Sometimes I Hate-Read Myself

Work habits. A poem about war that kills me. How to apply gratitude. "Always do your best," whatever that means. Requests for the Slate column.

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I wrote so many goddamn words in the last couple of weeks (for me, at least), and I was disappointed in most of them. But I still enjoyed the process because sometimes, I am willfully mediocre just so I can get things done. I assumed that after years of writing “professionally” and even more that I have a weekly newsletter routine, the repetitions would somehow help all my paragraphs blossom into magnificence. That I’d be able to simply plippity-clackity-clop on the laptop at any point in the day and all my best ideas would appear. But nope—most of the time, what comes out is mostly unremarkable, totally ordinary, but eventually good enough.

When I get stuck, I reread stories I love and then brazenly try to rip them off. When I was up very late last Saturday night deleting and rewriting nineteen different parts of the cocaine essay, I sought out the story I always read when I write about drugs—“The Worm In Philly” by Sam Lipsyte:

“I went to the library. I did this by going out to the avenue and asking somebody where the library was.”

He’s the best.

I add and subtract to this rip-off list every year. I don’t always have to read a recovery-adjacent story, but most of the stuff I get into tends to be a little dark. But these four have been in heavy rotation the past couple of months.

Confessions of an Unredeemed Fan

by Leslie Jamison:

“The footage of Belgrade is nearly impossible to believe, but there it is, happening over and over again, as many times as you want to click the YouTube refresh button. Amy stumbles along in her tiny yellow dress with ragged stripes of black, a bruised banana. When she falls off an amp, her drummer’s smile stretches into something more like a grimace. Is this an oh-those-self-destructive-music-legends-how-they-fuck-up moment or an actually-this-woman-is-basically-committing-suicide-right-in-front-of-you moment? He isn’t sure what face to make. The public didn’t know what face to make for years. “She’s shit-faced,” says a voice on the YouTube video. “She doesn’t know where she is.” And then: “Look at her. Look at her.” At a certain point, her face changes. She’s not confused anymore, or scared. She’s smirking. Her smirk seems to say, I’m done with this. She throws the mic. Someone hands her another.” [Longreads]