On Telling the Truth

A mid-week prompt.

Hi friends.

Hello from where it is gray and cold but not cold cold. I know what that looks like, and this is just a little bit bitter.

This is pulling out the lined coat from the closet but leaving the gloves in the drawer. Extra naps. Soup, sure. Red wine instead of white. A flattening of the hair. Moving a little slower in the morning.

It’s OK. We need the balance. Can’t be sunny days all the time.

So I’ll be back in a few days with a longer letter but I thought this might be a simple but juicy mid-week prompt for everyone.

A few days ago I wrote this note:

So what do you think your truth is exactly? What do you actually know about deep down? What is your personal and specific honest story? It could be in terms of your non-fiction, or it could be just themes you want to explore, but what are the ideas you live with every day, and put your whole heart and body into in an honest way?

I tried this as an exercise in my notebook this morning and I came up with this:

Dealing with (and loving) complicated families, how women are treated (and how they treat each other), American life in all its glory and shame, a certain kind of contemporary Jewishness, a certain kind of fading Gen X horniness, so much emotional messiness, getting old but still feeling young, making a home for yourself wherever you are, loving thy neighbors (appropriately).

I forgot to put the joys of creativity on there! I was immediately thinking about my fiction, but of course what I write here, to you, is entirely about that. And about the life of a writer or really anyone who chooses a kind of unconventional path without any real kind of safety net. It can be scary as hell and messy, too, but it’s real and in the end it has helped me figure out who I am.

What about you? What can you offer up as the truth?

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.