How to Not Die of Despair

for writers, for everybody

“…we must learn to be friendly with the quiet, with the version of ourselves that has no notoriety, the version that is just the woman in the red sweater, chopping onions into thin, translucent slices.”

But first! I wrote a tribute last week to the late, great Kris Kristofferson. I saw him in concert a handful of years ago and, while I won’t go so far as to say it changed my life, I will say I wept into my little plastic cup of red wine the whole time. I will say I never quite recovered. Read the whole tribute here, on my Instagram. And let me know—did Kristofferson impact your life in any way?

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“Well, I have this red sweater,” I think, consoling myself as I work my fingernails under the papery peel of a Vidalia.

I take note of the faux-cashmere fabric, take note of how brilliant I feel when I pull it over my head and pull a pair of jeans up over my waist and the two hemispheres brush there, right at my midsection. I think about being thirty-two, and how maybe I’m almost someone three-year-old Dee would be proud to be. Maybe when I’m thirty-three.

I want to check my email again, even though all that wanting is making me sick and I know it. Instead I trim the fat from a slab of red meat and smile because it will make a gorgeous ragù. Yes. I will shred hard, salty parmesan across the top. My knife continues to whittle away the excess, and I see that this is good.

Being a writer is mostly internal work.

There are the outward facing moments—those rare flashes in the pan when an editor says yes after hundreds have said no, or when a reader cries [a kindred spirit, recognized]—but if we live for those alone, we will die in fairly short order.

Because between those dazzling flashes, there are extended periods of not hearing back, of not knowing whether our words matter, of wondering whether we have something or nothing at all. There are the rejections and—worse—the ghostings, and within ourselves we must find a steady sturdy assuredness that can withstand long bouts of silence and humility.