Long time, no read about a nearly-thirty-year-old’s trials and tribulations through the motif of being an aspirational novelist but really she’s just venting a lot!
I posted my first Substack last January, and posted fifteen more throughout 2023, and also apparently wrote nine drafts that didn’t go anywhere because they were too sad and/or inappropriate; the bar for being too much of either of those things is pretty high here in Surely Unsure land, but I’m an overachiever. But happy new year!! For real!! This post is going to be happy everyone I pinky promise and maybe only a little inappropriate!!!
I feel the opposite way about even-numbered calendar years than I do when I turn an even-numbered age year. I read that sentence back and got confused. So let me be clear. Even-numbered age years do not feel sexy. I’m 28 years old, which is significantly less sexy than 27 or 29. That’s simply how it is. But calendar years? Different story. The even ones are hotter. 2024 has waaaay more sex appeal than 2023.
Then again, 2010, 2016, and 2020 were a few of the worst years out there, in ways both personal and global (2010 was my freshman/sophomore year in high school and all I really remember was crying in the bathroom a lot). But you can’t deny the sensuality of those number progressions. I do not make these rules.
Everything’s been going relatively well this year. I unintentionally am having a dry, now slightly damp, January. The only night I’ve had alcohol so far involved three craft ciders and an espresso martini. A revolting combination, but I woke up with 0% of a hangover. Is that what I have to do now if I want to go out and not have my next day ruined? I don’t even like beer. And the only other time I’ve combined a pint and espresso was when I was in London one time on my day off from free-trialing being an au pair (the fam I was nannying for at the time moved and asked me to join them for a week, all expenses paid, to help the kids settle in). I’d been walking all day and ambitiously bought standing-room-only tickets that night for an Arthur Miller play (famously a long event no matter how edgy the adaptation). Went to the pub and grabbed a beer, then thought, “blimey, I’m tired, babes.” Got a shot of espresso. Didn’t end up seeing the end of All My Sons because I was kneeling in front of a toilet looking at All My Puke.
That was also in January during an even-numbered year, so it all still felt sexy. And British. What’s more cultured than being on your knees in a loo?
On New Year’s Eve, I spent all day making a vision board after spending my New Year’s Eve Eve at the teensy apartment of a man who was, you know, fine. You could say he was way too old to be telling me that a joke I made about Uber was gaslighting him. But he was fine. By the way, I was very brave during that conflict, and only cried when I got home the next morning, and my therapist said that was a win. (Should this paragraph have stayed in the drafts? Oopsie poopsie, too late!)
That night wasn’t all bad though, I introduced him to the acclaimed television show Jury Duty, making that the second time I have introduced a hookup to Jury Duty. If someone has a connect, I will accept any amount of Freebie deems suitable.
In other news: three days after 2024, and almost exactly a year after I posted that first Substack essay about not being able to finish my book…
I finished my book.
What? She what?
You heard me. Well, sort of. Technically, yes. But also no. Please don’t close this tab.
A lot - like, a lot - of rewriting and editing and reworking has to be done, BUT…I, Suzy Weller, have (technically) written three hundred and thirty-three pages (font size 11 and double spaced) of a thing. Is it a good thing? Some parts of it. I can genuinely say that. And hopefully that amount of good parts will only increase!
But oh my god, can we applaud that for a second??
Mainly asking me that, since I haven’t really let myself celebrate yet, even though it was the most agonizing goal I had for last year. It doesn’t have to be ready or good yet, just get it down, would be the mantra I’d tell myself. AND I ACTUALLY DID IT. I’m a Gemini, I don’t think you all realize how huge this is.
In a few months time, I may even be asking one of you - yes, you! - lucky readers to be one of the first to read a draft. How much do you think a friend/colleague/close acquaintance/woman I currently nanny for who teaches a writing class would read? Fifty pages? Seventy-five? Two? Sound down in the comments below.
Since then, I spent a little time not writing at all, but now I’ve slowly begun the process of rewriting in sections. There’s honestly no structure to it, no rhyme or reason. And that’s okay. But I should really maybe do something about that, considering it took me a whole year and a half to write a single draft.
Sometimes I daydream about the book so intensely that I’ve already put myself in a chair across from a desk where the President of Penguin Random House is talking to me. And in some scenarios, he* calls the book perfect, and asks me if half a million is enough. In others, he says he has a hundred other books with the exact same plot and it’s too bad I didn’t pitch this to him two years ago instead of procrastinating like the dumb slut I am. And then I storm out, and write a revenge book about it, and the cycle continues from there.
In reality, the next hurdle to get over is not feeling too terrified to send it to a friend who has at least a fifth grade reading level.
But writing this book, if anything, has shown me a lot about showing up for myself, and what that looks like, and what it feels like to believe in myself, which I don’t think I’ve done for a very long time. And that’s enough to keep me going for right now.
~
*Yes I made the publisher in my fantasy a HE, because I clearly only seek MALE VALIDATION. We’ve gone over this.