Who Am I If I'm Not Working On a Book?
Hey if you read even a sentence of this, can you go down and heart it because I'm a creature in need of validation and also is anyone reading this? The hearts tell me you did or at least pretended to
When my marriage fell apart spectacularly almost twelve years ago, I definitely felt like a failure. How did I fuck it up so badly with someone I dearly loved? How had we come to hate each other so much that we could barely sit on the couch together and choose a TV show to watch? Was I that impossible to be around? What even were these roles called husband and wife and why didn’t they make any sense to me? Why was I always wandering around Windsor Terrace, BK pushing a stroller while crying quietly?
A person cannot ask these questions too often, if these are indeed your questions.
You may have noticed that heterosexual divorce books are having a moment. This is good! Most marriages are not good for women, and probably men too, but men actually live longer when they’re married so that tells you something.
I feel the need to say lately, hey I wrote a divorce book too. Long ago. It came out in 2019 and was supposed to be huge. By that I mean it had a big print run for a large indie. It wasn’t HUGE, but I’m still very proud of it. It’s called The Not Wives and I think it’s the best book I’ve ever written and will probably ever write because my brain was different then and it tried so hard that it gave itself a nervous breakdown.
Almost every sentence in The Not Wives is really nice and it has an amazing, fastish moving plot with some highesh stakes and three interweaving character arcs that overlap and resolve! It’s also in two points of view—first and third. Sometimes when I look at that book, I don’t know who wrote it. Like where is that woman? God she was a fucking try hard as the teens say.
I love a try hard. I am a try hard. I would like to be a try less.
You can buy The Not Wives in all the places still and I think you’ll enjoy it, especially if you like a juicy divorce book. But mine is not the first divorce book I tell my little lizard brain when it’s feeling sorry for itself. And why do writers have to play this game with ourselves? There will always be something to feel sorry for yourself about if you’re looking. Social media is definitely for the looking and the feeling sorry for oneself. I’m sure my posts have made others feel sorry for themselves. This is why we somehow have to kill social media even though we’re addicts and maybe AI will help with that.
She looks not murdery right? Floating in space holding our collective brain. All good here HAL.
Some divorce books I love:
Anna Karenina, Madam Bovary, Light Years, The Age of Innocence, Ex-Wife, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Portrait of a Lady, You Exist Too Much, Diamonds, and The Neapolitan Quartet.
I especially love the older divorce books that led to the end of your life or a very bleak existence with laudanum in Italy and man whores. It makes divorce these days seem rather banal doesn’t it?
Oh, and I have a debut poetry book coming out in July called Heart Less which is also about divorce and parenting and trying to be an adult in the world. I’m also super excited about Amy Shearn’s Animal Instinct (out in 2025). What divorce books are you loving right now?
The new marriage plot is the divorce plot.
I digress.
As ever.
So be it.
When my marriage fell apart, I pivoted hard to making books and getting them out into the world. My somewhat unconscious reasoning was well, you sucked at wifedom, and you’ve been writing your whole life and trying to publish, so it’s time to stop fucking around. To say I willed those books into existence is probably an understatement. I have written non-stop pretty much since then, and I’ve published five books. I’ve tried to publish far more than five, but such is the writing life. I have two unpublished adult novels, two un-published young adult novels, and probably five un-published poetry manuscripts. I’ve said this many times. It’s kind of a normal amount of books to have not published based on my writer friends and what I’ve read. Or I’m really good at failing and not caring.
I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished and really, really tired. Publishing requires incredible stamina and the ability to digest hundreds if not thousands of rejections. I also feel in some ways I’ve plateaued. Or that I’ve reached a plateau on the climb and I’d like to set up camp here for a while, build a fire, and toast hot dogs and marshmallows.
My last publisher didn’t want my next novel (the editor said it was too commercial, which ha ha on them because nobody commercial wants it either) and I couldn’t get an agent for it either. It’s out with some lovely small presses so fingers crossed, but if I doesn’t find a home, I can live with that. I’ll be sad, but I’ve lived through that sadness before and it’s okay.
I’ve been lucky to get this many books out into the world and have the readers I’ve had. Readers, I love you. Really. You are the best.
Given all of those feelings and realities, this summer, I decided I wouldn’t teach or work on a book. The not teaching is very not good for me financially, but after this year I think I’ll be teaching every summer for a long time to pay for college, so I figured I needed this one off.
I’m not working on any books. It feels really weird and also kinda nice. Some mornings I have panic feelings when I wake up because I’m not supposed to go to my desk and work on THE BOOK. THERE IS NO BOOK RIGHT NOW. NOT EVEN AN IDEA FOR A BOOK. NOT EVEN A DESIRE TO HAVE AN IDEA.
So I wake up and try to think of other things to do. I read. I try to sign up for Pilates and sometimes manage it. I hang with my kid. I talk on the phone. This summer I’m traveling a lot for work, and so I think about my trips. Shanghai has already changed my life, but that’s for another post or maybe a never post because what can I possibly know of Shanghai from one week there? I write in my diary which Amy Shearn (yes she’s my platonic life partner I’m sorry I mention her so much but what can I do?) got me doing. I haven’t had a diary since high school. I really don’t know who I’m writing to, but I let that go, and try to treat it as a friend who needs very messy updates.
Just kidding, I’d never write on lined paper.
The other day I built a bookcase that I had in a box for the last three months and I hung up a bunch of stuff on the walls that I’ve had for over a year. Wow. Things I can do when I’m not writing a book.
I’m trying to date someone in a chill way out of a friendship and not from an app.
I ride my bike. See friends. Naps. I am an epic nap taker. I take so many naps that I made up an alterego for my napping self. If you ask, I’ll tell you her name.
I don’t always know who I am when I’m not writing a book, but I guess I’m just Carley. Not trying to prove her worth to her parents and the world. Not really trying to accomplish much. Floating for one glorious summer.
Working on novels has always felt like having an unsolved murder board in my head that doesn’t even have the yarn or the pins to connect the victims to each other. Who are the victims? Are they even dead? Where do they live? What do they want? Novels are the worst most fascinating puzzles and they take up so much brain space. I have loved them. I hope to return to them, but if I didn’t, maybe that wouldn’t be terrible.
I could make other things like this Tiny Techno album my dearest friend Jason Nunes made by stealing my voice from our audio texts. At first he didn’t tell me and then he did and I found it all very flattering and fun, and he is very good at tricking me into making weird stuff. The songs are short and if you find my voice appealing or just weird or even sexy, you can get the songs on Spotify. I think they might appeal even more if you’ve had a puff or a gummie. Oh, and it looks like Jason even made a playlist to go with the album, so if you don’t like our songs, you can listen to other songs.
Here I am again, always hawking something. When I Goog (stole this from Michelle Tea) hawking, the Cambridge Dictionary warns, “On every street corner there were traders hawking their wares.”
Dude tell me about it.
Enjoy the typos!
xoxo
Carley
I can relate. Since I had children and divorced there was a gap in my allready sparse book production. It was shocking to realize my return to poetry was met with not only disinterest but rejection. It’s out there again now - with smaller publishers, but I don’t know. It felt like a postmodern “the NO of the father” to be rejected - and I don’t want to be part of this patriarchal system anyway, BUT at the same time I DO want to be a writer and I DO indeed want publish more books! First I have to write them
I guess
🌸🌸🌸🌸 I read everything you write on substack!
Dear Carley, I just wanna say that every time I get an email notification from your substack I'm like damn Carley is writing all the time. And every post is necessary. Thank you. I'm traveling but when I get home I will have books of yours to read from the mail. I'm a writer who never writes! I mean I write in my journal everyday but feel nauseated when I think about working on a "project" or a "poem". Last night I dreamt that I was working on a poem -- chiseling into a block of text, making lines breaks, and thinking--oh okay I need to go back to things I've written several years ago--that's how it works! The dream made me want to try a poem today but it makes my stomach turn and my body feel weighted to the floor. Does anyone else experience this? I have a desire to desire writing. I have no desire to write. I do all the other things you mentioned instead of writing basically every day. My debut book of poems came out in May and it took 10 years to write. I don't know how it happened. Anyway, as always thanks for writing all the time and sharing it. Also, I'd never heard of laudanum but it sounds fun!
love,
alex