Apparently, the problem is that I cannot be serious

Figuring out the kind of writer I am now

Let me just say at the beginning that, no, I am not going to stop writing. I guess in last week’s essay I gave that impression. I was writing about that weird displacement that comes after a big trip. You know, the rude re-entry into our everyday lives, which for me, includes writing. And social media. And news. And weeding and laundry and dishes. And all the whole big world of our lives that is not being on a boat in Europe traveling the Rhine River, which all-in-all, was pretty fucking cool.

Last week’s essay was about being plunged back into the mundane. It was also an essay about my failed attempts to write a SERIOUS novel and so it’s got me thinking about what that means. What is a SERIOUS novel? What does it mean to be SERIOUS? Also, why do I keep capitalizing that word?

Two years ago, I was at a book event for the launch of an amazing anthology, Playing Authors. The piece I’d published in the anthology imagined Ernest Hemingway having to go on a book tour. It was an idea that had been knocking around in my head for a while. Did Hemingway have to do book tours? If not, where did the horror-show idea of the book tour come from? And also, how would Hemingway have handled the repeated humiliation that is so many book events? Or maybe that’s just my experience.

At any rate, the piece was funny. Funny to a literary crowd, at least. People laughed out loud as I read the essay, which always seems like a victory to me. I found the idea of Hemingway on book tour inherently amusing, so of course that’s how I wrote it. I also found the idea of Hemingway on book tour to be deeply sad. To me, the piece was both things. Sad and funny. This is pretty much my happy place. Funny and sad.

After my reading, I was chit-chatting with a woman. “Are you a humor writer, then?” she asked me.

I think I laughed. I might have just taken a drink of beer, so there’s a chance I sprayed some on her in the process of laughing.

When I searched the stock photos for “serious” pictures, this came up and you know I could not resist a very fucking serious cat. Photo by Kido Dong on Unsplash

Me, a humor writer? I mean, no. I’m not funny. I’m not a funny person. I mean, not in an intentionally funny way. I can’t remember jokes, but even if I could, I cannot tell one to save my life. All the “funny” stories I try to tell in social settings generally fall flat. Once I tried to tell a story about stepping on an escaped gerbil when I was a kid and killing it. I thought it was funny. No one else did.

“Oh, no,” I said to the woman. “I don’t think I’m a humor writer. This piece just happened to be funny.”

She squinted at me, a little confused, I guess. If a humor writer is someone who writes funny things and this little story was funny, then by definition, was I not a humor writer?

This all happened in Indianapolis, the “big city,” and the woman I was speaking to was connected to some important literary institution in the state. So maybe I didn’t want to label myself as a humor writer because humor writers are, you know, not SERIOUS. Humor writers aren’t SERIOUS writers. Humor writers don’t win important book awards.

“I’m a real writer,” I imagined saying to the woman. “I’m SERIOUS. So SERIOUS.” I did not say that, though. I’d already spit beer at her, after all. I changed the subject or drifted away. I mostly forgot about the conversation.

At the time, I had already started the series of short stories that would become SEX OF THE MIDWEST (coming September 16 from Galiot Press!). The stories were also funny. I was aware that they were funny. When I read through them, I sometimes chuckled out loud (I still do, even after having read them approximately five hundred million times now). I didn’t sit down to write the stories as funny. They just sort of came out that way, I think because I was having so much fun.

Then when they were pretty close to finished, I let my husband read the stories. He was in the next room, but I could still hear him laughing. A lot.

“Am I a humor writer?” I thought as I listened to him chuckling. “What would that even mean?”

The stories are also sad at times. And moving. Perhaps in moments, they’re angry-making. You might get angry at a few of the characters. The stories are a lot of things, but funny is definitely one of them.

“Oh my god, I am a humor writer, aren’t I?” I thought. “I am not SERIOUS. I’m not SERIOUS at all!”

One of my favorite books is Small Island by Andrea Levy. It’s about the history of Jamaican immigrants in England. These immigrants experience a lot of prejudice and hardship, on both islands, and those experiences certainly come across in the book. But the book is also, in many moments, funny.

When I first read the book, it was a revelation. An author could write about SERIOUS subjects like discrimination and oppression and still be funny. That was possible.

Not only was that possible, but at least for me, it was desirable. And pleasurable. The world is bad, yes. Sometimes the world is bad in ways that should be impossible to imagine, let alone live through. Still, people laugh. People find humor. This is, I think, one of the amazing truths about our sad little species. We go on finding ways to laugh, even in the darkest of times.

This, I thought, is what life is actually like. We are never serious all the time. Or, I don’t know, maybe some people are serious all the time, but who wants to hang out with those people? Those people are probably sociopaths, if we’re honest. There’s something a little wrong with anyone who takes themselves and life seriously all the time. Beware of those people who cannot laugh at themselves or the world, but especially those who cannot laugh at themselves.

Books like Small Island were the kinds of books I wanted to read, I realized. I didn’t think it at the time, but maybe also they were the kinds of books I wanted to write. Funny and SERIOUS. Both things.

So when I sat down to write a SERIOUS novel this winter, I was probably doomed from the outset. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have a model. I wanted it to be LITERARY, which means, SERIOUS, right? And definitely not funny.

But also, the things I was writing about were things related to my own life that I have not yet achieved enough distance from to find the humor. You know how that goes? Eventually, there’s something to laugh at even in the saddest stuff. But often, it takes time to get to that place and in the moment, it’s just sad. Turns out that maybe I can’t write from a place of only sadness. Or at least not anymore. Probably, this is a good thing, even if it doesn’t win me any awards.

Of course, humor writing is also SERIOUS. You can be both funny and LITERARY. Think Mark Twain. Think Kurt Vonnegut. Think, for that matter, Jane Austen. Think J.D. Salinger. Think Elizabeth Strout. Think Percival Everett. Think Nick Hornby. Think Niall Williams.

Humor might not even be the right word, but all of these writers have a lightness to their work. They have an airiness to balance the heavy. They do not take themselves very SERIOUSLY even if their subjects are quite SERIOUS.

This week, I set aside the SERIOUS novel and started something else. It is amusing to me, even as it is about SERIOUS things. I mean, I guess it will be about SERIOUS things. It’s early days. Right now I’m having fun. The writing amuses me.

The question of whether this will turn out to also be SERIOUS sort of doesn’t matter. This is how I write. This is who I am. A little bit tongue in cheek. A little bit amused. A little bit sad and funny at the same time.

Thanks to all the new subscribers. I write a lot of essays that are me figuring things out for myself and then sharing it here because, why not? If that sounds good to you, stick around. Thanks also to the folks who hit that tip jar button above. Always appreciated!

We’re currently in the middle of copy edits for SEX OF THE MIDWEST (coming Sept. 16 from Galiot Press!), which makes the five hundred million and one times I’ve read through the stories. Still laughing. Still loving these characters.

The next step is talking cover design, which is slightly more exciting than copy edits. I’ve also got some of my first blurbs back, which I cannot wait to share! Stay tuned for an announcement when pre-orders are ready. In the meantime, go subscribe to the

Galiot Press Substack

.

I also did a very cool interview this week with

Eva Langston

at

Eva's Newsletter for Writers

for her forthcoming podcast, The Long Road to Publishing. It’s such a great idea, a podcast where writers tell the real, weird, convoluted stories about their publishing and writing lives. The podcast debuts this summer, so look for my episode later this year.