An old friend called recently for a commensurably old-fashioned reason: just to say hi. Turns out, Xers still do that. Incorrigible habit we picked up in the analog age, I’m afraid.
We’d grown up together in the Bronx, though she’s lived in New England nearly as long as I’ve been in L.A., and we’ve seldom had occasion to cross paths in the old hometown over the past two decades. Still, we’ve remained close; I regard her in every way as an older sister, indistinguishable from my actual older sisters. She wanted to know how my wife and I were settling into our new home (more on that matter in a forthcoming post), and asked how my various writing projects were going, citing each by title. Few of my friends ever inquire as to my writing (they’ve probably long since reasoned I’d be only too delighted to tell them, in exhaustive detail), and I’d buy the lot a round, with chasers, if even one could reference a single project by name.
This particular friend is a registered nurse who took a professional leave of absence to care for her terminally ailing mother after a prognosis set the woman’s lifespan expectations at perhaps a few months. That was well over two years ago. My friend’s life and career, accordingly, remain on indefinite hold. So, when I asked how she was doing, she sighed and blurted, “Not great.” To be clear: She wasn’t looking to complain, only to confide. I think it helped her, however fleetingly, to have the ear of someone who knows and loves her family as if it was his own, but isn’t directly involved with or affected by its short- and long-term dramas.
The entire conversation stood in stark contrast with an experience I’d had only a week earlier. I was at a backyard barbecue in Jersey—there have been quite a number of those this past August, as it happens—with friends and relatives I hadn’t seen since well before the shutdown, folks I’ve known for at least a quarter century if not the entirety of my life. We’d all just endured the collective trauma of pandemia, and I guess I had a notion in my head that being in each other’s company once again would provide a tangible sensation of catharsis—a renewed appreciation for our shared history; a deeper sense of trust in one another; a tighter grip on the ties that bind; a desire, for lack of a more erudite phrase, to be real. To confide.
Heh. My wife warned me years ago I’m a hopeless Romantic. Well, she was right yet again, because while it was certainly nice to see them, we mostly just talked about the same old shit: the Yankees’ midseason slump; the enduring mystery of why Millennials venerate The Office as the Greatest Sitcom Ever; etcetera, etcetera. I wasn’t asked about my work—I can write about all this publicly with full confidence none of them will ever read it—and I’ve learned to stop asking about theirs; I never get an answer, anyway. And Christ knows no one expressed a candid or unflattering word about how they were feeling. No, everyone just put on a happy face—though many of them didn’t seem particularly happy to me—and a lot of perfectly polite if entirely superficial discourse ensued… just like the good old days.
The difference this time, I suppose, was how attuned I was to the skillful manner by which some of those folks—not all of them, to be perfectly fair—fluidly change the subject the instant a question trips the “too personal” wire. Suddenly, I found myself flashing back on a zillion cocktail conversations over multiple decades and wondering if a piece of information has ever been exchanged that offered even so much as a cursory glimpse at their secret hearts? I don’t think it has, and not for lack of trying on my part. I make it easy for people to open up, if they choose.
About a decade ago, I was a member of a critique group of fledgling screenwriters, some of whom have since gone on to write for shows including The Handmaid’s Tale and WandaVision. We were all young, scrappy, and hungry, meeting every other week at one location or another in Hollywood to share our creative influences and workshop materials, an intensely personal and emotionally intimate enterprise. You grow close to people in short order when you make yourself vulnerable to their criticism of your fiction. There was one guy in the group I liked a lot—he was eminently charismatic—and I had many one-on-ones with him over the years at various industry parties and whenever we’d run into each other on the studio lots.
And yet at some point I realized that for all our confabs, I didn’t know a goddamn thing about him—and not because I hadn’t asked. I didn’t even have a firm sense of how old he was. And he was older than he let on, but he never lied about his age because he didn’t have to, so masterful was he at the art of deflection; he did it so smoothly, I didn’t even register we’d moved on to a new subject before we’d fully concluded the last one. And once I grew savvy to that diversionary trick, I stopped trying to connect with him. I accepted he was a self-made enigma—a man who, for whatever reason, didn’t want to be known. Why he went into writing, then, is anyone’s guess. And a guess it will have to remain, because he’ll never tell.
This summer, I have had multiple joyous opportunities to reconvene with relatives and old friends—at pool parties, or down at the pub at a curbside table for two. And throughout the past season, now drawing to an end, it has become manifestly apparent to me—as never before—that there are basically two types of people in our personal lives: those who let us in, and those who keep us at arm’s-length. To the latter, I guess I’ll just say, Message received. I’ll stop trying. If that’s what you really want—even after a year of social malnourishment—I’ll respect it.
To the former—the friends who take an interest in my life, and who aren’t reluctant to share in good faith their frustrations, their disappointments, and their failures—let me state here on the record how much I appreciate you. And I’ll be happy to tell you that in person, too, next time we meet for drinks. “After all,” as the deceptively wise storyteller-philosopher Augustus Wren once said, “if you can’t share your secrets with your friends, what kind of a friend are you?”
In essence I agree with you, Sean, but with this caveat. You don’t know what’s going on inside those who keep others at arms reach. They may be going through a very vulnerable period due to any number of reasons right now (I think evictions may soon become a huge deal), and the generally wise thing to do in our society is to hide that sort of thing as much as possible. So maybe keep an open mind about letting people back in, is my point. : )
And btw, I love the Rush tie-in. : )
Haha! Thanks! This particular post didn’t lend itself to snazzy visuals, but I needed something to help break up the text, so I included the YouTube link to “Entre Nous,” a great Rush tune that never got much play. Seemed appropriate.
Hey, Cathleen!
Yes, I absolutely concur: Reticence doesn’t necessarily mean aloofness. In all my social interactions — be it an old friend, a clerk at the supermarket, or even a reader who takes time to comment on my blog — I always try to operate from the position that I never really know what’s going on in someone else’s life at a particular moment. And I never interpret someone’s unfriendly mood or perceived restraint as a direct reaction to me (unless I know otherwise with ironclad certainty). A friend gets demoted at work, for instance, he may not want to open up about it in full (or any) detail that morning. I get that — absolutely.
But I have people in my life I’ve known for years — even decades — who’ve never even told me Word One about their jobs, and not because I haven’t asked. They don’t talk about what they do, they don’t talk about their experiences growing up, they don’t discuss their relationship with their parents — nothing. And they certainly don’t put questions of that nature to me. They’re just not interested in sharing those particulars — in us knowing each other in any sort of intimate way. That’s different from someone keeping something personal and/or painful to themselves, which we are all entitled to do. To my view, it’s the difference between intermittent reticence and chronic disinterest.
And here’s the thing: The latter are the folks in our lives who seldom if ever appear aloof or restrained; no, they’re the ones that greet you with a hug and a smile and seem to engage, but it’s only when you play back the discussion in your head that you realize they skillfully avoided any and all personal questions. They just won’t go there with you. They only want to have a superficial relationship in which all conversations are confined to neutral subjects like sports or the weather or what they’ve been binge-watching. With these kinds of friends, it’s not a matter of letting me back in; they’ve never let me in at all. I think that’s a little odd when you’ve known someone for decades — to have never, even once, been real with them.
And they have their reasons for being perennially guarded — probably deep-seated traumatic ones — so I am not without sympathy. I am, I hope, sufficiently sympathetic — to the point that what I’m saying to them here is: I hear you. You’ve set the parameters for the relationship you want to have, and I respect that. I think it’s a deeply sad thing when someone tries to take a genuine interest in your life and you can’t or won’t surrender a little trust to them, but it is what it is. To them I say: We can be arm’s-length friends, if that’s what you want.
Thanks, as always, for weighing in, Cathleen. I wish you a Happy Labor Day and a joyous end to the summer season.
Sean
Another great read, Sean. You always give us personal, thought-provoking insights into your craft and yourself as a man, husband, writer, etc. And I know that you’re more than willing to listen when the frustrations of writing and life get to be too much! Thank you for everything.
Thanks, Jeff! I think writers are people who are inclined — and then trained — to share personal (and often unflattering) details of their lives, so perhaps for that reason I have a hard time relating to the mindset of those who keep their guard up as a matter of practice, particularly in the company of folks who should’ve earned a modicum of their trust after years of close association. But you and I have always been candid with one another, an intimacy for which I am grateful. After all, friends need to look out for each other, and artists need to take care of one another. That’s easier to do when we’re willing to show each other the Real Me.
(And being real doesn’t mean sharing everything. It just means being real.)
I dare say you are arriving at that age when true friends are few and hard to replace–or find. And it only gets worse. But, that’s OK because as you’ve realized–who as time for the superficial type?
I bet your telephone caller (who you opened the post with) had no idea she’d be the theme of a post. But then, maybe she did. I do stay in touch with close friends (mostly family) via phone but almost never the tangential ones. Such is the nature of a life, I think.
I suppose the precarious thing about being friends with a writer, Jacqui, is that you never know when something you said or did might serve as fodder for a published work! (I believe Thomas Wolfe wrote a novel about that very subject, in fact, and I’ll be addressing the question of whether or not we can in fact go home again in a post coming soon.) No, I don’t think my nurse friend had any idea our conversation would inspire this essay, but then, neither did I. I don’t often plan my posts very far in advance; rather, I tend to just write about whatever is on my mind in a given month. And since my summer was spent in large part in the company of friends and relatives I hadn’t seen since before the shutdown, the nature of how friends relate to one another became this post’s thesis. I don’t typically write these kinds of (relatively) short, personal pieces… but this month I felt like it.
For me, it’s not that some of my friends are superficial people, just that they seem to tacitly insist on a superficial relationship with me. And that’s fine. I still consider them friends, I’m simply learning to be okay with the fact that there are limits to the time and interest they’re willing to invest in my life, and I should cap my own emotional investment in their lives at the same amount. And those are the kind of friends we’ll be. It’s not good or bad — it just is what it is. It only deepens my appreciation for the friends I have that want to be a truly meaningful part of my life, like the nurse from New England.
Thanks, Jacqui. Happy Labor Day!
You sound like an introvert, Sean. I wonder if that’s true. My experience of introverts is they’d rather have a few close people who are like blood-brothers or sisters, than a gaggle of acquaintances that only go skin deep. True of me anyway and I’m practically a recluse. I’m glad you connected with an old friend and could tell the difference. It’s all good.
Hey, Diana! I’m honestly not sure if I’m an introvert or extrovert — probably a bit of both. I mostly just consider myself a humanist. I spent many years as a kid working the counter at my local deli and pharmacy and video store in the Bronx, and got very adept at talking to people and being an engaged neighbor. I’m very comfortable chatting up people of all stripes and finding common ground with them, a skill I imagine helps make me an effective climate activist.
I guess that’s why I’m sort of stymied by people with whom I can’t connect — particularly when they are longstanding associations. I think when you try and try and try for years on end to make a personal connection with someone and still it never evolves beyond much more than a superficial rapport, what that person is ultimately telling you is they’re not interested in intimacy. And it has nothing to do with you — it’s a decision they’ve made for themselves.
And the time spent apart from everyone in my life during the quarantine has thrown into harsh relief that I have some friends who are interested, and some who aren’t, and now I have a better sense of how to engage one type over the other. I don’t have to spend energy connecting with those who’ve made it unambiguously clear we’re as close as we’re ever going to get.
I hope you’re safe in Oregon, Diana, what with the terrible wildfires burning through the Tahoe region. I wish you a peaceful end of the summer season and a bountiful harvest to come…
SPC
Your heartfelt article opened up some rather tender (even sore) memories of my past friendships. And I find that what you’ve said about some people simply choosing to keep you (and themselves) at arms length becomes even more true as you get older.
I’m much older than you, nearly 70. But, I still recall the very moment when my best friend from high school, a man I had stayed in touch with for thirty years, always connecting like we had when we were teens, showed me the door. Twenty years later I still don’t know why. Perhaps he’d grown wary of sharing the intimate details of his life, like we used to. Truthfully, I still miss him.
Oh, Dave, I feel your pain, sir. I’ve had dear friendships unravel on me, or become irreversibly poisoned. One of the members of that writers group I mentioned in the post above was a real bro who, for reasons I still don’t comprehend (because it’s never been explained to me), one day wanted nothing more to do with me. He and I started that critique circle together, in fact, and shared many happy occasions — birthdays, weddings, Thanksgivings — and then overnight I was persona non grata. Who knows what happened? I’ve had to learn to let it go.
Around that same time, as fate would have it, an altogether different friendship came to an end, this with a man I consider to be the closest adult friend I’ve ever had. A true blue. A “hetero soulmate”! Haha! (I do know why that one ended, however.) It devastated me. I think about him often and miss him terribly, but I also know there’s no amount of time that can ever heal the wound that keeps us apart. I hope he went on to a happy, successful life — I honestly don’t know where he is now or what he’s doing — and I’ll always regret that I couldn’t be a part of it.
I guess the lesson I take from those bygone friendships I mention here as well as the superficial associations I discuss in the post above is to cherish every friend still in my life who takes an active and engaged role in our relationship. I genuinely appreciate those folks — now more than ever.
And I appreciate you — for sharing a bit of your own secret heart with me here. Thanks for keeping it real.
Sean
Sean, I hear and share the disappointment in your words! Friendships sometimes have an expiration date for all sorts of reasons. I have lost people who I believed to be friends when some set of circumstances caused them to reveal something they didn’t want to share, and the relationship was never again the same. In my younger years I assumed that friendship implied reciprocal support but there have been a number of times I began a relationship as the supportive friend and, somewhere down the line, when I needed some support back, the reaction was “How dare you change the rules on me!” and that friendship was over in the blink of an eye. As you say in your essay, “friend” means different things to different people and different types of friendships are absolutely a thing to be acknowledged.
When you and I met, what is it now, 3 years ago? (before the shutdown of 2019) at a Climate Reality meeting I was instantly comfortable talking to you and instantly interested in who you are and what you do because it was immediately apparent to me that you know how to BE a friend. Because you are genuinely interested in the people you connect to. Not a skill that everybody has.
I realize this transition in your perception of the people who you used to think of as close friends is a bruising one but here is the harsh truth as it was told to me when I once shared my disappointment in the lack of reaction from someone I had thought was part of my inner circle: “Don’t go to the hardware store for bread.”
Hey, Tara!
Thanks for this thoughtful comment!
As I said in my response to Dave above (he is also a trained Climate Reality Leader, by the way, and you should follow him on WordPress), I have certainly had many close friendships in my life that withered for all sorts of reasons: a catastrophic miscommunication, a contentious falling out, a fundamental difference in values I could no longer overlook, or sometimes it’s merely an innocuous change of circumstances (a new job, a move from one place to another) that puts people who were once a daily part of each other’s lives out of touch. It all happens — and all of it has happened to me, at one point or another.
As I once advised my college-age niece who was grappling with the erosion of an important friendship: When we’re young, we assume our friendships are forever. What we learn with age and experience, however, is that most relationships in our lives are of a certain place and time, and aren’t really built to go the distance. That’s okay — that’s perfectly natural. As Stephen King once wrote (in The Body): “It happens. Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant, did you ever notice that?” I am unusually lucky in that I still count among my close friends some of the same guys who were part of my grade-school gang.
What I was mostly addressing in this post are the folks in our lives with whom we feel like we’re close, because we’ve known them for so long and spent so much time together, and yet who perennially keep us at arm’s length — who’ve never really let us get close to them. It isn’t merely that they don’t confide anything meaningful to us; it’s that they don’t express anything more than a superficial interest in our lives. You know? They don’t ask questions of us, because they don’t want those kinds of questions put to them. So they tacitly set the parameters of the relationship by only engaging in conversations about neutral subjects: sports or entertainment or maybe politics (and only that if they’re certain you’re ideologically aligned with them). But nothing personal — ever. It’s a kind of don’t-ask/don’t-tell policy, in which I won’t broach any personal topics with you, and I’ll expect the same in kind, thanks so much.
And while I certainly understand such a polite-conversation-only approach with respect to our transactional relationships (our hairstylist or mechanic or what have you) and our casual acquaintances, I’m baffled by that sort of arm’s-length discretion from people who’ve been an active and/or meaningful part of our lives for years on end. I know quite a number of them, as it happens, and I’ve recently come to accept that what they’re implying through the way they manage our relationship is that they’re only so interested in me. They care — but only to a point. And that’s fine! That’s cool! What I’m saying now is that I’ll reciprocate in kind. I will no longer take an active interest in the lives of people who’ve made it unambiguously clear to me that they don’t value my interest. I mean, I think it’s weird… but I’ll respect it.
With respect to my partners in activism (like yourself): I have found that climate activists are among the most open, thoughtful, approachable people I’ve ever met. Every one of us on the leadership team of the San Fernando Valley Chapter are people with whom I felt an immediate rapport, and who I would trust to have my back in a pinch. Bless you all. Just yesterday, in fact, I had lunch with one of my mentees from last summer’s Global Training — the first time I’ve ever met a mentee in person — and midway through the lunch, we were like old friends. I was instantly comfortable with her (even though it surely helped that we’d corresponded via e-mail on numerous occasions). And I think the reason for this is that anyone who gives something of themselves to a cause like climate change is by definition a compassionate person — someone genuinely interested in the stories and welfare of others. A humanist. And I am blessed to have a disproportionate amount of those folks in my life!
And it’s precisely because of people like you, and like my mentee, that I’m able to see so clearly the friends in my life who’ve placed definite (if implicit) limitations on our friendship. Accordingly, I think I’ll reinvest the energy once spent on them into the friends who want and value my friendship. You’re the kind of people our world needs more of, Tara.
Yours in friendship,
Sean
Personally, I’m a very introverted person, so I don’t tend to get very personal with people unless I’m VERY close with them when it comes to deep life stuff. But I have a wonderful trusting relationship with my colleagues where they know they can share personal issues with me. Still, there’s one person who doesn’t share ANYTHING–like, her dog died and she said nothing, her husband had a heart attack and she said nothing. It made the rest of us feel bad that we couldn’t do anything t help her, but then again maybe she didn’t want our help. Some people are just stoic and want to go it alone. I’m happy that I have a couple of really close friends and some family too that I can share with. And I know it’s not you, because after meeting you, I instantly felt like I could share things with you:-)
So kind of you to say, Suzanne, because I felt an instant rapport with you when we finally met via Zoom over the summer! Perhaps it helped that we’re both candid bloggers, often sharing unflattering facts about ourselves with complete strangers online, and therefore already had a general sense of one another? Who knows. Based on your blogging and our Zoom call, though, I certainly wouldn’t have pegged you as a self-identified introvert.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot since Diana raised the issue above — whether I’m an introvert or extrovert. I don’t know. Normally I’m completely comfortable “categorizing” myself as one thing over another. I’m perfectly fine with labels, reductive though they may be, because they often serve as an accurate shorthand. I’m a democratic socialist. I’m a minimalist. My pronouns are he/him. I’m okay with all of that. But I can’t say with certainty whether I’m an introvert or extrovert.
I’ll say this: I’m extremely comfortable being alone. More than that, even, I crave solitude. I will happily get lost inside my own head for hours. I can’t recall the last time I felt lonely. High school? I can be very introverted, a quality I in no way see as negative despite how it is often positioned as such in our culture. All writers must by introverts to some extent, else how could we spend so much time at a desk by ourselves?
But I can absolutely hold court in a room full of people or “go deep” with someone in a one-on-one. That doesn’t make me uncomfortable, either. I’ve always loved being social, whether it was leading my grammar-school gang on adventures, or making movies with my pals as a teenager, or working the counters of the local deli, pharmacy, and video store as a college student. I love coming out of my shell, too — my creative cocoon — to connect with people.
I guess I’ve quite recently become very sensitive to the fact that there are people in our lives — I know several — who seem perfectly gregarious every time we meet with them, greeting us with a hug and a how-ya-doin and it all seems so comfortable and friendly. These aren’t the type of folks who sit in a corner looking sullen, whose very demeanor discourages social engagement. No, these are the friends you can chat with over multiple drinks, who are always happy to participate in conversation…
… but it’s only when you replay that conversation in your head that you realize they never “go deep”: They never ask or answer questions that are even remotely personal. They keep the discourse entirely superficial. These are the people we think we know, because we’ve had countless long discussions with them over many years of acquaintance, and yet they’ve never shared a meaningful word about their jobs or their parents or their upbringings or the death of their dogs or the heart attack their spouse suffered. They never give you a glimpse of their secret hearts; they skillfully deflect all efforts you might make at getting to know them.
And one of the strategies they use to ward off personal questions is by never asking any of you. It’s a kind of don’t-ask/don’t-tell social compact. And I think what they’re ultimately saying, if only implicitly, is that they’re just not that interested in my life. You know? For whatever reason, they’ve set a limit to how invested they’re willing to be in me, and they don’t respond when I take interest in them. And I’ve simply reached the point where I’m going to show as much interest in their lives moving forward as they show in mine, because that’s the extent of the relationship they want with me. (Incidentally, everyone in my life in this mode seems like a deeply unhappy person. Chicken or the egg?)
Perhaps I’ve also reached an age where I just insist on being real with people, and I expect the same from them. I’m not talking about with my doorman or my dry cleaner; relationships like that only call for being polite, not necessarily being real. But friends and relatives I’ve known for years, if not most of my life? Let’s be real with one another, huh? And as I said to Jeff above, being real doesn’t necessarily mean sharing everything. It only means being real. And if you’re not gonna be real with me, I’m not sure what kind of friends we are. As someone recently said to me: If we’re not sharing, we’re not really showing up. Hear, hear.
Anyway, Suzanne, introvert or not, you are always real — with your readers and with me personally — so let me say here how much I appreciate you.
Sean
I’m out of room to respond to your comment on my blog (I can only stack so many comments in a row), so I thought I’d reply here.
This month I’m writing a short story, cap of 3k (although that’s flexible sometimes). The constraints I’m putting on myself are the Blog Battle prompt word–this month it’s precious–and a prompt from Reedsy, which stated it had to involve a journey. I’m thinking of starting a series of short stories set in a Faerie version of a tavern with human ex-patriots from our world. Probably. Sometimes it changes while I’m writing it. But it’s supposed to be somewhat of an homage to the Gavagan’s Bar classic collection by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt.
You want to write something as well? No worries if the answer’s no. But just to sweeten the deal, I’ll toss in a beta read, as long as a no-nonsense approach to critique isn’t a concern. Just in case that helps. We have another mutual friend who’s an excellent beta reader as well. In my experience, beta reads make the world (and my stories) *much* better. : )
Wow, Cathleen — I appreciate the motivation and inspiration!
Let me give that offer some thought. I really should participate in more writing prompts, if for no other reason than it’s good practice to churn out fiction on a deadline. I can become too focused and too perfectionistic about my long-form fiction. Years ago, when I was still screenwriting, my wife urged me to start a blog — “You have so much to say and you’d be great at it,” she said — but I didn’t want to distract from my “real” work. Time spent blogging, I reasoned, could be time spent working on “meaningful” projects.
Cut to a few years later: My screenwriting career had cratered, and I was trying to make the transition to “author.” I had no online presence, so I got on Twitter and started this blog. Seven years — and over a hundred posts — later, this has been one of the most rewarding creative experiences of my adult life. Short-form nonfiction exercises an entirely different set of intellectual muscles than long-form fiction, and because I’ve committed myself to a monthly blog post, no matter how busy or uninspired I may feel in a given month, I can’t be overly precious about the essays I produce. I do the best I can… and then I publish ’em. For that reason, I know that making time for more flash fiction and writing prompts would be creatively beneficial — in no way a “waste of time.” Let me give it some thought this weekend. (Either way, I’m excited to read your work — about the faerie tavern! Love that idea!)
Only because Diana asked, let me offer an update on my own writing. After I left Hollywood (the industry), I began work on my first horror novel, a prison break–zombie outbreak mashup called Escape from Rikers Island. I shopped the manuscript around to absolutely zero response, then started work on a magical-realism novella called Spex, about a 12-year-old boy who comes into possession of a pair of magically functional “X-ray specs,” and soon begins to see that not everything behind closed doors — or even in plain sight — is quite as it appears. I couldn’t get a damn soul to read that one, either, but I am extremely proud of it and plan to include it in a collection called Saturday-Morning Cartoons.
Last year, during the winter before the shutdown, I began outlining a new horror novel about a municipal animal-control officer whose Upstate New York community is being terrorized by a beast in the woods. My plan was to finish a draft that summer, but the pandemic — as well as some personal developments in my life I’ll be blogging about soon — wrought havoc on my productivity. This past summer, I resumed work on that project, and have the first draft nearly 75% finished. I’m planning for this to be my debut novel, whether it’s published traditionally or independently. Hopefully that will happen in ’22 or early ’23.
Escape from Rikers Island, even though it’s finished, might never see the light of day. Last summer, during the police-brutality protests, I took a hard new look at the action movies I’d loved as a kid and decided I could no longer abide by “hero cop” narratives. And even though EFRI is explicitly critical of the racist policies in our justice system (like Broken Windows in New York), I simply cannot in good conscience put another “heroic cop” story out into the world. I just can’t. I’d rather tells stories about different kinds of (heroic) public servants, like animal-control officers.
So, the short answer is that I have three pieces of fiction in my drawer: an as-yet-incomplete novel, a novella, and a finished novel I (likely) won’t be releasing. I hope the first two on that list will see publication in 2022 or ’23, with more in-development work to follow. I’d spent a few years chasing after literary agents and editors at traditional publishing houses/presses, but have recently come to accept that’s probably a hopeless endeavor, and that I may as well just publish the damn books on my own. I am more than happy to place a bet on myself.
Anyway, such is the current status of my fiction. I can say that I am in one of the most productive periods of my professional life right now, cranking out manuscript pages and blog posts prodigiously, and I plan to release quite a bit of work over the next few years. So, stay tuned!
In the meantime, thank you for the motivating prompt and for the offer to beta-read anything I might write based on it. Yes, I absolutely concur: Honest feedback from an experienced eye is the secret to producing better writing — and cultivating better writers! So, thank you for that; I appreciate you. And kudos again for sharing your own piece of short fiction with us, “Tribute.” Nicely done!
Sean
Hi Sean! Only read this post now and I liked it a lot. Also know quite a few of those people. I think sharing is quite important. If someone keeps you at arms length how will you ever get to know that person for real or know how to treat him if you don’t know much about him. Ps. I enjoy your blog and do read whenever I can.
Thanks, Lena!
We certainly needn’t be an open book with everyone in our lives; not every relationship needs to be — or should be — intimate. That would get exhausting and, ultimately, unmanageable. But every so often I’ll take note of someone I know and marvel at how consistently and/or skillfully that person refrains from sharing anything too personal or being emotionally vulnerable in any way. For whatever reason, they keep their secret hearts locked away. That’s fine; that’s a matter of individual prerogative. It’s only when you’ve known someone decades but never really known them that it occurs to you what a shame that is.
When I look back on my two decades in L.A., I see plenty of times I could’ve been a more involved neighbor or a more open friend, but for all sorts of reasons, I myself stayed at arm’s length. Since returning to New York nearly two years ago, I’ve been better about taking opportunities to be neighborly, to be friendly, and to be open to new people and new experiences. I’m trying to make up for lost time!
Thank you, also, for the kind word about the blog. “Entre Nous” is one of my (exceedingly rare) short posts! LOL! Most of my essays run around 5,000 words, the subject matter can be, to put it mildly, esoteric. So, I am grateful for anyone who takes interest and/or finds value in this ongoing project. I’ve curated links to what I consider to be my highest-value posts on my Start Here page, subdivided into four categories: Narrative Craft, Socially Conscious Storytelling, Commercial Adolescence, and Personal Essays. That’s always a good place to browse for content!
I’m grateful for your support, Lena. Glad to hear you are making progress on your WIP! Keep it up!
Sean
Always a pleasure to leave a kind word! I agree with you, Sean. We don’t need to be an open book with everyone, but it’s nice if someone opens up a little more – especially if one considers that person a friend. I don’t open up easily to other people myself, but when someone gains my trust, I will. It feels good to get to know people. I enjoy your ongoing project.
I’m still keeping up with the WIP. Thank you so much for the support.
Lena
In my forthcoming comparative analysis of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie and TV series, “Into Each Generation a Slayer Is Born,” I will demonstrate how in the face of setbacks and disappointment, Kristy Swanson’s Buffy nonetheless chooses to be more socially open-minded and emotionally vulnerable — she learns to feel more fully and deeply for the trails she’s endured — whereas Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Buffy becomes incrementally closed and callused with experience — she succumbs to emotional numbness.
Such is what I mean when I say, Lena, that the themes we explore in one blog post invariably end up informing later essays. The blog is an intellectual workshop — a place to see what we say so we might better know what we think.