"Writers Don't Read, They Write"

Bargain Bin No. 18 - We're all working on our Zombie Novel, in a way.

Is having a boyfriend embarrassing? Are men who drink matcha lattes embarrassing? Maybe! But so what? That’s not going to stop literally anybody. Loads of stuff is embarrassing and yet people still do it, even if they probably oughtn’t. There’s loads of people, for instance, who haven’t read a book since they graduated high-school, and who nevertheless one day think to themselves ‘the things that I say are really interesting to me and my bros and thus likely to other people, we should order a microphone set from Amazon for $99 and start a podcast’. Embarrassing! But there are no signs of this pattern of behaviour abating. Loads of other people spend long hours, trawling the basements of gross bars for polite applause, drinking cheap liquor or beer because they’re so fucking embarrassed that they’re about to get on stage and play acoustic guitar singer-songwriter Vance Joy-core ass music about some girl they met backpacking in Bali when they were 21 or whatever. And yet…

This very site, Substack.com, is an edifice of embarrassment. Being a writer, particularly in this cultural moment, is embarrassing! First of all, nobody is reading anymore. You are talking to a room full of people quietly filing out the door. Those who are reading are basically only reading dragon porn and re-skinned Harry Potter fanfic, so – either you think your prose is just so fucking elegant, your style so vibrant and your commentary so lucid, that the precious few resources left in the world of publishing ought to be spent on you, or you’re writing dragon porn! Which one of these guys do you wanna be?

The degree to which being a ‘writer’ is embarrassing, varies in part depending on who you are, to be fair. If you’re a capital W capital M White Man, it is particularly embarrassing. You probably really like fucking American transcendentalism, Pynchon and Bukowski you absolute DORK!

I know this to be true. Because I am a writer. But also, as with so many things that I know, I know it to be true because I saw it on television and in the movies.

I have a list numbering dozens of examples, like, for instance, Nick Miller from New Girl

The curmodgeonly charms of Jake Johnsson (who, by the way, was born to be a leading man in romantic comedies raking in hundreds of millions; in a version of Hollywood that was even remotely just and competent, this man would be the Hugh Grant for America in the 2010’s - I DIGRESS) couldn’t even obscure the fact that Nick Miller being a writer makes him… kind of a bum.

‘The dumbest boy in school’

‘An agoraphobic, turtle-faced, borderline alcoholic’

‘A child’

these are the words used to describe Nick, by his friends.

The idea that he’s 'working on a zombie novel’ (titled Z is for Zombie) is a running joke throughout the first several seasons and serves to aid the characterisation of Nick as someone who has 0 sense of direction, a guy with ‘Big Ideas’ who lacks the drive or frankly competence to ever express them. Later on, it even turns out that his big idea is actually just a beat for beat ripoff of Twilight, but with the undead.

The writers looked at this man, unshaven, in a stained hoodie, law-school dropout, working as a part time bartender in a perpetually empty dive bar in his mid 30’s, his only friends his roommates, a misanthrope, and they thought ‘how else can we make it clear to audiences that this is a guy who you wouldn’t want to introduce to your coworkers. He is not fit for polite society. He’s embarrasing’ and to efficiently convey this to the audience they decided to have him be a writer.

There’s Jughead Jones from Netflix’s Riverdale

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m weird. I’m a weirdo. I don’t fit in, and I don’t want to fit in.”

This is how Jughead describes himself. That’s one of the corniest things I’ve ever heard in my life. This guy is an absolute prototypical adolescent edgelord. He fits very neatly into the ‘lit bro’ archetype and is supposedly writing his very own ‘In Cold Blood’. Aight bro.

Hannah Horvath from GIRLS is broke, in love with her deranged and emotionally unavailable situationship. Even Hannah’s parents think she needs to get it the fuck together.

And of course, who could ignore thee Gossip Girl, in Gossip Girl, Dan Humphrey.

A thing about Dan is that he wrote a poem called ‘Sluts’ about his ex (???) and got it published in the New Yorker which arguably does make him the most successful writer on this list. (At least in the book version). But it would not be unreasonable, given the circles he runs in, to assume that this was an act of nepotism. His dad’s in the entertainment industry and all his friends are oozing money and influence.

This guy’s whole shtick is that he doesn’t fit in at his fancy Manhattan private school (spoiler, this isn’t even true, unless ‘not fitting in’ means the same thing as ‘being best friends with all the most popular kids at school and dating Blake Lively’) because his family ‘only’ lives in a massive Brooklyn loft, subsisting off the meagre scraps from his father’s days as a world renowned musician/rockstar? Okiedokie bud.

Now, remember, these are fictional writers. This means that by definition they were written. The authors of these figures have first hand knowledge of just how absolutely cringe the act of putting down ink on a page is and they decided this is how their ilk should be presented on screen.

So?

Ok but like why though? I don’t know, I’m sorry. If that’s why you hit open on this link (or email, if that’s how you get these dispatches), then I will have to let you down. The mechanisms by which that feeling arises that makes you feel like you’re shriveling up into a little hot blushing raisin of concentrated cringe are unclear to me, if I understood them I would be applying them to my own lived experiences and probably not writing about it online. As I’ve gotten older I’ve also gotten a lot less self conscious, and consequently I am free enough from embarrassment to share with you that I do still get quite embarrassed.

I would guess, however, that the reason why writing feels so embarrassing is in part because of the low barrier to entry. This is the answer to a lot of mysteries about writing, I think, such as why people pay so poorly for it. Since almost everybody can write, everyone sort of thinks they can write well. That also means that in all likelihood a lot of us have experienced the phenomenon where someone who can write, but by no means has put in the time or effort to practice writing well, has shared an attempt at writing which was… well, embarrassingly bad. And who’s to say, when you produce a piece of writing from behind the veil of ignorance, that you aren’t just like that person. I mean, they didn’t realise that what they were sharing was bad, clearly, perhaps you are just as deluded, perhaps you too have stepped into the trap of thinking that just because you can write, people will want to read what you’ve written?

All of the characters above have very high opinions of their own inner world and the way they think about things. And the juxtaposition between that confidence, and their lack of success is what is, in the case of Nick or Hannah intentionally comedic and in the case of Jughead and Dan, unintentionally comedic as well as off-putting. That same disconnect, I think, is what people perceive as embarrassing when it comes to being a writer.

And yet, these freaks persist, and perhaps that is the more important lesson to draw from these fictional depictions. Lean into the humiliation of it all, and maybe gradually you master your craft and the writing becomes good, or maybe you find yourself swimming against a current that eventually sweeps you off somewhere you weren’t trying to get to, but you don’t much mind. Either way, maybe being embarrassed is the buy in, and you need to put money on the table if you want to play.

Much like reading books in public, heterosexual love, or whatever other thing we’ve decided is now cheesy, cliche or just aesthetically unbecoming – there is still something about writing, the verb, which is seductive enough for people to throw caution to the wind, to embrace wholeheartedly the reputational damage and humiliation that comes from being a writer. When I tell people I’m a writer, it is typically quickly chased by some sort of qualifying statement, or self-effacing quip. Perhaps even a change of topic. But maybe that’s a me problem. I saw three beautiful women stare their boyfriends dead in the eye this year and swear infront of the world they’d love them forever, and a dude at the coffee shop the other day was so engrossed in Outline by Rachel Cusk he didn’t even notice that he had food on his face, (which is suboptimal for peacocking in front of women who you’re trying to impress). And you read this far. So maybe it’s fine if it’s embarrassing.