In Process with: Esmé Weijun Wang
On using multiple notebooks, deadlines, and the beauty of a mother-created residency
Hello, Friends!
How lucky we are to have the writer and teacher
of as today’s In Process With… When I asked writers if they’d be interested in this series, Esmé was one of the first to respond, with an enthusiastic self-identification as a “huge process nerd,” which of course was delightful to me. I find that those of us who are interested in process are often so because we’ve learned that writing of any kind and working on long-form books in particular don’t look or feel like we imagine it will, and of the many things I love about the way Esmé is present in the world as a writer is that she has little use for what should be and is much more interested in working with what is.Esmé and I met in person a few years back when we both returned to our graduate program at the University of Michigan to give a reading and meet with MFA students. The reading she gave from her novel The Border of Paradise absolutely blew me away; I still remember watching her on stage, in a knockout outfit to boot (Esmé is always in a knockout outfit), the spotlight on her, reading a section about David, a character for whom the boundaries of his world had become frighteningly unclear as he experiences mental illness. This character—man, really; he was undeniably palpable that day at the reading—was written with the clarity, empathy and honesty that is present in all of Esmé’s work, whether that’s in her newsletter, interviews, or essays.
But I was already impressed by Esmé, by how, the day before, we’d sat a large table with current MFA students and answered questions about our paths after our MFAs to publication. Esmé was forthcoming about not only how windy and disheartening her path was at times (like me, she also experienced a lot of no’s during her novel submission to publishers), but also about how those obstacles only made her dig in to her commmittment to her self, work, and vision for that particular book.
Because of Esmé’s persistence, that novel, The Border of Paradise, not only was ultimately published but also led to her being named one of the Best Young American Novelists by Granta (a big f’ing deal!). The other thing I heard from Esmé that day wasn’t that this accolade made everything suddenly okay or worth it, or proved a point about how much publishing doesn’t know, but that this is just sometimes how it goes. Sometimes it’s very hard, and you keep going because the work matters to you, and you know it will matter to others. Her next book, an essay collection called The Collected Schizophrenias, about her experience with schizphrenia and episodes of psychosis, won the Graywolf Nonfition Prize (also a big f’ing deal; do we see a theme? We do.) and was a New York Times bestseller.
I encourage you to follow Esmé on Instagram, and subscribe to the newsletter,
, a mix of searing personal essays and practical tips for writing with limitations. Though Esmé writes particularly about the limitations of chronic illness, anyone who does not subscribe to a work till you are dropping way of approaching writing will find so much to take into their own practice to make it not only kinder but smarter and more ambitious. More about her work as a writer and teacher can be found here.On the other side of the paywall, I’m delighted to have
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