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while i was still unemployed last year the anxiety really fucked with my circadian rhythms, and so on one sleepless night i saw an indie lit mag slide by on my Instagram feed, one of the recent ones in Brooklyn that count themselves among a new underground elite. i doubled back to the post, a call for submissions with a three day deadline, and the part of me that was high on insomnia decided it made sense to sit down with my laptop and scrape away at something i hoped to maybe submit. of course i didn’t meet the deadline, but something about the draft sparked the slightest grasping hint of a memory of a style. my style. the way i used to write.

as recently as December of 2022 my language had both a swiftness and a fluidity to it. i used to write with a very specific rhythm and attention to assonance, consonance, cacophony, alteration, rhyme—i may not be precisely a poet but i would have died before i removed the musicality from my language. i played with excluding expected commas for effect in ways that were technically correct but certainly uncommon, and i wrote colloquially, even conversationally, and in a stream of consciousness that prompted a National Book Award winner to compare my novel in progress to Mrs Dalloway.

language and tone mattered most to me—details were only important if they had something important to say. i didn’t like to describe the color of a character’s eyes or their height or the shape of their face because i was more interested in what their choices communicated about who they were. how did they dress themselves? did they have tattoos? what did they bring with them when they left their home? most of my characters had tattoos and wore carabiners clipped to their belt loops.

but this draft i wrote at 3am was the first thing i wrote in a year that reminded me of how i used to write, and reminded me how much i missed it. i probably finished the draft back in November, and two days ago while organizing my files i came across it. i read it and understood what needed revision. i also understood something else: it was good. or, at least, it could be.

i used to be a good writer. a really good writer. my feelings towards my first experience working (for pay) in an editorial environment remain mixed—i took a job as an editor at a publication in a space that i had ideological qualms with, though i also met people i liked, learned things i otherwise would not have, and did things i could only have done in that place at that time—and it hurts to realize that i dulled my skills and talents for the sake of work i only half believed in when i should have been putting more stock in myself.

even my publications prior to that don’t feel correct. between the time i wrote those stories and essays and the time i accepted the job, i wrote a lot more. none of that work has been ushered outside the confines of a workshop, except for a single live recorded reading. i wrote most of a non-fiction book that combines memoir and film criticism, and most of an autofiction inspired deeply by Eileen Myles’ Chelsea Girls. those are the pieces of writing that produced the best version of myself as an artist.

i used to do more than write. i was an occasional photographer and experimental filmmaker. i drew cartoons sometimes, though i wasn’t good at it. i used to feel very compelled to create in a way that has since sploshed out of me and been sopped up and wrung out.

but this one thing! this piece of writing from when i didn’t have a job! maybe it means i’ve still got something inside me.