Writing as a "Good Girl"

Why I write, what's shaped my voice, and what I wish for all writers

The first question I see when I open my Substack app is, “What’s on your mind?”

What isn’t on my mind?

The way the butterfly bush outside my window is trembling in the leaves, the steam rising from my hot tea I take as a ritual for writing the way steam only rises in the comic books is on my mind.

The way I want to sit here in my home and write for the rest of my life, taking comfort in warm drinks and baths and books.

That’s a funny question, “What’s on your mind?”

The Mind Map

It brings to my mind an exercise my therapist had me do a long time ago. When we first met, she handed me a picture of a human head and asked me to write or draw on it as if it were my head.

Essentially, I was to draw a mind map of MY mind.

I wish I had a picture to show you, but being a lover of factual accuracy, someone who not only venerates the truth but more so the appearance of being right, I labeled my brain as if it were any brain. I drew the brainstem. I labeled what happened in each cortex. I made a little bridge of the corpus callosum.

She still laughs at that lovingly. “It was the most organized, logical one I’ve ever seen!”

That used to be something I would have been proud of. But the more time I spend unpacking what’s on my mind, the more I realize my mind isn’t concerned with whether a joke is funny - it’s concerned with whether the context for the joke is primarily accurate.

I correct people. A lot.

My biggest idols when I was young were men who prized the ability to be correct over all else.

I wrote about it during a writing workshop in the past year.

How do your perceptions of masculinity and femininity affect your writing practice?

“As a female-bodied writer and as a woman who grew up around a lot of men who fancied themselves influential, I was always prized for saying things were smart or precocious.

My words carried a lot of value in my family when they were the right words and the right things to say.

When I started writing and sharing things that were no longer the right thing to say, I was punished harshly for it by those same men - and the women in the family as well.

In that same vein, I was discouraged at a young age from participating in serious discussions simply by being minimized by the men in my family while being encouraged and rewarded when I was too mature for my age, which was confusing and ultimately reinforced the idea that my job was to be responsible for everyone’s emotions by being wise at the right times, not speaking my mind too loudly, and ultimately safeguarding everyone else’s emotional wellbeing. “

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What a confusing message for a little girl! This was specifically in response to how the aspects of masculine and feminine have influenced my writing practice, and I didn’t get much farther than this. Still, if I had to continue, I’d say they’ve influenced my writing practice like this:

• I’m more worried about how I’m perceived than about the impact I actually leave on others

• I secretly(or perhaps not so secretly) prioritize my work being widely read and widespread rather than being valuable to a select few, even if I’m never famous or influential to many

• I hold back what I really want to say

• I struggle to find a way to be honest and compassionate, and how to know when I’ve found that point — because it’s unlikely anyone else will tell me I’ve struck a balance.

• I constantly worry about how my writing will be received and if I’m writing about the “right” thing

This is a “seat of my pants” post, not a planned and outlined post, but I think what I want to do by putting a combination of freewriting and previously written thoughts into the world is twofold:

Encourage self-reflection

Give every writer permission to write badly or just to write in a way that may not be pleasing.

Let’s break those down a bit.

Encouraging self-reflection

This post started as a reflection on what I’ve come to learn are some fundamental aspects of me. Not because I was born this way but because I learned these behaviors through observation. And maybe it’s a little bit genetic, who’s to say? :p

Those aspects are the desperate need for control and, by extension, the need to be right.

A friend and I are currently spending a year reflecting on death. What we’re afraid of about death, the process of dying, preparing for dying — the whole 9 yards.

We’re currently at a point of being encouraged to reflect on our past actions, our lives up to this point to reconcile our psychological understanding of ourselves and our lives thus far with who we know ourselves to be on a spiritual level.

What underlying emotional state drove your actions? Stephen Levine, the author of A Year to Live, asks.

I have the answer for almost every action I’m not proud of(and some I still am)— the desire to be in control. In control of others, in control of events around me, in control of things I was never meant to be in control of.

Control has always helped me feel safe.

I’ve spent the past year and half learning that, and learning that control isn’t safe; it’s a coping mechanism that keeps me stuck.

So, encouraging self-reflection: I’m not trying to be wise. I spend my life in a near constant state of self-reflection, and I know how agonizing it can be when we are too fixated on our actions and thoughts.

But I also know how much we can miss when we cannot befriend ourselves. When we can’t turn toward our pain and allow it be here. When we aren’t willing to take a flashlight to the dark corners of our hearts — or minds — and find out what’s going on.

Someone once said, be a friend to yourself, and you befriend the world.

And as a poem from the First Free Women reads,

“I have walked the path of friendship //

And I can say without a doubt that it will lead you home.”

Giving writers permission to write badly

Bear with me. This is not the writing advice most come seeking. And to be honest, I have very little creative writing advice to give. I sit down every Sunday and hope something worth reading comes out. But that’s not a guarantee. Nothing in life is guaranteed.

When I restarted my Substack publication, I said I wanted to write. Write a lot, and write badly.

(you can read the full context in this article!)

Some of you may have blinked at that, missed it, skimmed it, or thought it was a typo. It wasn’t.

When we sit down intending to write something other people will want to consume, we write for them.

But when we sit down intending to write for ourselves, we do it for us. We give ourselves permission to be any kind of writer possible. We give ourselves permission to create trash work. We give ourselves permission to write for the sake of writing.

To me, that’s the whole point.

I love that I have loyal subscribers. I do, more than anything.

But my Substack is ultimately a relationship between me and myself put into the world for those who may see a bit of themselves in what I write, and therefore feel less alone.

I am under no illusion everything I write is good, or worth reading. That is not to say I don’t believe in my own capabilities. Simply that writing, for me, is not about some arbitrary measure of good or bad.

It’s about…

Why Do You Write?

Well, I can tell you what it’s about by answering a classic Natalie Goldberg prompt we should revisit together.

Why do you write? She asks. It doesn’t matter, she says. All that matters it that you write. But tell me anyways.

I write because…
I feel better once words are on paper
The weight on my chest feels lighter

I write to empower myself

I write to remember that I have a voice
Even if I can’t use it in all of the ways I want to
And to remember that voice can never be taken from me

I write for my children and my grandchildren
That they may have something to remember me by

I write to take stock of the beauty of life
To document the way the wind chimes sway and the steam rises and the grasses move in the wind
The wonder of this massive space rock we call home
This once in a lifetime chance to be human

I write because I can
Because I must
I’m compelled to

I write because other stories made me feel seen
And I wanted to do the same for others

I write to affirm to myself that I matter
That my stories matter

I write because stories matter 
And if we don’t write them down
We’ll lose them

I write to keep the stories alive
To tell you how much I hate it when my dog barks at seemingly nothing

I write to capture big, magnificent things that cannot be put into words
A child born
A sunset
A sunrise
A tree budding
Dying

And I write to capture the ordinariness of this one life
This life that we seem to forget will end for all of us

The car horns
Traffic
Who will cook tonight?
Mowing the grass
A long flight

The beautiful moments that are so precious 
Yet slip through our fingers like sand

I write to capture them all
I write to slow time down
To be present, 
Here, now

I write because time is speeding up
And I want to remember everything