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  • Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. I recently learned it's been 510 days

  • since my fifth novel "Turtles All The Way Down" was published,

  • and if I'd written just, like, a paragraph or two each of those 510 days,

  • I would've at least finished a draft of a sixth novel, but I haven't

  • and today I want to talk about why.

  • This came to my attention, by the way, because the paperback edition of "Turtles All the Way Down"

  • is being published today in the United States.

  • It's like the hard cover, except less expensive

  • and also the cover is softer, and there's a Q&A in the back,

  • and we fixed a couple typos.

  • But yeah, I haven't written a novel in the last 510 days,

  • partly because I've been working on other stuff -- Crash Course: European History,

  • our project with Partners in Health, TV and movie adaptations,

  • but then again, I've had some kind of day job for most of my writing life.

  • The truth is a little more complicated.

  • "Turtles All the Way Down" has been very generously received, both by critics and by readers,

  • and I want to emphasize how grateful I am to have a large audience

  • and even to have my book reviewed in places like

  • The New York Times and The Guardian, let alone positively.

  • But the process of publishing the book was very difficult for me.

  • I realize this is the pinnacle of champagne problems,

  • but I was really overwhelmed with fear about whether people would like it,

  • and whether it was a good and useful thing to put into the world,

  • and whether it was the best book it could be, and so on.

  • Also, and this is the champagniest problem of them all,

  • when you have a lot of success, it can start to feel like

  • everyone has to develop an opinion of your work,

  • even if they aren't particularly familiar with it or particularly interested in it.

  • Like I haven't seen "50 Shades of Grey," but I still feel like I have to have an opinion about "50 Shades of Grey"

  • and I kind of do have an opinion?

  • Although maybe the opinion is wrong-- maybe the movie's amazing.

  • But when that happens -- when you make a thing that people like,

  • or, in some cases, dislike so much they define themselves in opposition to it,

  • it can be pretty destabilizing.

  • Writing stories has always been, like, a way out of myself--

  • trying to inhabit other people's consciousnesses can give me a break from having to inhabit my own.

  • But publishing those stories is about something else:

  • a complicated mess of wanting people to like me, wanting to be "successful,"

  • hoping that my stories might be useful or important to the people who read them,

  • and wanting to pass on some of the gifts that other people's stories have given me.

  • And so for at least the past, like, decade, writing for me hasn't only -- or even primarily -- been about writing.

  • It's also about touring and publicity and movie rights,

  • all of which I am ridiculously lucky to stress about, but which I nonetheless find stressful.

  • And all of that together means that-- for the moment, anyway,

  • I'm not really able to write much fiction, but I haven't stopped writing.

  • Instead, I started writing in a place that felt quieter and safer to me,

  • where people who liked my work could find it,

  • but people who didn't care to probably wouldn't.

  • I started a podcast with a somewhat weird premise--

  • reviewing facets of the human-centered planet on a 5-star scale

  • and gave it a hard-to-spell name: "The Anthropocene Reviewed"

  • and for the last year and a half, I've been writing about

  • everything from scratch-and-sniff stickers and the Taco Bell breakfast menu

  • to the practice of Googling strangers.

  • And it has been so fun and so fulfilling to explore a new kind of writing

  • and to seek out places where my personal experiences connect to universal ones,

  • like I was way too into scratch-and-sniff stickers when I was a kid--

  • an early symptom of my long-term fascination with virtualized experience --

  • but I didn't understand the strange and beautiful chemistry of those stickers

  • until I started writing about them.

  • The pleasures of unexpected discovery turn out to be similar, whether you're writing fiction or non-fiction.

  • I do intend to publish more novels-- many more, hopefully,

  • but in the meantime, I'm very grateful that the ones I've written are still finding new readers.

  • Books are quiet and interior experiences in a very loud world,

  • and so are my favorite podcasts.

  • So, regardless of the medium, I just want to say: "Thank you for listening."

  • Hank, I'll see you on Friday.

Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. I recently learned it's been 510 days

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新しい本を書いていない理由 (Why I Haven't Written a New Book)

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    林宜悉 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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