maybe even the bad writing is good writing
REAL literature, rupi kaur, and if i belong on substack
Dear whomever,
Todays story is about me being a cheater.
Yes - I’m coming clean.
The scene opens with a twelve-year-old me in my hand-me-down bedroom, painted purple by my older sister a few years earlier. I was excited to finally get the prettiest room of the house, and wanted to get started with my decorating. That’s what jumpstarted years of obsessive reading: I was cleaning my new room, but she left behind a book and, after inspecting, I just couldn’t stop. I was so curious, so intrigued, I kept going, and going, and going… until it was dark out and I was yawning.
The first book I ever read cover to cover was the fourth book in the Vampire Academy series, Blood Promise by Richelle Mead.
This is an ‘embarrassing’ fact I’ve had to live with. I had to take it to my first year of university, where I was so so excited to pursue an English Literature Degree as the perfect English Literature student. In my dreams I imagined that everyday I’d walk into class with a cigarette in my mouth (hate cigarettes) with wired headphones in my ear (hate wired headphones), a searing hot American Coffee in one hand (hate coffee and America) and most importantly - a classic in the other (by then, I had never read a classic unless you counted The Book Thief. Which we didn’t, yet, as it was still 2018).
I wished I read the normal books normal Literature girls read. I wanted to pretend I did. With my lifelong obsession for curation, I was upset by my choices. I would never tell a soul, in my new life, Literature student and all, that I read something ‘stupid’ like Vampire Academy. I should’ve been introduced to the magic of books through A Series of Unfortunate Events, or Harry Potter. But I fell onto a vampire novel as a preteen and have always hated that it’s what started everything for me.
in loving memory of my tumblr account, with the fond username @ivashsobs
My favorite character was an Adrian Ivashkov, whom I would sob over often. Obviously.
In the beginning, when fandom was at an all time high, I was fine with being obsessed with Vampire Academy. I found a community on Tumblr and got my best friend into it. I was pretty active, writing fanfic, learning how to make gifs. My fanart, actually, was featured on the official movie’s page (gone, so far, though I searched really hard to share it with you).
I have never re-read the books (I am not much of a re-reader), but I will say I know exactly what made me love Vampire Academy. The heart. The realistic dialogue, the dark romance, the themes of mental health and addiction and drug use. A strong female lead, interesting character dynamics, life-changing friendship, and above all, a world one could fall into. It was my Harry Potter. Now, I can validate it. But, for some time, I hated that I loved it. I felt it was not respected, especially in those days when Twilight was so hated. I felt I should’ve been reading better things. I should’ve been more cultured.
But something about it sparked a love for writing. Well, perhaps not a love, but a urge. I wish I did this, I would think. I loved Richelle Meads ability to make vivid a detailed world while not overdoing it with the descriptions. I liked that, at the time at least, the characters felt like realistic portrayals of teenagers. I wanted to recreate that. I wanted to steal it. So I tried. And how did I try, you ask? Well, I copied, of course.
I stole many lines from Vampire Academy in my early writing. After I bought every book in the series, I would sit in my bedroom with the pages open around me, underlining and highlighting the sentences I felt the most appealing. I knew I wanted to write, but had no idea where to begin, so I took tidbits from different books - a paragraph here, a line there - and merged them together like a Frankenstein YA novel.
So that’s how I wrote for a few years, I stole other people’s writing and tried my best to add in some lines of my own. My mother would tell me this was fine - my mother, who was so proud that I was reading and writing - but within me remained a feeling of guilt. I was a thief. I was a cheat. How could I ever be a real writer? I was not creative, I was pretending to be: my mind was empty of ideas, and I was only building on the ones I knew. Singers can sing naturally, I believed, and painters are good at drawing from a young age. I decided I wanted to write, one random day. It wasn’t bestowed onto me, not really. So was it even good? Even more importantly: Was I allowed?
do you have to be the right kind of person to do something you’re drawn to?
In my first year of university there was nothing more embarrassing to me than the fact that I couldn’t - for the life of me - seem to enjoy a classic. I started with YA, I loved YA, and I loved fanfiction and I loved characters I felt I could relate to - characters that spoke like me. But, well, it was just that… I wanted to read and write about important things and important people; I wanted the world to clap and cheer for me and say, Wow, you are so well-spoken, you are so smart, you write so lovely, your taste in books is so interesting…
During my first semester of university, we didn’t do a lot of reading. But I must have showed enough passion that, right before my second semester, my professor recommended I take a third year course with her. I agreed, of course, but doing so put me somewhere I was really not ready to be.
It was The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck we were assigned to read first: a classic that, to me, felt more like a torture device.
I hated The Grapes of Wrath. I hated the slow descriptions and the blocks of prose - I hated the heaviness you felt when you read it. I hated how long it took me to care about it. And I hated how hating it made me feel so much lesser-than the other girls’, the third-years, who spoke so eloquently and with such ease. The book cover alone evokes in me a visceral reaction. I feel it thrusts me, knee-deep into the Great Depression, so bored, watching a piece of dust float in the wind, feeling time move so so so painfully slow, feeling so so so painfully hungry.
I was a wannabe Literature student, I felt, despite how badly I wanted to be there and how much love I had for everything we did. I stood to give presentations and my knees would go weak, not with shyness, but with how stupid I felt. How out of place. Once, I mumbled some comparison against The Hunger Games, like an idiot. What was The Hunger Games to The Grapes of Wrath? What was me, a fanfic writer with a Tumblr account, to these girls, these smart girls with their beautiful words and spot-on analyses?
Forever my closest most loyal lover, Literature is. To me, perhaps, in some way, Literature is the God I worship - there is nothing I’ve ever been as sure about as I am with her. My hear beats for her. I want so badly for my days to be full of her. I mean, I fought to go to university and study Literature. And yet - I shrink in her eyes, I feel small in her presence. If you’ve been reading my work for a while, perhaps you’ve come across some other pieces I wrote which highlight how difficult it is for me to feel confident about what I create. Nothing is ever enough for the thing I fell in love with in my sisters’ old purple room.
One could argue that YA isn’t Literature at all. Many do, in fact. And that’s an idea that sort of pulls at my sleeves all the time, a question that continuously haunts me: is this Capital-L-Literature? Is this ‘Good’? Am I allowed to enjoy this? Am I supposed to?
I’ve recently deleted my writing account on Instagram, which for a long time felt like a heavy thing to attend to. My true vision for it simply never came to life, and that made me tired. I feel that translating poetry to a visual medium is such a difficult task - I have tried again and again to do it, it’s become cyclical and, frankly, exhausting.
Some writers are just… writers. I don’t particularly like reciting my work, or turning my words into graphics. That’s the kind of writer I am. Just letters against a blank page, I guess. I mean, yes, I hope I can evoke something in you, but whatever that is, what color it comes in, what feeling it brings - that’s completely dependent on you, reader. I could say blue you could see green. And who am I to force you otherwise?
The Instagram page, most importantly, felt like a public window into my soul, where people could go and - God forbid - laugh at me, silently cringe, or - oof - share a post with their friends on their group chat to make fun of me. For a lot of my life, I would push myself to post, fuck it, and then wake up gasping from bed, reaching for my phone, and tapping delete. Delete, delete, delete.
This month, without my writing account, I’ve been (pleasantly) surprised when people at some social event or the other tell me, “Oh, hey, don’t you write poetry? I really like you’re work…” and I’ll be like lol I deleted it all. I’ve deleted everything. I am an evil, insecure person and all my creativity is mostly down the drain. NOooooo whyyyy they’ll moan and I will say You don’t get it, no one cares and I’m bad and horrible at it.
But you’re a literature girlie, some would ague, and I would blush with how badly I want it to be true. But am I?
A new friend and I sit at the edge of a pool and discuss: how the Internet and Instagram could give people a look into your soul, a scrapbook of your creativity, and we should be more okay with that. I’m trying to be. Really. But she’s a painter, her medium is already visual. Instagram was created for her. How do you make letters pretty? How do you make poetry presentable, when all you have a 1080 x 1080 px square to work with?
writing and what is writing and what is good writing - and of course, what is bad writing and who gets to decide what is bad writing anyway?
Art for the sake of art, I hear a professor of mine saying. What is literature? asks another. What are the rules and why do we follow them?
A piece that fell onto my feed today was one titled The machine in the garden. by Emily Sundberg, which has garnered a lot of attention, it seems, both negative and positive. I can’t tell if I’m easily swayed or just too empathetic, but I see both sides clearly. I read the piece, thought, Yeah, I guess you’re right, then the comments reminded me of other ways I could’ve taken it.
Essentially, Emily writes that Substack has become ‘watered down’ as of late, an idea I’ve seen circulating my feed, but I’d recommend reading it and the comments yourself. It’s the discussion around it that really got me thinking.
Yeah, I guess you’re right, I’d thought while I read it. But the actual, more dominating thought I had was: Am I one of the people she thinks shouldn’t be here? Am I writing good things? Am I writing meaningful things? Is this worthy of Substack, could I ever get paid to do this thing I love?
I think that’s what’s getting people frustrated - their insecurities being validated, suddenly.
I’m not new to Substack, but new to posting. And as you already know, I’m not new to writing and posting. When I used to post on Instagram, I would read back my poems and think, This reads like Insta-poetry, all judgmental, then I’d feel ashamed - ashamed in my work and ashamed I look down at Insta-poetry because I literally researched Insta-poetry for my graduation project and argued in favor of it acting as a stepping stone for people trying to get into poetry.
And who do you think of when you think of Insta-poetry? Rupi Kaur, of course, and Rupi Kaur, as much as she has become somewhat of the Internet’s laughing stock, acted as a beginner poet for me - me, someone who had never read a full-fledged poetry collection before Milk & Honey blew up on Tumblr.
I think the reason people don’t like Emily Sundburg’s piece about Substacks content deteriorating in quality is because it brings up feelings of shame, like the ones I felt. Her ideas did not sound unfamiliar to me. Sundburgs argument is similar to the Rupi Kaur argument, especially that time Kaur read her grocery list at a live poetry show. I tried to find an article about that incident, as I remember it was a big deal when I was still active on the poetry side of Instagram, but only found the following piece:
art, technically?
Something about the hugeness of the internet and how easily people people grow makes it an addiction… a yearning… it seems so easy… and I have tried countless of times to follow other influencers flow and build an audience. Very little people would say they don’t crave that - I know I do. I mean I’m writer (I guess?). What does a writer want if not an audience?
But the part no one understands (as someone who has literally tried everything) is how goddamn difficult it is, to have the drive, to have the consistency, and to not have the fear that someone will tell you You don’t belong here. You need to have confidence. You need to trust that what you do deserves a spot. Even when you see someone’s opinion that kind of triggers you.
That’s the crucial thing I don’t have: the confidence to be able to take constructive criticism. I certainly try to, and hope it’s something that I can learn with time.
But here’s the thing: in this day and age, to have an audience one must be relatively easy on the eyes. One must be consistent. One must have a clear niche. One must be curated. That’s the truth we simply don’t like. And curation is difficult. Much more difficult than you’d think. It’s easy in concept, but harder in reality. So, the lists come, the easy content, the… lazy stuff.
Art Technically? we keep asking. For some (some being me, the painful romantic), art could easily everything around you. At the end of the spectrum, you may find the more arrogant Literature graduates or classic-readers or [insert term here], who get slightly more specific. I mean, can every person be Emily Dickinson? Can every person be Rupi Kaur? Can Rupi Kaur be a bit of Emily Dickinson, or vice versa? Or, a favorite of mine, E.E Cummings - what was he trying to be? Shakespeare? Certainly not. Art Technically? we could have asked of E.E Cummings, who, in many ways, is nonsensical, and existed in an age where poetry was not as malleable as the modern day has made it. And certainly many asked, then: Is this even poetry?
Is Rupi Kaur even a poet? Am I?
Rupi Kaur’s strong suit is her recitation of her poetry, I believe. Having watched some of her videos, I always crave and wish that she would ditch her own poems and read out one of my favorite Ocean Vuong pieces, or even go back to the classics. She has a natural stage presence; she evokes emotion with her voice. Her poetry is stronger when recited with her voice and mannerisms - it becomes a song, a dance - that’s why her shows sell. I get it.
But no one likes her. We tip our noses up at her, say, She sucks! This is useless! This isn’t REAL poetry! and move on.
I tell that to myself. I read my own work and think, This reads like Insta-poetry, I have to fix it. Do I hate Rupi Kaur or do I just hate my own stuff? Do I hate my own poems or does people’s hatred for Rupi Kaur make me think they’ll hate me because I’m similar to her? Or am I just better - for simply noticing that she’s no good?
God, my therapist would love this.
Rupi Kaur read out her grocery list on stage! Everyone shouts, so upset. On Substack, a girl lists out her Skincare Favorites and we wonder, Is she worth the $5 subscription? Well, to someone, maybe. To many, probably. But is it worth it? Is it Real Writing?
You know, my literature degree would cleverly suggest that a grocery list could reflect many things. It could reflect a state of mind. It could reflect a loving relationship. It could reflect someone about to cook a dinner for a loved one or poison them. Right? Right?
Art Technically? My friend says they want to get into poetry, and I lead them immediately to Rupi Kaur for her ease. Must we argue about it? It is the truth. Before Rupi Kaur, was poetry even something the mainstream knew/cared about? I certainly didn’t know or care for poetry, and knew only of one lone poetry collection in my best friend’s book collection that I think was titled CLUNK and it scared me. If I wasn’t reading classics, I certainly doubted my ability to understand poetry. It was a medium that was way, way, way out of my league.
But, later, I paid 15JD for Rupi Kaur’s Milk & Honey in 2015, and finished it in the 15 minute car ride home. It was a waste of money, in my mind, as I regularly saved up and usually paid, like, 8 or 9JD for my books. My family could barely afford to buy me more than 2 books a month, and that was if I was lucky. As someone who didn’t re-read for shit, I needed my new books to last.
So Rupi Kaur’s Milk & Honey definitely disappointed me, in some ways. But it interested me, too. I paid money for it, too. I posted a photo on Instagram, of course, too. And, importantly, it made me realize there were mediums other than novels and novellas. I was fifteen, when Milk & Honey released, and surprised that one could tell a story in so little words. It shocked me. I didn’t want to be a poet back then, but who knows? Maybe merely knowing of Rupi Kaur, I figured it would have been okay to try, in 2020, when I wrote my first poem, bones.
Whether voice of a generation or queen of cringe, Rupi Kaur was a gateway to the world of poetry, is the title of a Guardian article, written only about four months ago. I agree - this was an idea I offered my professors during the defense of my graduation project. It’s the idea I’m trying to convey to you. I was introduced to poetry through pieces like Kaur’s. You were, too, most probably. The world requires pieces like Kaur’s.
And what else does the world require? Books like Vampire Academy, which lure kids in, and keep them reading. Likewise, the what i wore this month and what I like this week’s of Substack interest people, and open them up to a world of so many possibilities. Maybe strengthen their muscle for reading, a breath of fresh air in the myriad of short-form content. Yes, even a list sometimes requires some effort to get through. Yes, even a list could be a better part of someone’s day.
Early in our relationship, my ex-boyfriend really wanted to start reading. Perhaps he figured it was something we could bond over - since I come off as a heavy reader (I wish I still was). He often asked for recommendations. As a lifetime “bibliophile”, this specific question tired me, and unfortunately, the only true answer I could provide after my years of trying to give a good answer was “You need something that will get you hooked.” And he would ask, “Okay, what?” And I would say, “I don’t know.”
My ex would regularly read articles, and research topics that interested him, but did not call himself a reader. I find that an interesting thing, in retrospect. He probably read and knew more than me, but because I would hold a physical book, I was doing something so many people found difficult. He would tell me, I want to read, and I never figured to say You already do.
I of course recommended John Green stuff and The Hunger Games - all good and easy books that keep early readers hooked long enough to develop the muscle to keep going. But some people may not like either, and that’s fine, because what reading is is a muscle - though it’s unlike other muscles since what you really need is the right book, at the right time, like Blood Promise was to me in my sisters old bedroom. It needs to be something that will get you interested enough and leave you craving more after it’s done.
Similar to how my ex wanted to be a capital R Reader, I think we sometimes feel that some places don’t want us, or people in those places may make us feel that we don’t belong there, or that… we’re not doing what is required of us to exist in those places. Is this literature, or just a useless newsletter? I ask myself. When someone asks, Why would you delete your Instagram? Bring it back! Keep writing! I’ll say, Oh, but I write a Substack… it’s a newsletter… I think it’s a newsletter. It’s something… It’s writing.
Is this a newsletter? Or an essay? Or prose? Or an idea? A letter? I like the “dear whomever," but I did used to imagine these to be more poetic. I fell onto the essay thing. Fuck, if I know. Did anyone else? Did Shakespeare know all the ‘big words’? Or was it just the way they spoke at the time, was it just the language they were around? I liked my course Modern Literature because it was so malleable - it made me believe that art was whatever I wanted it to be.
Art for the sake of art. Art even as a thief.
I needed all the “bad” writing to get me into “good writing”. And, you know, isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder?
I don’t know what this is. But I’m doing it. I hate the rules, but I do think about them a lot. I try to disregard the rules, but that’s a hard feat. Who cares?
Who cares?
With love,
Amal
PS: try to define Literature. How broad is it?
while weekly with love, amal will always be free, i’m introducing a subscription option for those who want to support my work further. i will not be putting anything behind a paywall, but know that with love, amal is a side-gig-one-woman-show-creation-of-love, and i am a wannabe-almost-kind-of-dreaming-to-be writer. if you like what i do, upgrading is a vote of support i would really appreciate.
This was such an interesting exploration and it had me asking myself so many questions about artists and how complex their relationship with their art can be.