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Express Yourself
Editing Ourselves Into Oblivion
Where does the real me end and the fictional one begin?
In her 2010 experimental novel, How a Person Should Be, Sheila Heti writes that “most people live their entire lives with their clothes on.” They are private and possess a natural modesty. Others, artists, she writes, cannot put their clothes on. “They are destined to expose every part of themselves, so the rest of us can know what it means to be human.”
When I told my mom I wanted to publish books, she said she didn’t understand. “That would feel like running around naked.” My mom used to sell art, and her statement annoyed me. Because she was right. My debut novel comes out this month. And I feel very naked.
As kids, we have nightmares of being naked at school — a metaphor for exposing our true selves. Today, everyone is naked online. In the age of Only Fans, public nudity has been rendered an empty gesture. It’s difficult to go online without seeing someone’s breasts you never wanted to see. But bodies are edited into a lie, a form of being clothed, and true exposure remains rare.
I am 33 years old. I wrote my first novel draft at age 17. I wrote four entire novel manuscripts that I was unable to sell to a publisher before selling this one. In other words, I have been actively trying to publish a novel for 16 years. And this month it’s happening.
It all feels very surreal.
Which is sort of what my novel is about.
In Vagablonde, my protagonist — Prue — is a government lawyer who has tried for many years to make it as a rapper. When I was writing it, I was a government lawyer who wanted to be a writer. Writing Prue’s artistic ambitions was not difficult; not writing them would have been harder. As the book progresses, Prue’s music career takes off. She makes a song that goes viral and lands a show opening for her favorite band. It’s everything she’s ever dreamed of, but before the show — she feels only dread.
