8 Questions for... Kendall Lamb

Touching the Elephant

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Kendall Lamb

is a marine ecologist, an evolutionary biologist, a mother, a housekeeper and a mystic- which means she is great at identifying whales by the shape of their spout, making perfect crustless grilled cheese sandwiches, and folding fitted sheets, all while thinking about what it is we’re doing here. She has yet to publish a single thing, but she’s actively working to remedy that. Her Substack is Touching the Elephant, where she mostly writes about wild animal encounters and ponders questions that she has no answers to.

1. Why Substack?

I recently got a comment from one of my readers, who happens to also be one of my favorite writers, which started with this line: “I often find myself wanting to tell you the first time I teared up during one of your stories. Then I tear up a bunch more and don’t know which moment to highlight.” Writing is such a solitary endeavor- we spill our hearts onto the page to the soundtrack of the music in our earbuds or the crunch of dead leaves under tires outside our houses or the clatter of metal buttons in the dryer in the next room. It can be maddening and mundane and lonely as hell. But here on Substack, we also get to write with the echoes of comments like these ringing in our bodies, and that helps me feel rooted in a landscape much larger than my own isolated little patch of grass.

2. How long did it take you to find your groove?

It took me about five months to figure out that I had a voice worth listening to. I started my newsletter as a way to support a podcast that I was working on, which had a listening audience of about 40 people, most of whom were curious family members. I thought that maybe I could drum up more excitement for that project if I posted interviews in written format. I initially published some really searing and beautiful answers to questions about God and creativity and the nature of the sacred from some of my personal heroes- men and women with books on the NYT bestseller lists, people who had been on tour with Oprah, for God’s sake- who I had no business interviewing. And that was inspiring and humbling, but at some point, I realized that I was hiding behind other people’s words, and I had stories to tell as well. When I stepped out from behind the curtain, and started telling the truth of my own life, my community here on Substack really took off. It turns out, I didn’t need big names to generate excitement- I just needed to show up and write.

3. How has it changed you?

I’ve begun to call myself a writer, which is no small thing. For far too long, I was a person who knew that I could write, and I suspected that I was quite good at it, but mostly I did it inside of my head on the way to work, or staring out the window. I was so afraid to fail at the one thing that really mattered to me that I spent a great deal of time failing at things that weren’t so precious, which drained me of quite a lot of energy. I don’t know if I am failing or succeeding at this thing I am doing here, but at least I am doing it. Come what may, it feels like I’ve taken off an itchy sweater and am walking off into the unknown with the sun on my skin.

4. What mistakes have you made?

Because I am a human being, I sometimes become far too preoccupied with how my writing is being received- whether it’s generating likes and comments and restacks- and this keeps me from being present to the things in life that make my writing actually come alive- sounds and sights and tastes and goosebumps and heartbreak and desire. Even at its best (and I think Substack is a great platform) the internet has a numbing effect on our senses. I can tell when my words have lost the sharp sting of truth when I’m too absorbed in the racket of validation, and I’m constantly working on keeping it dangerously close to the chest.

5. To pay or not to pay?

Oh gosh, I don’t know. We live in a world that tells us to monetize our passions, and I am all for finding a way to get paid to do the thing you love, but putting my words behind a paywall immediately pinches off the flow of creativity for me. I admire people who don’t suffer from this particular stagnation, who can confidently write in this way, but I am not yet one of them. I currently enjoy leaving it all on the table for free. It makes the money that I do receive feel like a gift rather than an obligation, and I’m getting much better at graciously receiving gifts these days.

6. What artistic and technical choices have you made?

I started serializing a memoir about four months ago- I release a chapter each Wednesday- and it’s the most cohesive thing I’ve done with my writing to date. Each piece is centered on an animal encounter I’ve had in the last 20 years, and it spins out from there into all kinds of weaving and meaning-making, and I’m having so much fun with it. I carve out time from mothering and working each week to invoke the muses, and I see what comes up. It feels collaborative and surprising, which is my favorite place to write from.

7. What’s been the effect on your writing?

I’m learning to trust that I’ll have something to say even when I feel like I have absolutely nothing at all to say. I think this surrender is evident in my writing these days, this willingness to be tossed about in the process, to break some rules and let go of precious outcomes. And I know this trust only happens when you keep showing up to the page- bloody and bruised and skeptical- and still, somehow, something comes of it.

8. In it for the long haul?

Hell yes. I’ll write until I have nothing left to say, and I’ll only have nothing left to say when I fall asleep to this brutal, beautiful world we live in. If the apocalypse comes, and there is no one left on the whole planet to read what I write, I’ll pen words to the mushrooms and the cockroaches to keep myself alive.

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