The sentences that save you
Ambition, failure, & a thought on letting go
In my 20s, I planned on writing a book a year. The math checked out: at a meager one page a day, for 365 days, I’d have it done. I wanted to write novels. More specifically, I wanted to be a writer of place, namely my home place in rural Indiana, where as a boy I’d fished Wildcat Creek with my dad and, later, as a teenager, spent six summers on corn detasseling crews.
Everything I’d seen growing up, the violence and beauty—I wanted to hold it up like an offering. Here, imaginary reader, I salvaged this for you. All I asked in exchange was to finally feel seen.
I did not know—did not, did not, did not—that nothing satisfies a desire like that. Not publication. Not awards or praise. Not crafting a fully realized literary masterpiece. There’s always the next thing. Then the thing after that. The part of me that wrote in order to be seen was like one of those hungry ghosts from Buddhist lore, the ones with enormous bellies but tiny little mouths with which to feed. Even if I somehow managed to give it a book a year, it wouldn’t have been enough.
When my life fell apart, sentences are what put it back together.
Not that I ever got close to a book a year. I spent 3 years on my first novel, a work of auto-fiction about corn detasseling. And I spent the next 7 on a novel loosely based upon my grandfather’s appearance on the cover of LIFE Magazine in 1942, a story I wrote about for Longreads in 2018. Despite my best efforts, both books failed. For one thing, I didn’t know what I was doing. For another—a detail my incompetence at novel writing deftly kept hidden from me—I didn’t know myself well enough to write a novel. I couldn’t answer the big Aristotelian questions: Who are you writing for? Who are you writing as? In whose interest are you writing? I had only that gnawing hunger to be seen and a love for language.
In addition to hours and hours at my writing desk, it took leaving my home place in Indiana—and my dream of being its poet king—before I ever wrote something true. It took giving up on writing a book a year. It took forgiving myself: 1) the folly of such youthful ambition; and 2) the idea that I might cure my broken-hearted loneliness through literary stardom. Forgive, forgive, forgive. And let go. And when my son was born with a mystery ailment in 2009 and spent the next three years screaming and crying out in pain…and when my wife and I both lost work in the Great Recession…and when we moved from Nebraska to Massachusetts after I lucked into a 4-4 college teaching job…and after my writing feel to the bottom of a very long list of greater priorities…only then did my work become truly necessary. In those years, I wrote to survive. Not to heal some old wound but to breathe in the present moment. To keep my head above water.
In the end, the 10 years I burned on failed novels served me well—because, if nothing else, I knew how to write sentences. When my life fell apart, sentences are what put it back together. Their rhythms helped me make sense of the chaos around me. They brought me images and insights.
I felt the satisfaction of reading a well-made sentence—one no one else had ever heard before—out loud.
I did not write a book this year. I wrote only a handful of essays and stories, and of that handful a mere three made it to publication. But I wouldn’t trade those three finished works for a book, or for any other outward marker of success. What matters is that they exist when they easily might not have. What matters is that they are pieces of me, spirit made flesh. I no longer write to be seen. I write so that in my stories other people—other lonely people—might see themselves. Might see how we are all connected through our heartache, our laughter, our memories. Might find the courage to live to fight another day.
It’s such a fucking privilege to have arrived at this moment in my life and career. Here are my three pieces from 2024, for those who might have missed them. I hope you find something in them that helps with the hurt.
“The Wanting” - a flash fiction about suicidal ideation and parenthood that won Wigleaf’s Mythic Picnic Story Prize.
“Yellow Band” - a long form essay about my autism diagnosis (and the giving up of my second novel), which was one of The Yale Review’s top ten most-read online articles of 2024.
and lastly
“As a Writer, You Can Never Collect Too Many Endings” - a hybrid/personal/craft essay about endings in Literary Hub.
And of course 10 weeks ago, I started this newsletter…which (so far, so good!) I’ve been sending out on Sunday nights. I’ve loved the freedom of following my thoughts here, and I’m grateful to the 300 or so of you who have joined me so far! If you find my writing valuable, please share away! I’m eternally grateful.
And if you’re interested in taking a virtual class with me on Saturdays this January, there are three spots left in my Rediscovering Your Story workshop at Larksong Writers Place. This is a beautiful gathering of new and experienced writers capped at 12 so everyone has a chance to speak and be heard.
In the meantime, wishing you all the best with your own writing. Be patient with yourself and your circumstances. Be fierce.
The world needs you.
There is so much relatable material in this article. I’m glad to have found you and look forward to reading more of your work.
So much of this post resonates with me. I failed first as a poet, then as a fiction writer. I veered into academia and that kind of writing with its paragraphs as stiff as steel beams. But I kept coming back to the sentence and how sometimes it's enough to craft one that hooks onto things in an interesting way.