In October 2022, in a dimly lit hotel room that smelled like mold, I decided that I was going to make a pivot and pursue a life as a writer. It was a strange feeling, sitting alone in Frankfurt with a boiling hot espresso and realizing that across the globe somewhere, a life I no longer felt called to pursue was waiting for me, anxiously, to return. That night, I sat there, shaking, and started writing the first words of what would be my debut novel MY TRAIN LEAVES AT THREE.
I first learned the term liminal space from my Dramaturgy Professor Ilana Brownstein at Boston University in 2013. Liminal space, she said, was a place or moment in between one thing and another. It comes from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold. To be in a liminal space is to be partly both while not wholly belonging to either. In my life, I equate liminal space to those few weeks in between drafts, or as my (very cute!!) boyfriend would put it, those few years an artist has to face in between albums. It’s often easier for me to translate big themes into analogies that relate to writing, or books, or music. In that way then, Frankfurt was the beginning of my liminal space. My threshold between one life, and another. My few weeks between drafts. My biggest rewrite yet.
Like any large revision, the place I found myself in riddled me with overwhelm, fear, and anxiety. In writing, and in life apparently, it’s very scary to look down at a page that you thought you perfected and realize that, actually, you have a lot of work to do.
So for the next year and a half after I left Germany and flew back to LA, I woke up at 5 am to write 1,000 words before clocking in to the fluorescent lights of my office at 9 am (on the dot). I remember all of the doubt that ran through my blood, the late nights of answering emails, and the alarm clock waking me up at five to do it all over again. What I remember most though, looking back at this particular rewrite, this wonderfully fortunate liminal space I’d found myself in, was the delusionally optimistic voice that powered me whole, convincing me that I was a writer, no matter what my LinkedIn or Instagram Bio had to say.
In fact, recently, I was looking through a few old morning pages and found this note I’d written to myself. “I’m a writer.” it reads. “I’m a writer. I’m a writer. I’m a writer. I keep saying that so maybe one day I’ll believe it.”
This note makes me think about how easily we can change the definitions of ourselves. Even more so though, it makes me wonder about who gets to slap labels on us, and why we so willingly allow for it. I know it’s not revolutionary, to be asking these questions about how we perceive ourselves in the world, but for me, as an artist, it’s essential. My freedom to create depends on my ability to rewrite my own story. It depends on my willingness to sit uncomfortably in a liminal space. Neither here nor there yet.
For two years, I worked on a novel in the quiet. For two years, I nodded my head to that voice I’d heard in Frankfurt and kept chugging along. For two years, I worked on a plan. All that to say, my liminal space lasted what felt like a really long time. Among these months were multiple corporate bathroom panic attacks, sick days that were full of writing, and wild weeks of joy too, in the life that I knew I’d soon be leaving behind.
When I finally got to the last few pages of my manuscript and could see the horizon of my liminality, I called my mentor who in so many ways has been my saving grace. “You think you’re jumping out of a plane,” she said to me about my decision to leave my job and pursue my art, “but really, once it’s through you’ll realize that it was just stepping off a curb.” It was true. My rewrite was both a free fall and a small step in the right direction.
In my favorite novel, Writers and Lovers, which if you follow me at all you know by now is my bible, King talks about this fabulous idea of an underpainting. The novel’s main character, Casey, is struggling with defining herself amongst the madness of a her adult responsibilities, while shamelessly pursuing a creative writing career.
About herself and her work-in-progress novel she says, “Painters, I told myself, though I know nothing about painting, don’t start at one side of the canvas and work meticulously across to the other side. They create an underpainting, a base of shape, of light and dark. They find the composition slowly, layer after layer. This was only my first layer, I told myself as we turned the corner, the dog pulling toward something ahead, his nails loud on the sidewalk. It’s not supposed to be good or complete. It’s okay that it feels like a liquid not a solid, a vast and spreading goo I can’t manage, I told myself. It’s okay that I’m not sure what’s next, that it might be something unexpected.”
I think I have my underpainting, too, now. It might feel sometimes as though the world I built before is erased, but the truth is, when you hold up my pages to the light, you can still see the pencil marks. All my things are piling, one on top of the next, to make whatever it is I’m becoming. So I’m left now with what feels like the beginning of a blank page. With so much room left to write on top of a solid stack of eraser marks. A good underpainting. A solid rewrite.
Now that I’ve told you a bit about what I’m rewriting, here’s what I’m rereading…
WHEN WE WERE SISTERS by Fatimah Asghar - Since I’ve started reading, I think about the writing in this book all day. All day and all night. I think about how writing is really just an art itself, that in any form, in any adaptation of it, there is time to be creative but really on the page is where it sings most. This book does that. It sings. It sings more than I could ever imagine.If you want to read it too, buy it HERE!
Several times this month, I got lost reading the back of the label for RYZE MATCHA. My dad gifted me a subscription for my birthday and it has ACTUALLY changed my life. I’m not getting paid to say this, but obviously am open to it. The power of magic mushroom matcha.
DYSCALCULIA by Camoghne Felix - UHM? This book holy effing shit????? Camoghne is a lyrical writer who has shown expert storytelling skill and also made me cry on the floor so fucking hard. Buy it HERE!
A letter the IRS sent me - a year ago the IRS sent me a CRAZYYYYY letter saying I owe [redacted] amount of money and it sent me into a spiral of hell. My dad came to the rescue and cleared up this issue (WHICH, LET THE RECORD SHOW WAS THEIR FAULT NOT MINE). A few days ago, they finally sent me a letter admitting their guilt. 365 days of lost sleep later, I’m finally clean. I’ve reread the letter every morning since to remind me of that. P.S. if you’re reading this, your taxes are due.
E.F.’s Fuch’s Visit To A Small Planet - This essay was shown to me by a fellow writer and I live and die by it now. It’s a very practical guide to world building, and dramatic structure. Moving forward, these kind of resources (PDFs, writing process specifics, prompts etc.) will live in my Weekly Writers’ Report for paid subscribers! If you’re interested in hearing more about the nitty gritty of my writing process and engaging in conversation about process and practice on a week-by-week basis, please consider upgrading to paid!
Okay that’s all for now. See you next week!!
I love that idea of underpainting! So encouraging. Thanks for sharing!