My god the freedom
of remembering you can write about anything, and everything. And must!
I’ve been up since 4 a.m. reading on Substack. I found this incredible writer named Tom Cox who had me shrieking with laughter in my bed, over and over again, tears rolling from the corners of my eyes to my temples.
He reminded me you can write about anything at all. You don’t need to have a be-all, end-all or grand scheme of any kind. You don’t have to analyze your “audience” and try to figure out what they want from you. Or any of that stuff that freezes me to the bone and prevents me from writing for hours, days, weeks, months, and years.
You can write about the apple slice you just bit into that shocked you with its tart-sweet bright crunch with the clarity and brittleness of glass. Then, you can marvel at the fact that this apple came from the bag you brought from Grocery Outlet, the discount grocery down the street you’d sworn off because the food, unfortunately, is too often so bad.
Like the beef I bought the last couple of times. The “New York Steak” like cardboard in both color and consistency no matter how briefly I cook it. The salmon that tastes weirdly powdery, that sort of disintegrates, that has no structure. Disturbing. Or the crackers — the giant tin of crackers you thought was such a great deal that…
