{"id":51593,"date":"2017-07-03T00:01:25","date_gmt":"2017-07-03T00:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/?p=51593"},"modified":"2017-07-01T10:08:56","modified_gmt":"2017-07-01T10:08:56","slug":"at-the-very-least-it-permitted-her-to-write","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/at-the-very-least-it-permitted-her-to-write\/","title":{"rendered":"at the very least, it permitted her to write"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Emily Gould schrijft <!---- I started seeing a new therapist while I was pregnant with Raffi, so she has only my word for it that becoming a parent has changed me a lot. I mean, she believes me, but I can tell that sometimes she craves independent verification. Recently I was telling her about something that happened in my 20s and I could tell that she was trying to evaluate whether I used to be an actual sociopath, or whether I'd just been a regular person-in-my-20s. \u00a0\"If I'd met you then, do you think I would have experienced you as a totally different person?\" she asked. Obviously the correct answer to this question, for the sake of not uselessly derailing what remained of our 45 minutes, was \"No.\" \u00a0But when I thought about it afterward, I had a very clear memory of a session I'd had with my previous therapist. I was around 26 and I told her that I despaired of ever finding someone who could do [sex thing I can't even remember] the way [horrible ex] did. I was *crying* about this. And honestly props to that therapist for not making it more clear to me that she was internally rolling her eyes so hard while thinking about her patients who were torn apart by legitimate grief of every variety. I was not a sociopath, or an idiot all the time, but I did not think very often about how anything besides me looked from other people's perspective.\u00a0---><!--- I'm not a saint now, but I do consider other people's thoughts and feelings much more than I used to. It's been great for me as a human being, I think, but as a writer, the jury is still out. ---><\/p>\n<p>Genuinely caring about other people is bad for my writing in at least three distinct ways! The most obvious is that I take time away from writing in order to actively care about and for real people in my life (then feel bad about that, then feel bad for feeling bad about it.) <!--- I also second guess myself more when presuming to understand how fictional people might think or feel because I am now marginally more capable of writing fiction about characters who are something more than 'me, but with a different hair color.' --->\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;] <\/p>\n<p>And then there is also the part of me that recoils from writing anything that might hurt or offend anyone I care about, which now seems consequential to me for reasons beyond just &#8220;their bad feelings will be an annoying inconvenience when I have to deal with them.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I guess what I&#8217;m longwindedly trying to say is that I wish I was still the kind of asshole I was in my early 20s, because that person could write so effortlessly and thoughtlessly, and sometimes that permitted her to write well. At the very least, it permitted her to write. <small>\u2013 Can&#8217;t complain, Emily Gould, TinyLetter<\/small><!--- http:\/\/tinyletter.com\/Emily_Gould ---><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Emily Gould schrijft Genuinely caring about other people is bad for my writing in at least three distinct ways! The most obvious is that I take time away from writing in order to actively care about and for real people in my life (then feel bad about that, then feel bad for feeling bad about<a href=\"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/at-the-very-least-it-permitted-her-to-write\/\" class=\"read-more\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[2152],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51593"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51593"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51597,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51593\/revisions\/51597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.imhd.nl\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}