it gets better (???)

who started saying that anyway

This time last year, I was overbaking in a thick, gooey, sheet pan of shame over stopping writing my book. I hit page 185 and couldn’t do it anymore. Every word felt like stereotypical-average-boring manure. The tropes were absolutely trope-ing, and not in a good way. It sucked, basically.

It felt terrible to hate what I had written thus far, but even worse was the feeling I had after quitting. But I eventually started again. As you all know. Obvi.

But here I am now, a year later. A new draft. Page 185.

And I’ve barely written over the last two months.

Here’s where we say, okay, take a breath, we’ve been down this road before and we know what happens if we stop here. So we just have to trudge through the mud. But I don’t have four-wheel drive and the energy to plow through is dwindling fast. (Did that metaphor make sense? I don’t know how cars work.)

It’s still supposed to not be that great at this stage, I remind myself. Most people’s first drafts are shit. Shut off the editor brain, stick to a schedule, and move those freakishly small fingers of yours! Also maybe stop mentioning it to every person you meet when you know you’re barely making the time to do it. That’s like, the number one rule of making stuff. Until it’s done, don’t talk about it. Pursuing a creative project is kind of like Fight Club, but with more suffering.

Speaking of, I want to see Bottoms soon, because it looks like a great movie. I also don’t want to see Bottoms because seeing movies that bright young women have written and produced and starred in reminds me about how I’ve (seemingly) wasted my bright young woman years. I have to add (seemingly) or I’ll really get depressed.

Literally as I wrote that last line, a friend texted me,

Do you have a writing schedule?

Or do you write when inspo hits

I’m not alone. There’s at least that. And what a killer question. I squash down the instinct to reply I don’t fucking know it changes every hour of every day and still nothing gets done. (I do end up saying a version of that, something about how a schedule often feels too rigid but if I wait to write only when I have inspiration then I’ll hardly ever write at all.)

So why, even with a completely new draft, am I finding myself stuck at the same spot I was over a year ago? I think I know partly why. My inner critic, who I think I named Stephanie a while back, is seeing that I’m getting close, but with a ways to go. Perfect time to swoop in and tell me that no one cares about my fucking perspective. She can add that I haven’t worked enough to write a book that centers around the film industry. Oooh, or I haven’t been loved enough to write a romantic interest. Why not tell me both, the more insecurities the merrier! Then, for a final touch, Stephanie says I simply haven’t lived enough to say anything of note that people would relate to, or mutter an emphatic mm to like boomer audience members of a socially conscious play. And she’s got me. My only defense is the fact that JoJo released “Leave (Get Out)” when she hadn’t even been kissed, so life experience doesn’t matter. It’s not the strongest argument.

I tried to write earlier and ended up giving my undivided attention to Olivia Rodrigo’s new album. I’m not going to justify loving the crap out of it. It’s filling the Avril Lavigne hole in the heart of my ten-year-old self, the one that couldn’t believe her parents agreed to buy her an album that had ass in the lyrics. So I’m vibing with Olivia, and then the last song comes on. Essentially, I combust. I’m in my bed, devoured Thai food on my nightstand, bawling to the lyrics a nineteen-year-old has written: I fear that they already got all the best parts of me. They say it gets better, but what if I don't?

At nineteen all I wanted to be was special; I wonder if it’s the sole reason I wanted to be an actor in the first place. When people looked at me in school it was usually at my glasses or my acne scars caked in cheap concealer, but when people looked at me onstage I was admired. I was elevated. I was so shiny. It feels like that shine stopped somewhere around twenty-three and every year I’ve failed to bring it back. There’s this crystal pedestal with me at the top, the me that finally did something with her life, and I get halfway up before I slip because my palms are too sweaty (knees weak, arms are heavy).

I’m supposed to be smarter and more successful and prettier and cooler than I was at nineteen. I’m supposed to have gotten better. That’s what was supposed to happen, right?

Hm, okay, we’re accelerating past the level of angst that’s entertaining and soon approaching the level that makes people exit the page, so let’s merge to a different lane. More driving metaphors, I see.

So other than the disarming fear that nothing I create from here on out will be special because I’m too old for it to be impressive, things are good! This is classic summer-to-fall melancholy, which is much different than summer melancholy. Ache with pumpkin cream cold foam.

If we’re really going to get into the weeds here, I’m stalling finishing my book because I don’t want to be embarrassed. What started out as just a fun idea is getting closer to a point where other people will have to read it, and that will be humiliating. I’ve made my baby too precious and I’m not letting her grow, and I’m ending up just Gypsy Rose-ing her.

How do we not get embarrassed so easily then? I ask as if I’m addressing a class. I do wish I was doing that actually, because I don’t have the answer. Someone write it on the whiteboard for me, I’m begging you.

Like just the other day, I was babysitting, and I was pushing a stroller containing a four-year-old who was simply too big to be in that stroller anymore while also making sure a nine-year-old didn’t crash on his scooter, and I had accidentally poked said four-year-old in the eye so she was bawling, and the restaurant the nine-year-old wanted to go to for bubble tea said “we don’t have the bubbles ready.” And all this happened during the local high school’s lunch break. And it was ninety degrees out. Now put teenagers in cool pants in front of that, and I actually want to off myself. Especially when I’m babysitting, for some reason. I don’t want them to think I’m a mom!

But also. Who. The living fuck. Cares. Susanna. Yes, I am saying your full name.

You are literally old enough to be a mom. It is okay if a sixteen-year-old thinks you’re capable of birthing. Also, they’re not thinking that, because they’re thinking about calculus or going thrift shopping later or a soul-smashing crush they have on someone. It’s not about you. Nothing is ever about you.

There are many ways it’s gotten better since I was nineteen. And harder. That’s to be expected. I’m doing the best I can and as God and My Twenty Subscribers are my witnesses, this novel will be finished! One day! Hopefully soon and/or a good time before I perish and have no legacy to leave behind! But also what a weird thing to strive for when we all die anyway!

I actually get annoyed when people say that — like the fact that everyone will eventually die is supposed to take off the pressure, and I guess it does, for a while anyway, until it roller coasters me into a pile of nihilism and too much ice cream.

So I will tell myself this instead: creating something isn’t embarrassing. It’s very very cool and admirable and brave and also sexy. And all this worrying about not doing enough at my age…isn’t going to magically stop the aging. What, am I simply going to not do the thing because I have this notion that I’m too old to do it? And then never do it? How gross!

It does get better. It will get better. Because it already has. So calm down, Olivia Rodrigo, we’re gonna be fine girlie!