Why You’re Not Allowed to Write About Writing
A story about books, Barnes & Noble, fear of failure, and a very name-droppy special guest appearance
In 2007, like so many English degree holders before and after me, I set out post-college graduation to become a writer. But first, I needed money, so, also like so many English degree holders before and after me, I got a job as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble.
The title of “bookseller” is the romantic, optimistic twist on a retail position that entices so many English grads in the first place. One soon discovers, after a monthlong purgatorial stint slinging mocha breves behind the cafe counter, that the privilege of working on the book floor is a bait and switch, enticing serious-minded literary types who imagine that working at a conglomerate bookstore affords one the opportunity to discuss books all day long. One would be incorrect on this front.
Most of the job turned out to be pointing people to the latest installment of the Twilight trilogy. Sometimes I got to work in the children’s section and convince parents to buy the Thoroughbred series for their tween girls instead; when I was a kid I devoured every issue of the girl-and-her-horses saga. Other times I worked the cash register and tried to chat about the books customers slid across the counter, but the company cared more about how many people I could cajole into signing up for the Barnes & Noble membership. Showing customers how they’d get a discount on books if they coughed up $25 at least felt better than when I had worked at the Gap and convinced people spending $34.99 on jeans that they should open an extremely high-interest credit card so they could save $3.49 on today’s purchase—plus you’ll get coupons! (Don’t worry, karma got me; I’m still paying off my own credit cards that a nice lady at Chase would casually open for me months later when I moved to the most expensive city in the world with no money management skills or sense.)
Sometimes I’d be stocking a book display and a man would sidle up and ask me vague questions about the particular book, and by the time I realized he was hitting on me I didn’t know how to extract myself from the conversation without being Rude to a Customer. My managers, most of them women several decades older than me, would reliably notice and pull me away with an urgent book-related task.
Still, I did what I could to turn this period of my life into a Valuable Experience—I was living at home with my mom and sister, saving as much of my meager salary as possible for the move to New York, where my REAL writer’s life could start. I made a few bookseller friends, and we’d sneak in conversations about our literary dreams and favorite books in between hunting down Janet Evanovich paperbacks. I took way too much advantage of the employee discount, reveling in the ability to read whatever I wanted—no summer reading list, no syllabus—for the first time in years. I was saving up a little money (my then-boyfriend-now-husband slaved away at a diner in an upscale Philadelphia suburb and socked away most of our joint move-to-New-York fund himself) and I was also building up the kind of life I thought I would live, surrounded for eight hours a day by florescent lighting and boredom and the ever-present smell of sugar cookies from the cafe and acrid coffee—and books.
I got really into books about writing, and one of the first I snagged was Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers, by Carolyn See. In the book, See dispenses basic writing advice, but what fascinated me was the advice on how to set yourself up to be a writer. There’s a whole chapter on what to do on your first trip to New York to meet with agents and publishers. I thought my impending move there already put me ahead of the game, and was eager to put all of her advice into practice. See recommends sending “charming notes” to other writers you admire, and so I got myself some hot-pink monogrammed stationary from Staples.com and starting sending letters to authors. One of my most treasured possessions is the handwritten reply postcard that David Sedaris sent me from France. I had complimented the ending of a particular essay from When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and he thanked me, writing that he appreciated the compliment especially because he’d worked very hard on that ending.
It shocked and touched me that he was so candid with a random fan. It also serves as a stark reminder that writing is very hard. Even for David Sedaris.
Eleven years later, I have taken some of Carolyn See’s advice, and lots of advice from lots of other people, and I have a sort-of literary life. I work for a media company, and much of my job involves editing, writing, and coaching other editors. I’ve got dozens of journalism clips and a master’s degree. I’m really proud of some of the stories I’ve written. Every couple of months I finish a new essay, submit it somewhere, get rejected, and then sometimes decide to publish a version of it myself. And I am constantly, constantly thinking about the book I want to write.
Oh God, writing about writing! It’s so horribly boring. I’m sorry. But here it is, because I’ve been slacking, thinking that the trappings of a somewhat-literary life could make up for a lack of actual writing. They can’t! Thinking about a book does not, in fact, get you closer to finishing it. We all know what Yoda says.
The reason we’re not supposed to write about writing is that it’s self-indulgent, and often the clumsy mask of neophyte writers who don’t yet have anything to say and just like the sound of their own literary voice and use pretentious words like “neophyte.” Save it for your diary, a grumbly writing professor might say. Good advice. But there are only so many hours in the day, and I must confess that I don’t actually know how to do anything, I am just throwing spaghetti at the wall, an activity I have actually done while fighting to stay awake ahead of a 3 a.m. flight from London to Barcelona when I was studying abroad and my best friend and I decided to make and consume pasta, the most sleep-inducing food imaginable, the whole experience of which is much more interesting than writing about writing. Except it is very difficult to get dried spaghetti off a ceiling, so throw at your own risk.
When you work at Barnes & Noble, you’re just a retail clerk, and you’re also a literature concierge, available at any magical moment to introduce someone to what will surely become their favorite book. It’s easy to hand off that book when you’re twenty-two and think, someday some bookseller will hand off MY book to become the favorite. It is easy to think that. It is hard to write.
This is not the First Step of anything, it’s just an essay that I’m publishing myself, and I truly cannot tell if it’s good or bad. Can anyone? Can you? I think it might be bad but it’s A Thing I’ve Written. I should save it for my diary. I should write 1,000 words a day. I should publish everything. I should never put something so unpolished, so meandering, into the world. Have I done it, have I explained why you aren’t allowed to write about writing?
When we did make the move to New York, I transferred to work part-time at the Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, so I could keep my health insurance while I searched for a Real Job. (It would be three years until I got my first job as a reporter.) It was disheartening—I worked in the children’s section, watching kids tear through the aisles, pulling books from the shelves, while their nannies and parents wandered away with lattes in hand. Sometimes we had to ask a homeless person to leave if they fell asleep. No one was nice to me and no one cared even a little bit whether or not I liked books.
For a few months, I worked two or three shifts a week after a full day at my other job as a receptionist, walking fourteen streets and two avenues home in single digit temperatures because I didn’t understand how buses worked. When we moved to Brooklyn, I attempted to transfer to the Park Slope store, but they didn’t want me; I rearranged my schedule too often and was reliably 3–5 minutes late to every shift. I gave it up gratefully, thinking that with the extra time I could devote myself to writing when I wasn’t at my new full-time receptionist gig.
And sometimes, I did. But it wasn’t enough. Eventually I had to quit that job, take on more student loans, put myself through grad school, get internships, get experience. That’s how I got a literary life—not through charming notes to authors.
And yet. What could possibly be more valuable than the personal understanding that David Sedaris doesn’t know how to end his essays either.
No one has ever had anything to say, but we all keep talking. Isn’t that so beautiful it breaks your heart.
