Sometimes My Love is Blurry
And sometimes my love is clear.
Hi friends.
On Saturday night, at a party in Miami at a hotel along the waterfront, I arranged my friends so I could take a picture of them. A woman sitting nearby offered to take the photo so I could get in the shot but I politely declined. I have been this a lot lately. I just don’t want to be in the picture anymore.
If I’m in the picture then I don’t get to take it, and then I don’t get to express how I feel about the subject, and it doesn’t end up looking the way I want. Because instead the picture will be through their eyes, the eyes of this stranger. And that wasn’t my intention when I picked up the camera, to have a stranger try to capture the moment. My intention was that I would be the creator of this particular visual memory. I would have the opportunity to shape an image of these people I care about.
“It’s how I express love,” I said, without thinking too hard about it, but then I realized it was true.
Sometimes my love is blurry
When I write about other people—real or fictional alike—it is mostly because I love them or find them interesting although I will admit sometimes I don’t like my subjects. Whatever my feelings about the subject, it is because I want to understand them and process something about them. And because I think they are worth my time.
It is an expression of a desire to communicate something, and I believe that is connected to a kind of hope. If I keep thinking, talking, writing, digging digging digging, maybe I can get somewhere new with myself and my relationships. Maybe I can bring it all into focus somehow.
Why do you write about other people?
Sometimes we think we’re just writing about ourselves but we’re still writing about other people. They’re always going to crowd in around the edges.
When I write about myself here it’s mostly because I hope sharing my process will be helpful, and also because it is a way to hold myself accountable. But also I am writing to you. You are receiving it. I am imagining you on the other side of this.
Do you think about the reader when you write? Do you imagine an audience? Do you write for yourself or do you write for them?
There are days I feel like I could totally never write about myself again and just write novels and I would be fine. That would be enough communication. That would be enough of an expression of hope. But I know I would miss you.
And also, I can never fully escape me. When we’re writing about other people, we’re still writing about ourselves. We crowd in around the edges, too.
Sometimes my love is clear
I’m sensing this vibe that some of you would just like to take a little time to relax for a beat over the long weekend so I’m going to obey that instinct and stay out of your heads until next week.
But we will be back with so many good things though! December is editing month and in January I’ll be doing another Mini 1000 which will be super fun I suspect.
Until then I hope you get everything you need out of this long weekend—
Jami
You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on bluesky and instagram.
I write for my younger self. The one who believed she didn’t have stories worth telling because she wanted to write “unserious” genres. I write for my current self, not just as catharsis from the pressures of my work as a reproductive health lawyer, but as a space to unpack the systems I’m trying to dismantle, the messiness and labor of resistance, and the luminous potential of liberation. I write for people like me—communities with marginalized identities—who deserve to see themselves in fiction.
I’m the stranger always offering to take the photo for you. 😂 No one has ever refused (I say yes if the roles are reversed), so I’ll keep asking, but now will wonder if they said yes just to be polite.
Regarding audience & characters … I’m in the throes of Novel November, closing in on 40K (woot!) & definitely writing for me. The characters are exaggerated variations of family, friends & dogs I love.