Eleanor – This work deserves paper and ink, and it will not be complete until it is been preserved there, but what a gift for your readers (for me) to find it serialized here. Your work is the most sophisticated creative work I've found on Substack. I'm thrilled for you that so many readers "get" you and marvel at your talent. It is getting repetitive to call it out, but all writers, yourself included I'm sure, need to hear it frequently. We have an obligation to keep writers like yourself in targeted motion and not careening.
As much as I marvel at your talent with words, there's something richer for me: I fear your eye. I wouldn't want it trained on me (or my work, for that matter.) You don't massage. You lay bare. You slice. It's intense. It's surgery. It should only be trained on the Good or you will do damage with it. Maybe big gifts are always like that.
This work: You capture something about a class of people in your country that you may not even know you are capturing. I'm familiar enough with this world through marriage to recognize these characters, but not familiar enough to describe them or "see" them properly on my own. You have the proximity and the talent and compassion to share them. They are the water you swim in, so you may not even know what you're creating for outsiders. Undoubtedly, you could manage Ros's time in Santa Monica as well, though.
But, again, the writing: There are descriptive zones you drop into when you write (they are easy to pick out, everything gets still on approach) that are positively Anstrutherian. (My spellchecker informs me that "Anstrutherian" is not a word it recognizes. Give it time.) You are a surgeon of environments, picking things apart object by object in rooms, in cars, in bars, in mental wards, in ponds, and, above all, in kitchens.
I could pick out your writer's voice in a lineup. It is fully mature. Yes, there's always better and more with language, but you have all the tools you need right now to say what you need to say. I'm primarily telling others this right now, Eleanor, if they haven't read you yet. Your job here is to blush with pride and remember that this is true when someone says no to your work and relegates a draft to the dust and empty pens of a desk drawer.
Keep putting it out there. Keep slicing. You have many, many readers on Substack who expect much of you and will hold you accountable to your talent. Stay good.
I've done more than blush with pride, Adam. I've copy pasted it onto a word doc marked "read this when you need reassurance". I've also cried because, you know how it is, those rejections, the terrible feeling of no, the dust and empty pens. Thank you doesn't cover it xx
Eleanor – This work deserves paper and ink, and it will not be complete until it is been preserved there, but what a gift for your readers (for me) to find it serialized here. Your work is the most sophisticated creative work I've found on Substack. I'm thrilled for you that so many readers "get" you and marvel at your talent. It is getting repetitive to call it out, but all writers, yourself included I'm sure, need to hear it frequently. We have an obligation to keep writers like yourself in targeted motion and not careening.
As much as I marvel at your talent with words, there's something richer for me: I fear your eye. I wouldn't want it trained on me (or my work, for that matter.) You don't massage. You lay bare. You slice. It's intense. It's surgery. It should only be trained on the Good or you will do damage with it. Maybe big gifts are always like that.
This work: You capture something about a class of people in your country that you may not even know you are capturing. I'm familiar enough with this world through marriage to recognize these characters, but not familiar enough to describe them or "see" them properly on my own. You have the proximity and the talent and compassion to share them. They are the water you swim in, so you may not even know what you're creating for outsiders. Undoubtedly, you could manage Ros's time in Santa Monica as well, though.
But, again, the writing: There are descriptive zones you drop into when you write (they are easy to pick out, everything gets still on approach) that are positively Anstrutherian. (My spellchecker informs me that "Anstrutherian" is not a word it recognizes. Give it time.) You are a surgeon of environments, picking things apart object by object in rooms, in cars, in bars, in mental wards, in ponds, and, above all, in kitchens.
I could pick out your writer's voice in a lineup. It is fully mature. Yes, there's always better and more with language, but you have all the tools you need right now to say what you need to say. I'm primarily telling others this right now, Eleanor, if they haven't read you yet. Your job here is to blush with pride and remember that this is true when someone says no to your work and relegates a draft to the dust and empty pens of a desk drawer.
Keep putting it out there. Keep slicing. You have many, many readers on Substack who expect much of you and will hold you accountable to your talent. Stay good.
I've done more than blush with pride, Adam. I've copy pasted it onto a word doc marked "read this when you need reassurance". I've also cried because, you know how it is, those rejections, the terrible feeling of no, the dust and empty pens. Thank you doesn't cover it xx
goodie
spooky
⏰
Cannot wait! I love your voice.
Thanks Alicia!