How’s the Writing Going, Jen Doll?

This is a column called How’s the Writing Going? It’s the question no writer wants to be asked—but which every writer wants to ask others. We want to know that other people are struggling the same way we are, or to learn other writers’ hacks and antidotes for blocks and other challenges.

Here I chat with Jen Doll about giving yourself breaks from actively writing, as well as which non-writing endeavors qualify as part of the process.

Jen Doll is the author of the young adult novels That’s Debatable (forthcoming from FSG Books for Young Readers in June 2022) and Unclaimed Baggage, as well as the memoir Save the Date: The Occasional Mortifications of a Serial Wedding Guest. She’s also a freelance journalist and editor who’s written for The Atlantic, Fortune, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, New York Magazine, the New York Times, and Publishers Weekly, among others. Her website is JenDoll.com. Follow her on Twitter at @thisisjendoll and Instagram at @jendoll.

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Sari Botton: I wanted to interview you for this series because now and then, lately, you text me and say, “I think I forgot how to write.” But the next thing I know, there is evidence to the contrary—like, you’ll have a big piece in Fortune. And you have your third book, That’s Debatable, coming out next June. I want to understand whether it’s just garden-variety writer anxiety and self-doubt, or something else. 

Jen Doll: I partly think this is just a part of the writing journey. But there’s something preventing me from writing the way that I used to, or from feeling comfortable in that space.

SB: “Something” like . . . a global pandemic and political unrest?

JD: Yeah, obviously, the state of the world is weighing down on us heavily, and it’s hard to have that constantly happening in the background. Also, we’ve been inside in our own homes, in our own brains, but other people have been inside with us. There’s not quite the same space or freedom in my head to just go off into these other worlds, to tap into this quiet space the way that I used to. That blissful moment when you open your computer and you just start typing and you’re like, Oh my God, I’m creating something. This is so fun—that’s not happening. It makes me feel stuck, or like I'm being a bad writer, or as if I don’t know how to write.

Sometimes I’m fine. I’ll turn around and write a thousand-word essay on something, and I’ll feel, Okay, you know how to do it. It works! Those muscles are not dead.

SB: What was your old process that you loved? How did you used to tap into “that quiet space?”

JD: Well, as a writer, I’ve gone through many different phases. I became a writer, officially, by blogging for the Village Voice. Then I wrote for The Atlantic Wire. I was writing about news and takes on culture. After a while, I started to feel very disempowered by that pursuit, because you’re always reacting to news. You’re always writing about something that’s already in the conversation. So how do you start the conversation? Around that time, I sold my first book, Save the Date, which was about going to eighteen different weddings and the pursuit of love in a time when marriage seems to be paramount to our human experiences: this thing you're just supposed to do. Things have changed a little bit since then, but there’s still this pressure around marriage, especially for women and for women who remain single as they get older.

While working on the book, I was able to take a leave of absence from The Atlantic. Having that space to work on only one thing, one that I had created in my own mind—creating and seeing that through felt very luxurious and wonderful.

More recently, in the spring of 2020, around the time that the pandemic had just started, I was writing the first draft of That’s Debatable, my young adult book about two high school debaters. I was at home and I was sitting on my couch and somehow, in between reading news updates, I was just able to channel into this created world. Maybe I just needed it. I think those times when I’m able to set aside the things that are going on around me—whether it’s news, or the pandemic, or family stuff, or home renovations, or laundry—feel good. But for whatever reason, right now, I have not been able to do that.

SB: Well, your life has also changed dramatically in the past few years, which would also affect your writing habits.

JD: Yes, I got married in 2019. I also got a puppy. And stepkids!

SB: You also left the city and moved upstate.

JD: Right. I left my small apartment, my creative space, where I could worry only about what I was doing and where no one came in that door unless I invited them, to a shared living space. I moved into an old house that we’re fixing up, which takes a lot of time and energy and money that we don’t necessarily have. So there have been all these things. I need to remember to give myself a break and not be as self-hating, which I think is something common to all of us when we feel we’re not writing enough or not writing the right way.

SB: It’s kind of amazing how easy it is for us to be hard on ourselves and how hard it is to step back and gain perspective on all that we’re juggling.

JD: It can also be hard to remember that we’re often doing things that aren’t writing but are part of the writing, like living and thinking. All of the experiences that we’re having are part of this process before we even try to make sense of it and put it down on the page. For example, Save the Date was about every wedding of import I had been to over eighteen or twenty years. I couldn’t have written that book without those experiences. It’s so easy to be angry at yourself, but then you look back and you’re like, I was doing all of this work. I just didn’t know it.

The experiences—and the thinking about them—are part of the joy of writing. But right now, whatever pleasure there is feels somehow dead-end, which is very sad. I don’t know if you feel that way too.

SB: Oh, I definitely feel that way. There’s been so much shocking news, out in the world and also in our own families. We’ve had three Covid-19 deaths in our family. I feel like I now live in a constant state of fear and anxiety. And there’s this added level of doubt about whether I’m writing enough or in the right way (as you said before). On the flip side, if I throw myself into my writing, I worry that I might forget to worry about other more important things—or I’ll start to feel as if the writing is pointless, given the state of the world.

JD: Yes. There’s also the problem of constant comparison. I’ll think, How come everyone is doing it faster and better than me? How come everyone else has all these great book deals? How come everyone else has all of these New York Times bestsellers? I end up feeling like I must just suck at this thing.

SB: Social media doesn’t help because there’s comparison going on nonstop—but we need social media because we’re isolated. You seem to be spending less time on social media. Has that been a conscious decision, in terms of being able to focus better on your writing?

The experiences—and the thinking about them—are part of the joy of writing.

JD: Well, spending less time on social media hasn’t actually, at this point, made me write more. It was more of a conscious decision in terms of thinking about what I’m putting into the world, why I’m doing it, and what I’m getting back from it. I feel in some ways like there’s been this big lie put forward about social media, in publishing and elsewhere: If you spend time there, it will give back to you. You will sell books, you will get followers, you will gain attention and/or power through your followers. When really we’re just all giving to the tech bros who own these companies our best ideas, our thoughts, our daily whatever—they’re just getting more power.

But even if you don't believe that . . . everything you spend time on, well, there’s somewhere else you’re not spending time on, and I feel like the time I was spending on social media had a definite diminishing return. I wanted to take those thoughts inward and see what I would do with them and also just have more quiet time away from the increasingly loud and panicked and often not very nice voices online. I mean, that said, I still tweet sometimes—but I’m trying to do it when it feels like a moment of organic joy or fun rather than a moment of pain or a moment where I’m trying to get something. I will also say that Twitter is like an ex-boyfriend: You know you’re over him when you stop thinking about him at all, and that is so very freeing.

SB: It also seems as if you’re being more selective about the journalism you’re taking on. You’re putting your energy more towards books.

JD: I think that that was always where I wanted to go. I do also have an editing gig that provides me some stability financially, so that I can pick and choose what I do want to work on. If I start to worry that I’m not writing enough articles, I remind myself that I’m still writing books, I’m still putting sentences together—still doing something that feels like a good in the world.

SB: It might not provide the same kind of instant gratification, but maybe it’s more satisfying in the long run.

JD: Books take a longer time, but that’s not a bad thing. Also, the longer you work on things, the better they tend to be.

SB: Speaking of which, you said that you recently pushed back a deadline—you were supposed to get a draft of your new novel to your agent in January and you told him you wouldn’t. What was that about?

JD: I had a conversation back in October, maybe, with my agent, where I was trying to set up a schedule for writing a new novel (trying to force myself to do it, I guess) and I was like, “Be very mad at me if I don’t deliver this to you in January, okay?” And because my agent is very nice, he humored me and was like, “Yes, I'll be very angry.” Of course, I knew he wouldn't be . . . but I felt like I needed that pressure. Then, as I got pulled into different directions and something just kept stopping me from working on this novel and we approached December, I was like, nope. I’m just not gonna.

In fact, more recently, I think, nothing I’ve been doing in terms of pressuring myself has been working. What if I tell myself I am not allowed to work on fiction until the New Year? What if I can save up that energy and harness the joy that way? Around that time I also started working on something new with a friend, but it’s a screenplay, so hey, I’m not breaking my rules!

I guess I’m just trying to listen to myself, even when confronted with those inevitable feelings that I am probably very lazy or irrelevant or never going to write another book again. I mean, so what? The world is a very big place and there are lots of things to do that are worthy, and maybe I just need this time and . . . all of the other things you tell yourself. I think I’m trying to reconcile the need to write and have a deadline with the need to be a human? And right now, the human is winning. And even though I’m struggling with it, I’m trying to be okay with that and just let myself be. For now.

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