I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home

by Jami Attenberg

The writing filled me like nothing else had. But it also poked holes in me, and that was where the sadness came out. I accepted it all as part of the process. Now, nearly twenty years later, I fully understand

I just wanted to be in a better place than I was when I wasn’t writing.

Except it’s all interesting if the emotions are real.

Sometimes we write books to learn how to do something we can use for the next book or the book after that. Sometimes we’re making mistakes so that we can learn how to fix them. Sometimes we’re just practicing. And sometimes we just fuck up and need to move on.

The better questions to ask: What kind of stories should I be telling? What would I be willing to do to make it all work? What do I love about writing? What are the voices that need to be elevated from my world and from outside of my world? What secrets of mine would I be willing to tell? What do I know already? What do I need to learn? Is that a ghost in the shadows or just another person slipping into the night?

No matter where you looked, it was rough. Best not to look.

stories are a beautiful place to hide.

When your soul cries out in the night do you listen? Or do you just roll over and go back to sleep? I’m jealous of the sleepers.

You gotta ask for what you want in this life, a thing my father taught me. A few years later, he

The books we carry with us when we travel become a part of that journey, as much as a special meal we eat, a piece of art we see in a museum, a viewpoint we climb to, so we can look out at the world.

The thing with being a novelist—or really with any creative endeavor—is we have to willingly enter into the not knowing. We have to embrace that fact that there are myriad nuances to be unfolded. Characters we haven’t met yet, actions we haven’t invented. Thousands upon thousands of words waiting to be chosen.

I was born a writer. I knew that I would live with a certain kind of heartache forever, that it had been ingrained in me since birth somehow. But maybe there could be moments where I soothed it.

Where are you going in such a hurry traveler? Pause . . . do not advance your travel, You have no greater concern, Than this one: that on which you focus your sight. Recall how many have passed from this world, Reflect on your similar end, There is good reason to do so,

If only all did the same. Ponder, you so influenced by fate, Among the many concerns of the world, So little do you reflect on death. If by chance you glace at this place, Stop . . . for the sake of your journey, The longer you pause, the further on your journey you will be.

Not me, I am special and unusual. But none of us are special and unusual. Our stories are all the same. It is just how you tell them that makes them worth hearing again.

But there was a lesson I gleaned from all this as a child: it was both OK and not OK to cause a scene. You would get attention, but you could get sent away, too.

Why don’t we have that option? To block what we choose not to see.

I did not know that a book was a reason to live. I did not know that being alive was a reason to live.

To make art is to wake up in a state of craving, a craving to discharge resentment, rage. It’s not a linear progression; it goes like a clock; every day, when you reach a certain spot on the clock, it recurs. It’s a certain rhythm occurring every day. And the making of art has a curative effect. A tension you are under disappears, dramatically.

We must push through the difficulties though, for the ease is awaiting us, and by that, I mean the ease of our hearts, at last, when we know that we are done with our work.

It was the last time she would see her, but she didn’t know that.

But eventually we all have past lives.

There are times we just send out messages into the world and hope they are received with the intention they were sent, but we can’t always count on the attitude or the generosity of the recipient.