In Process: On Writing, Now

We have to continue to see ourselves, each other.

This month’s In Process with me is a bit different. First, I’ve removed the paywall as I answer what I’m working on and how it’s going. Second, I’m trying to answer that question for right now, but also for the future, which many of us are buckling in for.

The great Peter Ho Davies, who was my professor during my MFA at Michigan, sent alum and current students what he called “a crumb of comfort” yesterday in the form of

Alexander Chee

’s essay, On Becoming an American Writer, on how to write and teach writing in the wake of the larger project of living in America, and especially at moments of inflection like the one that has been wrought by this week’s election. That link is an edited version; if you’d like the full length essay, I’m happy to pass along, and I consider Chee’s essay collection, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, from which this essay is excerpted, a must read for any writer, and encourage you to get a copy. I return to it often.

This set of pages, the final two of the essay, contain the answers to my usual questions, what I’m working on and how it’s going, far better than I can articulate it myself.

This part in particular lodged in me all day.

“I wanted to lead my students to another world, one where people value writing and art more than war, and yet I knew then and I know now that the only things that matters is to make that world here. There is no other world. This is the only world we are in. This revisable country, so difficult to change, so easily changed.”

The world we imagine is already here, between us, between so many others who believe in and will fight for the rights of others, who will insist on all over few, and that no change of presidency can obliterate that. We have to continue to see ourselves, each other.

Times of instability are not, though mythologized as such, good material for writers and other artists. I suspect many of us write as a form of survival, of not participating in self-erasure of our narratives as we exist in the world now, which is resistance.

Imagination matters. Stories matter.

In times of upheaval, I have written. I wrote through the Covid pandemic and I wrote through the first Trump presidency—my novel about an underground abortion network that did not sell in 2020 and which becomes less imagined than realized every day. I will write through this one.

50% of this month’s subscriptions will go to two organizations, the abortion justice group All Above All and Make the Road, which fights heartily for the rights and livelihood of immigrants. You can of course donate directly if you prefer not to subscribe.

Talk Soon,
Danielle

PS: It’s down to 2 years now, and she’s been watching.