“I’m GESTATING, Dammit!”
There’s a time to stop asking a certain generation about the creative dreams of their youth
So how’s the writing coming along?
Weren’t you working on some kind of novel?
You used to write the most darling little things! Are you still keeping that up?
This is what I brace myself for as I drive south to any family reunion, holiday, or hometown weekend. And somehow my canned answers never fully brace me for the sideways blow of these questions so like ghosts, so like funhouse mirrors sticking me with an image of myself decades ago, frozen in amber at 25: ambitious, unfocused, eccentric, brilliant, explosive, pure potential. That young woman was powerful and unforgettable, and to a certain cadre of close friends and family she is who I will always, always be.
But I’m at a crossroads in my life where their gentle curiosity feels like an interrogation.
This essay is a set of instructions for those people on how to help me. Because I think that deep down, you do want to help me. You believe in me.
But you need a corrective, an update on the nature of the artistic path — especially now. You need a guide for squaring the young ingénue I once was with who I am now (obscure, unaccomplished, and marginally employed).
New York Times reporter Steven Kurutz’s March 28 “The Gen X Career Meltdown” article went viral for good reason. The artistic life has never been easy, but this century has been a special kind of minefield. The arts-adjacent jobs that used to support people like me are evaporating, either vaporized by social media or eaten by AI.
Dear loved ones: Did you know I have actually held back from telling you about certain publishing wins because your minds are too front-loaded with 20th-century narratives of what artistic success looks like? If I land a short story in a notable publication, telling you will only to serve to inflate your expectations of me: This is it! She’s made it! In a few years she’ll be rich and famous and we won’t have to worry! Suddenly you’re envisioning book deals, a press apparatus, late-night chat-show appearances, a glam author photo of me beaming out from bookstores and college auditoriums — the sort of visible, measurably upward trajectory that was once the imprimatur of success.
Nothing works like that anymore. There are no “big breaks” from charismatic gatekeepers who dig our moxie. There are no cultural gates or palaces for us to crash, just the all-pervasive fortresses of Silicon Valley.
The cultural kingdoms of your generation flowed from the few at the top to the many below. Now all we have is a flattened, shadow-controlled many-to-many flow, and if you think that’s more democratic, you haven’t torn your hair out at 2 a.m. trying to finish a Substack essay that you pray to God will get you the long-promised “hockey stick effect” on your stats.
When it comes to the creative life, even very liberal Americans buy into an ageist, winner-take-all story. If we artists are not stars by 25, we’re losers. Most non-artists take little interest in the banalities of extended struggle at the margins of craft: 50-year-olds still doing open mics, 34-year-olds still donating their paintings.
And when that’s the case, the artist still struggling in midlife has no polite way of saying: Leave me alone. I’m not taking questions. Stop squaring me into your uninformed notions of success. I have my own difficult-to-explain relationship to my talents. I’m gestating, dammit!
My instructions: If you love someone past 40 who set out in their youth to be a sculptor or indie filmmaker or jazz critic or dancer, and they haven’t mentioned anything about it in a while — don’t ask them about it. Don’t inquire playfully if they’re “keeping a toe in the water” or anything else that sounds like child’s play in a kiddie pool. Believe me, if they have a major creative breakthrough, they will let you know. But stop expecting rich-and-famous things of them.
The old vision you have of this youthful artist — just let it go. This person is evolving in ways you can’t see or understand; they hardly see or understand it themselves. While working three jobs that barely exist and trying to raise a troublesome child and make sure an elderly parent doesn’t burn the house down and take care of themselves if they get the chance, they suppress their creative urges and ideas to keep everyone else’s home fires burning.
And you know what we call these people? We don’t call them quitters or losers. We call them heroes. Their dreams got mothballed through no fault of their own. If an artist needs to wait for retirement or some other peaceful interregnum of life to complete that novel or revive that sculpture practice, what’s the shame?
We all need to adjust our ideas of what a successful creative life looks like. We need to allow artists a career hibernation or long-term dormancy, because so often (especially now) that’s just how life is. Creative fulfillment can take a lifetime.
At long last: If society can’t give artists a future, can it at least give them distance, respect — and time?
Artists make art. Musicians play music. Writers write. Whether they’re pursuing publication is something else entirely. The intersection of art & business is strange.
There are a number of famous novels that took years, even decades to come to pass. Catcher in the Rye - 10 years, Lord of the Rings - 16 years. I've read stories of authors that have been living with their stories in their heads for years before it got to the point of writing it down. Take as long as you want. Take as long as you need.