I'm a "Worried Optimist" - What Are You?
It takes courage, and a fair dose of lunacy, to be a writer
Hello new friends! You’re reading a monthly newsletter called The Curious Kat, in which I seek to inspire and create community by sharing ideas about creativity. I write about books, movies, art (sometimes music, too) and my own publishing experiences. Welcome!
It's a good day to be
A good day for me
A good day to see my favorite colors, colors
My sisters and my brothers
They see 'em like no other
All my favorite colors
Are you superstitious?
When my first novel went out on submission many moons ago, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne had just rocketed to the bestseller lists. It’s based on a belief in the pseudoscientific “law of attraction,” which claims that our thoughts can influence objective circumstances within our lives1.
I remember desperately, and I mean desperately, trying to only think good thoughts.
The idea that my own uncertainty might doom me was more than I could countenance.
Much as I tried to be a good girl and think only positive things, it did not work. We experienced a global recession and my novel did not sell, instead languishing unread in a drawer. That is until I got a two-book deal for The Forgotten Hours and POOF like a genie, that novel-in-a-drawer got a chance to be resuscitated.
I tell this story often when I teach (hello new subscribers!) because I hope it helps students believe in the power of resilience, flexibility, and patience: I had just a meager few hours to write a killer one-page synopsis that would convince my new editor to agree to publish it as my second novel.
I made it happen (and then I rewrote the book). But I made it happen through hard work, not positive thinking.
And now I’m going on submission again. On the outside I’m chill. But to be honest, I AM actually a teeny bit superstitious. This month I was going to publish a piece about a professional challenge I faced recently and instead—
—instead I want to put out only GOOD VIBES!
Instead I want to urge you all to THINK GOOD THOUGHTS about my prospects. I have worked hard and written what I think is a rollicking good read, but a little positive thinking can’t hurt, right?
I’m a “worried optimist”
I was in Miami for a few days, working remotely and supporting my husband at his biggest event of the year for his company Zero100. Yesterday, I got to listen to him interviewing Tony Blair, the former UK Prime Minister about AI and globalism, among other things.
It was sobering and illuminating. Blair ended the interview by saying he’s a “worried optimist.” I now claim that as my new descriptor.
(Another quick anecdote: if David Cameron, also a former UK Prime Minster, hadn’t screwed things up so badly with Brexit, HE might have been invited to the conference instead of Blair. And I’d have been like, “Hey Dave, remember me?” We were undergrads at Brasenose College, Oxford together, and I’m pretty confident he’d remember me as “the American Girl” - though technically, I was actually the German girl, but with an American accent.)
Meanwhile, in my day job…
With the seminar and workshops finished, I’m starting all over again, preparing for next January. One of the first things I do is invite faculty to teach here in Key West for a week.
My first year on the job, I invited Christopher Castellani to come teach; 15 years ago he’d been generous enough to offer me my first ever teaching gig at GrubStreet in Boston. I’ve long loved Francine Prose (her novel A Changed Man is brilliant) and was thrilled when she came. One of my favorite novels of all time is Sparta, by Roxana Robinson — I invited her and she came, too! Claire Messud! Luis Alberto Urrea! We’ll also be hosting Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of the heartbreaking novel Chain Gang All Stars.
This year, Andre Dubus III agreed to teach in my program. His novel The House of Sand and Fog is genius and ranks among my ten favorite books. Really, it is so good, and newly relevant.
Come join us in Key West?
I was looking for nonfiction writers to invite, and I came across Leslie Jamison’s article “The Birth of My Daughter, the Death of My Marriage” in the New Yorker (she’s the author of The Empathy Exams). This article stopped me in my tracks.
THIS is what great nonfiction writing looks like. THIS is brilliant. (Below is a pdf of the article, if you want to read it).
The power of attraction
And friends, don’t forget to wish me luck — every good thought heading in my direction counts. I send thanks your way!
paraphrased from Wikipedia
I'm a big fan of Leslie Jamison's writing ever since I read her Empathy papers. Also, love House of Sand and Fog, and enjoyed meeting Andre Dubus at the recent Writers in Paradise conference. A gifted teacher and generous man.
I believe the Yiddish proverb, "Tracht Gut Vet Zein Gut" Think good, it will be good" predates "The Secret" by a long shot. :) I'm sending out good thoughts on your behalf from the Boston front!
Thanks for this thought-provoking read! I really enjoyed the music at the beginning and the Leslie Jamison piece. The story makes you feel as if she's unravelling something behind the events, to reach a new level of understanding. She had so much insight about everything that was happening, and such welcome honesty about herself, that I somehow expected her to wrap it up in a neat bow at the end with a new solution. I was a bit disappointed at the end because it felt a little abrupt, as if I'd fallen off of a really good ski lift while enjoying the ride. The storytelling was also so vivid that I didn't want it to end. It really feels like a "chosen" story, as the best fiction does, with every word lovingly chosen, every image carefully framed . I look forward to seeing other examples of her work.
As for the power of good attitudes or superstitions, they may not always have a purely rational justification, but they still seem to work sometimes! That may be why many people never quite give them up. Taylor Swift springs to mind. She swears by the number 13 -- her "lucky number" and also the day of her birthday. It pops up everywhere in her success story. Yet she never leaves everything up to that number alone; she puts in lots of hard work., like you. For people who do that, "thinking good thoughts" probably helps.
When things don't work out somehow, we can consider the possibility that everything happens for a reason, even if we can't see it at the time, as with your pandemic book. Perhaps it was "meant" to be born with the momentum of the one that came after. The Leslie Jamison piece might be even be pointing implicitly toward a point of view like that. I feel as if the story of her experience is driven by something authentic within herself, which may not fit within everyone else's idea of how life should unfold. It sounds as if eventually, she just had to be true to that, instead of all the norms she had been trying to live up to, about when/why to marry, or how to stay in her marriage, sell her book, and become a truly "perfect" mother. Instead, because of who she is, she found she needed to move forward according to her heart.
Hopefully your new book is doing that too, following its natural momentum and coming out at its own best time, now. From being in your classes I get the sense that you probably think "good thoughts" as part of breathing, but you do also ground the big picture with useful realism. That's the best way! Thanks for sharing the wonderful quilt of reflection in this piece.