How to sit down
January 12, 2025 4:07 AM   Subscribe

"If you have taken on a complex subject and try to engage with it too soon, the writing will be off, with a hard, raw tang. That applies to matter that hasn’t yet been fully digested, and includes subjects, like your childhood if it’s recent or your social scene if you’re in the middle of it, that might need years or decades of marinating; much depends on individual temperament." Author, chronicler, critic and essayist Lucy Sante is writing about writing [substack].

Widely known for Low Life, The Other Paris and countless critical essays (some collected in Kill All Your Darlings, Pieces 1990-2005), in 2024 Sante published 'I Heard Her Call My Name', a memoir of her transition. Profile piece and extract in the Guardian here. Interview about the book with Juliet Jacques here (LRB bookshop podcast). Since it came out she's started a substack, posting thoughts about what writing involves.

Some Sante previouslies on Metafilter:
  • Low Life
  • Appraising Paul Auster
  • Blogging in 2007 and links to other pieces.
  • On the state of literature in a digital world c.2010.
  • New York apartments.
  • posted by Joeruckus (3 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
     
    Thank you for calling attention to this! As someone trying to get myself writing regularly (journaling and horror mostly) and someone who loves Lucy's writings and insights, I'm really excited to see what she has to share with us.
    posted by kokaku at 4:44 AM on January 12


    “a riotous democracy of words”

    thank you
    posted by HearHere at 5:41 AM on January 12


    I don't write very much. I imagine my first drafts are delightful.
    posted by k3ninho at 7:03 AM on January 12 [2 favorites]


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