Hello and happy Friday! As I mentioned, I’m taking some R&R. But I’ve got a great lineup of writing friends to keep you entertained in my absence. Today’s guest post is from Jennifer Savran Kelly, a writer I met at a conference years ago. It was all rather circumstantial—I was having dinner with a friend from graduate school who asked if Jen could come along. We had a raucous conversation, which continued on Twitter after the conference ended. Jen is warm, funny, and honest and I’m so glad to know her. Oh and her debut novel Endpapers has been getting rave reviews (and is at the top of my pile for my time off—can’t wait!). If you enjoy her post, you should subscribe to her Substack and buy her book.
Hi friends,
You know those responses from literary journals and residencies and grant programs—the ones that begin “Dear Writer.” There’s a cold efficiency about them I love. I’m pretty sure no acceptance to anything in history has ever begun “Dear Writer.” Sometimes you can even see that impersonal greeting in the tiny preview before you open the email and then you don’t even need to bother. No set-up for disappointment here!
Before I go too far, however, I want to be clear that this is not a letter about rejection. That seemingly thoughtless email greeting also reminds me of one of my favorite moments in Parks and Recreation. If you haven’t seen the show (and you should!), all you need to know is that Leslie Knope, played by Amy Poehler, is the most passionate low-level government employee that never existed. In an early episode, after she holds a contentious town hall and is being interviewed by an off-camera documentarian, an angry citizen walks by and yells, “Hey, Park Lady! You suck!” Knope turns back to the camera and says, “You hear that?” Smiling, she adds, “He called me Park Lady.”
Writers talk—and write—a lot about success and how to define it. We also talk about the pain of rejection and how to mitigate it and keep going. But a few weeks ago I had dinner with my good friend Amy Reading, the author of The Mark Inside and the forthcoming biography Katharine S. White Edits The New Yorker. We were catching up, talking about our goals, our recent ups and downs, and I asked Amy some version of the question about what success looks like for her. Before answering, she reframed the question, saying it’s more about what kind of life she wants.
I loved that.
As Amy talked about that life—researching, obsessing, writing, traveling, connecting with other writers—it was nice to think about how much of a full, rich writing life consists of doing the work and being out in the world, surrounding yourself with interesting people and ideas. And to realize in such a concrete way that publishing is actually just one piece of it. Yet we tend to measure success based almost entirely on that one relatively small slice of pie.
But again, this letter is not about success or failure. I’m just interested in the fact that we tend to place so much value on an aspect of our lives we can’t control. Since my dinner with Amy, I’ve been paying more attention to all the ways in which writing enriches my life, regardless of any traditional ideas of success or failure. Because if we don’t acknowledge it, it’s not always obvious.
As writers, we don’t just sit around typing or waiting for our next story to come out. We walk slowly and deliberately outside, listening to the birds while we unravel complicated plot points, we open ourselves up to people and all their complexity, we eavesdrop on strangers’ conversations, meet interesting friends on social media, lift other voices by reading for a literary journal or reviewing someone’s book, stretch ourselves, cook a good meal for our writing group, learn a new skill as part of our research, spend hours Googling glass scorpions, spend hours at the library searching for something we can’t yet name, read yet-to-be-published work, pace for hours, notice things, open up to new experiences, stay present for all of it.
So next time you get an email that begins, “Dear Writer,” instead of worrying about whether you’re doing this writing thing right, maybe you can own (and even celebrate) the fact that someone just called you a writer.
Today, I’m celebrating this chance to connect with all of you. Happy writing, everyone.
Yours,
Jen
Jennifer Savran Kelly (she/they) lives in upstate New York, where she writes, binds books, and works as a production editor at Cornell University Press. Her debut novel Endpapers came out in February; prior to publication it won a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation and was selected as a finalist for the SFWP Literary Awards Program and the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Jen's short work has been published in Potomac Review, Black Warrior Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, and elsewhere.
Loved this, Jen!
So empowering and such a great reframe of a pervasive narrative! Thanks for writing this.