8 Questions for... Meghan O'Rourke
Meghan O'Rourke's Substack
is the author of the New York Times Bestseller The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness (2022), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction, and named a "Best book of the year" by Time, the Washington Post, The New Yorker, and many others. She is also the author of the memoir The Long Goodbye, a finalist for the Books for a Better Life Award, and three books of poetry, most recently SUN IN DAYS (2017), which was named a top ten poetry book of the year by The New York Times. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, a Front Page award for cultural criticism, and other honors, she writes often for The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and other venues, and was formerly a culture critic for Slate. She is a professor of creative writing at Yale University, and editor of The Yale Review.
1. Why Substack?
I missed having a weekly column and wanted to connect directly with readers! And, mainly, I wanted to take the decades of thinking I'd done about writing, editing, and the technical aspects of craft, as an editor, a teacher, and someone making art, and put it down on the page. I hoped it would help other writers. The Substack is meant to be a space where I can analyze writing and technique and talk about the professional and private aspects of living a writer's life. I wanted it to be concrete, helpful, and also a little delicious to read!
2. How long did it take you to find your groove?
Not sure one ever finds one's groove fully but I've loved doing it from the start! The direct relationship between writer and reader on Substack is unique and hard to find elsewhere in the current marketplace of literature and ideas. I liked that it feels like a cozy warm community--like we're having tea and gossiping and also talking about the issues we face in our work. It's also like a very large classroom, and I love teaching writing. It's one of my favorite things to do.
3. How has it changed you?
Hmm, I don't know! But I think it's made me feel a tad more optimistic. X / Twitter had gotten so grim, people weren't on Facebook much. So to have this space claimed by writers that has so much accessibility and immediacy has been galvanizing and cheering, and helped me with my own current book project.
4. What mistakes have you made?
Oh too many to name. But I think you have to make mistakes to make work. With the Substack, it's been trying to figure out a cadence that is sustainable--I have a job at Yale running The Yale Review, I teach, I have kids, I write, I live with chronic illness—it's a lot.
5. To pay or not to pay?
To pay AND not to pay. Some of my posts are paywalled now, because, as I tell my students, it's important to be paid for your creative work, and I do spend a lot of time writing them. But I make some available to all as I want some to be equally accessible to everyone.
6. What artistic and technical choices have you made?
I think of it as a space where I am speaking directly TO reader rather than writing essays or part of a book. (Writing a book I'm focused on the book and how to realize it, and less so on the reader, although of course the question of how to make a book propulsive and interesting is partly tied to the implicit idea of a reader.) For me, the Substack is primarily a space to share thoughts about craft, so I approach it like letter writing, or writing a lecture. I don't worry too much about the craft of it as I've been writing for 25 years, if you know what I mean; I have an internalized sense of sentence and structure and voice and pace.
7. What’s been the effect on your writing?
I don't know that it's had a direct effect on my writing, but it's made me happier to feel less alone at my desk and be teaching writing to a larger remote audience--a kind of glow of engagement I'm sure I bring back to the book I'm writing.
8. In it for the long haul?
For now, yes! (Ha; but that's all one can ever say.)
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Mad respect for all that Meghan has been able to bring to the community of chronic illness! So grateful for this interview and her voice. It feels especially resonant right now with all the NIH cuts. 🙏✨