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

by Jami Attenberg

The solution was to write my way out of the problem. That meant writing early in the morning, late at night, and on weekends. It meant carving out time, claiming it for myself. I thought: I will write this first book, and then maybe another after that. This is the thing I want to do.

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.

The safety of a sentence. The sensation when I push and play with the words is the most pure I will ever feel. The calm space of my mind. I curl up in it. I love when sentences nudge up against each other, when I notice a word out of order and then put it in its correct spot. I can nearly hear a click when I slot it into place. I love making a sentence more powerful, more dramatic or moving or sad. Or when I make a sentence quiet enough that I can almost hear the sound of my own breath. More than anything, I love when a sentence makes me laugh.

What is that thrill, when you give the right book to the right person? What psychological button does it press?

But I had only gotten a taste of the life without restraint. Ruined by freedom and choice and opportunity. Ruined forever.

What are our possessions but an extension of our aesthetics? Comfort, ease, safety. Those were not part of my aesthetics.

A great lesson: When someone tells you not to bother dreaming, they’re not on your side.

What does housing instability do to a person? How does it alter them?

How grateful women are sometimes when men simply back the hell off.

In fact, we receive so much from other writers when they show us how it’s done. When they position a character’s heart directly on the page for us, when they’re inventive in form or structure, or emotionally true in a way that feels radical in its familiarity. Or when their sentences are so crisp as to be nearly audible, like a piece of paper torn in two—all of this shows us how to do it ourselves, how it’s possible, but also it emboldens us, releases us from our fears about our own work. An encouragement by example. We learn from them, but also, they tell us we can. Without even knowing it. Enter here. Start here. Begin now. This is why it’s always important to be reading. This is why we must always chew on the words of others. It’s nutrition. Eat your dinner.

A tiny, boring suburb interesting to no one. Except it’s all interesting if the emotions are real.

Sometimes we make art in the moment in relation to a trauma, when we need to make art about it in retrospect instead. Certainly, there is something to be said for the purity of the instant response, that flash of hot fire and emotion. But what if we let time pass, looking at an incident in the rearview mirror rather than at the moment of impact? We can wave goodbye to it, but still see it so clearly, captured in a pristine reflection. And what do we gain? Perspective, wisdom, and perhaps not acceptance—some things do not deserve to be accepted, after all—but at least a sense of calm. And then, perhaps, we’ll be ready to tell a more fully realized version of the story.

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.

books that comforted me at that time. I was never truly alone when I had those books.

It was just so hard not to notice things. I could never shut off my general state of awareness.

Do you know this continuous tension of needing and not needing people? Knowing they’re nearby, happy they’re there, but wishing them away, too. They were on the shore, where they belonged. And I was motionless, I was one with the ocean.

To view things through another’s gaze as it applies to my own flesh is exhausting. Can you imagine viewing everything in your life through two sets of eyes? Yet surely, I have viewed myself through thousands of sets of eyes in my life. Without even knowing it.

was only ever going to have this body forever. Life was too short not to have radical acceptance of my body. And who am I to hide or ignore this flesh when there are so many fighting all over the world for control of women’s bodies? And who am I to ignore this body when it is still healthy and strong? And who am I to deny myself the comfort of the sun against my stomach, or the way the ocean feels on my skin when it surrounds nearly all of me?

Where you are both sad and alive at the same time because this is music, after all, this is a city of music. Where people drink and dance when people die.

There was wind that day, and it rustled the skirts of the women in attendance.

nearly no one is good enough, it has to do with how much work you put in, your diligence, your persistence, some fortune, some luck. And I suppose it has to be with your willingness to imagine things that aren’t there.

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?

But those possibilities were thrilling to me. It was the same as dangling my pen over the first blank page of a journal. A whole unknown world. I wanted a life of knowing the unknown. I started to look everywhere for more than what was right in front of me.

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.

For me, the best way to get to know a city is the same as with a human being: learn both the flaws and the charms. I cannot fully love something until I know both.

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or how to do it or what it would mean for me to start over again; I just knew it was time to go.

Thousands upon thousands of words waiting to be chosen.

I love the idea of solitude being a gift. I think we can be afraid of being lonely, but if you figure out a way to own it and see it as a treasure and a pleasure and a joy, then it can be quite comforting. I have a place to go in my head that’s just my place, and no one ever gets to that place. I value that alone time so much. I wouldn’t be able to be me without 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.

It already felt like work. Watching her speak. Watching everyone else speak. Feeling every feeling. I would have preferred to walk away from it all, but I feel responsible to this woman, to hear her truth.

But I had arrived at a moment in my life where I recognized I should have curiosity about everything. I wanted a perspective shift. I wanted to be somewhere unfamiliar. I wanted that feeling that comes with a lack of fluency in a language, where you are forced to converse with yourself, befriend yourself, know yourself.