Writing the thing that feels too hot

Some year-end regrets about this Substack, in the interest of being fully human

Also in the interests of being more human: here is my face, which I typically avoid sharing because of my horror of having my photograph taken. I am told, however, that it’s difficult to form a connection with a faceless stranger, so here’s evidence that I have a face. Photo by Suzy Bennett (who made photo-taking immeasurably less horrible).

Hi, friends.

Here’s something I often find myself saying: Write the thing that feels too hot. Whatever it is you’re trying not to say: put it on the page.

I say this most often when I’m working as a book coach for recovering academics, something I’m lucky enough to have done a lot lately. I’ve worked with former lecturers and professors and PhD students, helping them write novels and memoirs and put together book proposals for decidedly non-academic projects.

And oh man, I love this work. I love it because as the process unfolds and these former academics find the joy of speaking in their own voices, I get to watch the unlearning I’m trying to allow in myself and the wider world, taking place in real time.

My clients ended up in academia because learning filled them with fire and made them hungry for truth—then they lost themselves completely. No matter which discipline they were in, they were taught to write as if they weren’t people, as if they were standing outside of their object of study, observing it in detachment. They were taught to ignore, to obliterate, the little voices of doubt and fear and hope and longing that rose up in them as they wrote. They were taught that those things don’t belong on the page or in study or in the world.

This is the great lie of post-“Enlightenment” thought: the insane idea that you can best understand anything by pretending not to be a person. By pretending that you don’t feel anything; that when you turn up to the lab or the library you leave your fears and your faith, your heart and your history at the door. This bollocks worldview is, of course, the driving force behind AI, the monstrous spawn of a society that thinks intelligence is simply a matter of gathering and regurgitating information. A society that truly, terrifyingly seems to believe that this is the only or the best way of knowing.

Of course, it isn’t. For the vast majority of human history, our species recognized much deeper ways of knowing. We recognized that the world herself is animate, is conscious, and that she speaks to us. And that you can’t hear what she’s saying if you’re obliterating your little voices of fear and doubt and hope and longing. That in fact, those little voices might be the world herself shouting to you, trying to get your attention.

So I tell my clients to listen to those voices and to put them on the page. This is the first step: seeing that the thing you’re scared to write is probably the way forward.

And so I’m going to take my own advice. As this year draws to an end, I’m going to write some of the things that feel too hot, things I’ve been scared to share here, in hopes that this opens up a new path for the new year:

• I wish I felt more confident writing about injustice. Specifically, I wish I had written more, spoken up more here about Gaza. This Substack is called How to Go Home because I’ve spent my entire life fighting against, running from, and now trying to deeply understand and heal Englishness. By which I mean pretty much exactly the dynamic I traced above in post-Enlightenment academia: the absurd but culturally entrenched, bone-deep tendency to shut down emotion; ancient ways of knowing; and true connection to the self, other people, and the living world. This dynamic of Englishness is deeply at play in Gaza; in the climate crisis; in the inhumane treatment of migrants and refugees; in economic stratification; in the architecture of white supremacy and patriarchy—in every situation of injustice. It originates in fear of that which can’t be controlled (in the world and in the self), which in an emotionally immature society then becomes an impulse to dominate, which creates pain and oppression and severance, which then make everyone more fearful. And though I am teaching myself about the deep history of this impulse and though I want to speak up, I am also still too often stuck in the cycle of domination and fear. I fear saying the wrong thing, I fear I’m only allowed to speak once I’ve “mastered” the subject (whatever that might mean), I fear backlash—fear provoking the wrathful fear of things that won’t be controlled. And so I speak of other matters, though I have wanted to keep speaking up, and to keep saying that the injustice doesn’t live only out in the world, in the Middle East, but inside each of us raised in a colonizing society. I want to say this but too often, I get fearful. I’m even nervous about saying I’m nervous. I’m trying to unlearn this.

• This Substack’s subscribers are steadily growing, and the emails I get with growing frequency saying that people are enjoying the work—they really do mean the world. And yet as we close the year, my predominant feeling around this Substack is a sense of failure. I wish I were more organized; that I were able to follow a publishing schedule; that I were better at creating a network on here without feeling overwhelmed; that I wasn’t so often scrambling to put a piece together at the last minute; that I could stick with ideas for longer, especially the ones that seem to light people up, instead of bouncing around between ideas in ways I worry make my work hard to penetrate or follow.

• I know in my bones that all the things I’m researching are connected: the English severance from feeling and imagination; the animacy of the world; the history and origins of colonialism; the history of the English nation; the way the world speaks in vibrations and stories and feelings; how to write from a state of flow; imagination as the portal to a better world; ancient ways of knowing; the difficulty and the joy of living an unconventional life, especially if you’re a woman. But I’m not always clear, myself, on exactly how these things fit together. I look at other people’s writing and I envy their clarity of focus and direction. I fear I’ll accidentally bury anything important I have to say because I can’t join the dots in time, because I haven’t figured it all out yet.

• I oscillate between wanting to share more about myself, because it seems like a lot of women in particular need to hear more from women living unconventional lives, and worrying about oversharing or spilling over into solipsism.

• I wish I hadn’t run out of dopamine in the middle of reorganizing this page last week. I’m trying to make it all more easily navigable round here, but as of now it’s a bit of a building site (like my home, but that’s another story).

I’m sure there’s a lot more, but that feels like plenty for now.

If this post feels self-pitying or self-flagellating or ungrateful for the wonderful support you’ve all shown me, please know that it actually feels very pleasurable and intimate to level with you in this way. In England we spend so much time hiding our mess, and it feels so good when we stop.

I’m going to take the next two Thursdays off: to rest, to let these fears and doubts dance in the open air and lose some of their potency, and maybe dance me into a new way of doing things in the new year.

I hope that whatever you celebrate, you have a wonderful, restful time. Thank you so much for reading this year, and for bearing with me as I find my way. It really does mean more than I can say.

Love,

xx Ellie