Here’s me in sailing mode on a foggy day, during which I was neither writing, nor thinking about writing.)
But now that the leaves are starting to brown and curl, and the Dillardians are laying in their split wood for the coming winter, and the sailboats are beginning to vanish one by one from the harbor, it’s time for me to remember that I, too, am going back to school. At least for a few more months. It’s time to turn away from ropes and back to Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Saidiya Hartman, and my attempts to figure out what exactly it is that I am trying to accomplish, with writing. To resume the writing part of the writing life.
The writing life is in some ways a state of constant preoccupation. All the chopping wood, the hauling on ropes, the long walks, even the obsessive monitoring of social media accounts, whatever make-works we choose for ourselves - the modern equivalent of holy-stoning the deck - their job is to give us something to do while we are preoccupied with writing. I have delayed starting a new novel, in part because I need to finish this PhD first, but also because I haven’t felt ready to give myself over to the preoccupation. Once chosen, the writing of a new novel will occupy my mind, and time, and emotional life, and interrupt me when I’m in the middle of unloading the groceries, and distract me from listening when my offspring is trying to tell me something very important. Writing demands absence, preoccupation, even forgetting. It can be cruel that way.
We must be prepared.
So what’s next?
Astor will release in paperback on September 17.
Then, I’ll be visiting the James River Writers conference in Richmond the first weekend of October.
Next, on October 10 I will join the Manchester by the Sea Cultural Council to talk about writing and pirates and whatever else they have in store for me.
And more things lining up in November, when A True Account releases in paperback, and my dissertation is due.
But first, it’s time to haul the boat.