If you're reading this, I'm scared of you

Why I haven't been able to get it up

I have decided I am going to start writing journal entries on Substack because all of the most annoying people, whose views I should find fundamentally unworthy of respect or consideration, seem to believe it’s the most embarrassing thing in the entire world. Think of this (I am saying to myself) as a sort of exposure therapy for my brand-new fear of producing “worthless” writing that people will find juvenile and self-interested.

I only became conscious of this fear over the last few months, which were preceded by basically a year of trying and failing to “get it up¹” for Independent Literature—something that not too long ago, and for the better part of the last ten years, was basically effortless. Sure, I have had my moments of feeling less enthusiastic about “the scene.”² But those moments were bookended by exciting, prolific periods where I reached new people, found new friends to be inspired by, and overall had a sense of being part of something bigger than myself. Periods including, but not limited to, my time editing Philosophical Idiot, my stint as a regular on the Neutral Spaces site chat, and more recently, my life-rending love affair³ with Misery Tourism et al.

My fundamental experience of being part of the online indie lit cyberwriting alt lit runoff hooba booba whatever-the-fuck-semantic-lines-you-want-to-draw-around-it community has been one of constant evolution, leaning positive. Spaces were built, became load-bearing parts of my social life and identity as a writer, and then disappeared (or disappeared me) for one reason or another, leaving me marooned only for short periods of time before new spaces appeared to take their place.

So, when I found myself once again kind of cold on literature, I didn’t panic at first. This is just that thing that happens between friendlier and more prolific times! It always comes back!

While writing, I checked the Neutral Spaces chat just out of curiosity, and this conversation from 2020 or 2021 somehow had an answer for me. Shoutout to @dnlbly and whoever that Zach Braff person is.

Then, it didn’t, even when I wrote and published a few things and made some new friends and saw new spaces emerging in the ways I had come to expect, so I blamed the fact that I was withdrawing from SSRIs⁴. The chemicals are to blame! Once my brain fully adjusts to the lack of Sertraline, I’ll feel interested in writing again!

But it’s been a year now of very low interest in online literature and even lower output. At some point, I have had to admit that it feels different this time because it is different. There are a lot of contributory factors here that I may eventually write about separately (the mass exodus from Twitter in the last couple of years, the proliferation of Certain Personalities within the scene that have pushed a lot of my favorite people out, my age, my depression, the fact that I and everyone around me has the attention span of a fucking what was I talking about again?…) but the one that alarms me the most is how insecure I seem to have become over a relatively short period of time.

My insecurity is specific and grounded in my overexposure to prescriptive Twitter whining. Every single week I see people criticizing the overabundance of diaristic Substacks and self-narrative in poetry and women writing about all of the sex they’re having, or whatever, and despite the fact that none of these are really my bag⁵, I have allowed this to entirely kill my self-esteem.

I am not afraid my writing will be bad. I am not even afraid, necessarily, of people not liking my writing. I am afraid of people not thinking my writing “counts” as writing. I am afraid of people seeing that I have written yet another poem about my “fee-fees,” or whatever, and writing my work off as self-interested slop lacking the discipline and attention to craft of Actual Literature, so I don’t write poems. I am terrified of how many people are going to see that I’ve posted a Substack essay “about myself” and roll their eyes without reading it, so I have written multiple posts to this effect over the last ~6 months that I haven’t been able to stomach finishing. (This one is especially nuts because I’ve written about this topic before on this very Substack, and back then I was a lot less insecure about it!)

I imagine myself existing, the way I used to, as a prolific contributor to this whatever-you-want-to-call-it Independent Literature scene, and immediately being smugly written off in umpteen group chats as a narcissistic, annoying woman, and it makes me not want to exist. So I don’t.

I am very upset at myself for letting things get to this point, because I am a person who believes very strongly in the value of self-narrative. Not to be flippant about something better reserved for some kind of manifesto, but I happen believe that self-interest in literature is kind of the One True Transgression⁶. If you pick up the copy of Thumbsucker you bought in 2024 and didn’t read, it will be obvious to you that the person who wrote that book is not terrified of seeming cringe or juvenile. The person who wrote that book reveled in being seen that way because they understood that a person’s revulsion to watching someone figure themselves out in public is often a projection of the same insecurity that I feel right now. How do I find my way back to that person? Is it as simple as just deciding not to give a fuck again?

Honestly, I have basically no idea if this post is any good or will resonate⁷ with anyone in any way. I am going to hit publish in a few minutes and try not to be too precious about it. Then, I am going to sit on the couch and play a video game and try to feel good about myself for having written and posted something that meant something to me. I am going to pretend that it’s enough until one day, hopefully very soon, it is actually enough again.

More food for thought, and by “thought” I mean my paralyzing insecurity, provided by Neutral Spaces chat c. 2021.

1. And it really is a loss of libido, in the psychoanalytic sense!

2. For example, in 2018/2019-ish, everyone I knew seemed to be getting involved with a certain magazine/small press whose editor I had gotten into some kind of political tiff with and who had said something really humiliating to me publicly on the timeline. I refused to acknowledge anything this press published because my public falling-out with the editor had been so wounding to my ego and the right-wing dogwhistling I felt they were engaging in made me extremely uncomfortable. This self-imposed isolation also earned me a reputation as a kind of shrill “woke” personality in indie lit, which in turn left me feeling skeptical of and preemptively rejected by so many people who otherwise could have been friends or positive influences on my work. Later, like six years later, I ended up having a real-life conversation with this editor that squashed what remained of this intimidation-cum-animosity in minutes. There’s a lesson there, or there would be if I were interested in learning one.

3. He he ha ha.

4. Even though that’s supposed to make it easier to get it up.

5. That is, until I hit “publish” on this diaristic Substack post! Or until I fuck next, whichever comes first.

6. Or “OTT”… sychronicities.

7. This may be another thing that is better suited for some kind of manifesto, but I feel like at some point along the way, it became cringe to say something “resonates” or to care about one’s art “resonating.” Will have to think about this some more.