How’s the Writing Going, R. O. Kwon?

“I know that when I’m really writing, when I’m really, really lost in a sentence, I forget I have a body, I forget what time is. I forget to eat.”

This is a column called How’s the Writing Going? It’s the question no writer wants to be asked—but which every writer wants to ask others. We want to know that other people are struggling the same way we are, or to learn other writers’ hacks and antidotes for blocks and other challenges.

Here I chat with R. O. Kwon about the ways she’s quieted her anxiety at this fraught time in the world so she can be productive writing her next novel.

R. O. Kwon’s nationally best-selling first novel, The Incendiaries, is published by Riverhead, and it is being translated into seven languages. Named a best book of the year by over forty publications, The Incendiaries was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award. Kwon has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, and MacDowell. Kwon and Garth Greenwell coedited the best-selling anthology Kink, published by Simon & Schuster and a New York Times Editor’s Choice book.

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Sari Botton: Shortly after the 2020 election, I noticed one of your tweets. I think this was after it was finally determined that Biden had won. You tweeted, “somehow writing remains difficult even now, seems rude.” It was very relatable to me, and I’m sure to many other writers, because so many of us had been freaking out through the entire Trump administration and even before then—through the election leading up to that. It put us in this anxious state that made it hard to concentrate. Then, even after Biden was elected, there was this right-wing campaign to overturn the result. What was it like for you to focus and be productive through all the recent political turmoil?

R. O. Kwon: Oh man, it was so hard. To write fiction, I feel as though I need acres of space and time and ability to focus, and that’s so, so hard to find. Let me talk about some things that have helped, because at the start of the pandemic, I was only writing one sentence a day. I had this novel deadline to deal with, and I was like, one sentence a day isn’t going to get me there. It wasn’t great, but at least I was writing one sentence a day. In those first couple of months, I could barely even read, which I know was also common for so many people.

One thing that really helped was trying to set up community around the act of writing. I now have two different accountability groups: one over email and one over text. I send in the number of words I wrote that day, and a couple of people send in the number of minutes or hours they’ve worked. Getting those emails reminds me that, in a way, I’m sort of letting my friends down if I don’t work that day, if I don’t get to my writing that day.

I realized that it’s really important to me, in general, to try to not let other people down. I’m equally good at letting myself down. I break promises to myself thirty times a day. It’s just me, you know, it’s easy to let myself down. Applying that logic to the act of writing itself has been really, really helpful.

My other accountability group is a text chain with a couple of good friends. It’s more long-form, and we text each other what we worked on but also things we’re thinking about, things we’re reading, sometimes funny cat videos. That’s really lovely too, to be so aware of what these two dear friends are up to on a daily basis with their writing, reading, and living.

SB: One of the hardest things for me about the pandemic was that it forced me to close a small coworking space I had developed for writers in Kingston. We had ten writers, and we would leave our houses and go and work together. Then we would go get a drink together and we would talk shop. That was eliminated at the end of March 2020. I was suddenly just in my house by myself, well, with my husband, who’s wonderful and we get along wonderfully, but there were no writers around. I like that idea of the accountability group that functions over email and texts. I might try that myself because losing my writers’ community was one of the hardest things for me.

Where did the one-sentence-a-day thing emerge from? I’ve never heard of anybody, especially someone who’s a published novelist, doing that.

ROK: I was trying really hard to still have the world of my novel with me on a daily basis. So a sentence a day was a bare minimum. There was a different bare minimum around the time when The Incendiaries was coming out. Things were just so hectic. During that time, I couldn’t even write one sentence a day, much as I tried. Instead, I just wrote down words that sparked my interest. Sometimes they were long fancy words and sometimes they were really basic words—words that made me pause and just enjoy their presence.

I made a long list of the words. That was useful too. I know there are people who don’t find it useful or possible to work on their writing daily. Some writers might not work on their fiction or their writing for months at a time or only work on it on weekends. I have friends who only work on their books during the summer vacations when they’re not teaching. But for me, I’ve found that when I take a day off from my writing, it costs three to really get back to where I was.

It almost feels like having a jealous lover who gets really upset if I’m away. I’ve realized that it just makes more sense for me to try to do a little bit daily. Sometimes it would be just that one tiny sentence. It was the skinniest of lifelines connecting me back to my novel, which I so desperately wanted to be working on.

It wasn’t great, but at least I was writing one sentence a day.

SB: So you set the bar low for yourself. Then it’s easy to succeed and not be disappointed in yourself and not feel like you’ve betrayed this lover, which is your novel.

ROK: It kept me from fully despairing during those months when I was barely able to write or read, because at least I knew something was happening. There’s also a beautiful New York Times piece by my friend Ingrid Rojas Contreras on self-mesmerism, where she talks about things she does to counteract intrusive thoughts. After I read that piece, I thought, This is genius, and I changed some of my writing habits. It’s really helped me have more focus. So much so that since I started doing that, there are times when I can write almost as much as I can when I’m at a residency, which is wild to me. Let me note, though, that I don’t have children, which of course can make it much easier to find space for this kind of focus.

She talks about how she devotes certain attire in a certain color only to writing. So now there’s a silk shawl that I wear while I write. If it’s on me, I’m not allowed to do anything else. I won’t even look at my texts, let alone reply. I definitely won’t look at my email or social media. I won’t look at the news. The only things I’m allowed to do when I’m wearing that shawl is work on my novel and read or look at art—which I know is feeding the novel. I can also get coffee or feed myself—like, the basics to keep myself going.

Oh, and stretching—that’s another one. I’ve been trying to stretch more throughout the day. All of that is to keep the machine of my body going while I work. Ever since reading Ingrid’s piece, I also have coffee mugs that I only use for writing. If I’m switching to answering emails, I switch mugs. I also change the lighting. When I’m writing, I turn off the overhead lamp and use a standing desk lamp with a much lower wattage. Ingrid explained it as creating a kind of holy ground on which work happens.

Anytime I’ve had my lighting and my coffee and my shawl, if I’m following the rules of my writing space, it’s never not led to writing happening. Even if it’s not as much or as focused as I’d like, it has always worked. That continuity has also been intensely calming. I’m sure you know about the terrible anxiety of sitting down to write and not knowing if anything’s going to come of it, or thinking, Am I just going to sit there and just feel sad at the end of it because I wasn’t able to do a damn thing? That anxiety is now gone. Knock on wood.

SB: That’s brilliant. You set these conditions that your brain then learns to associate with writing, and the writing gets done.

ROK: The other useful thing is my husband knows that this is my rule. If I’m in my shawl and I start talking to him about random shit, he’ll say, “No, you’re in your writing shawl, you can’t.”

SB: That’s so good that you got him on board.

I know that you’ve been very active with an organization called Field Team 6, through which you’ve organized textbanking parties with other writers. I was inspired to join you several times. It really helped me feel less hopeless—or more hopeful, to put it more positively. I think we might’ve really helped get out the vote! Can you talk about how you got involved and what that’s been like for you?

ROK: Thank you so much for having joined us for so many events. It was really so heartening that you were there so often and that you were helping us spread the word.

SB: Honestly, I needed it.

ROK: Right? Everyone I know who’s involved in community work and political work seems to find it’s also good for the people involved. I started getting involved with Field Team 6 and some other textbanking organizations after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. I was a wreck, as so many people were. My friend Andrew Sean Greer emailed, “I’m textbanking tomorrow with some friends. Do you want to join me?” I was like, Yes, I want to do this. I couldn’t let the sorrow and rage just sit in my body. I needed to fucking do something with it. So I textbanked with Andy and with a few of his friends, including Ayelet Waldman.

We were just in a Zoom room together as we were texting. Pretty soon we were laughing and making fun of rude Republicans. I realized, Oh, wait, this is actually something writers can be good at. We like texting. We like making fun of rude Republicans. That’s something a lot of writers I know do on a regular basis. That was when I got in touch with Field Team 6 and I was like, what if we could scale this feeling of being in a room with people you want to be in a room with, and we could do this as a group? And then Ayelet and I organized a series of these events.

SB: Those textbanking parties were the best. I’ve volunteered a couple more times and I will continue to. Did it help you to get your work done? Did it help calm the anxiety and let you go into that ritual of yours?

ROK: Yes, it did. I’m curious if it did for you too, because I think what I realized after those first two pandemic months of abject misery was that part of the problem, at least for me, was that, when my anxiety was running high, I couldn’t let myself sink into the world of fiction writing, which is what needs to happen. One needs to forget other things. I know that when I’m really writing, when I’m really, really lost in a sentence, I forget I have a body, I forget what time is. I forget to eat.

I fully believe that art is necessary. It is not a luxury. There’s nothing self-indulgent about it. Books have saved my life. However, working for years and years and years on a book about invented people during a time of profound crisis, it did feel harder than ever. I did feel—even though I don’t believe writing is self-indulgent at all, even though I don’t believe making art is self-indulgent at all—like, what is the point of this when the world is collapsing? I found that the best preventative for this what-the-fuck-is-the-point-of-this feeling was to try to do something for other people on a regular basis.

I fully believe that art is necessary.

It was almost like bribing my anxiety with: Okay, well, we did this thing for others. Please, for the love of God, can we focus on writing for two hours now?

Did you find the textbanking to be useful?

SB: Yeah, I had the biggest deadline of my life looming, and textbanking helped. I turned in my memoir in June. I had been working on it through the run-up to the 2020 election, and then through the first half of 2021.

ROK: Oh my gosh, congratulations.

SB: Thank you. It was very anxiety provoking. It’s something that’s taken me a really long time to do because I never felt I had permission. It’s been this lifelong challenge and I finally got the opportunity—during the most fraught time in the world. I was in a state. My body felt like it was on constant high alert through the entire Trump administration. And then when the pandemic came along, my body started literally shaking all the time.

I would try to sleep at night but my limbs wouldn’t stop twitching. Then I would have to write during the day, and aside from being in a state, and exhausted, I also had to grapple with this feeling of why bother, who cares about my story?

It was very helpful to do something concrete, like textbanking. Especially when you texted someone who wrote back, “Thank you so much for reminding me that I need to register by this time,” etc. That helped ground me.

ROK: I’ve been thinking a lot about the whole notion of self-care, and about what Audre Lorde said about it. I’m writing a piece about this right now. There’s a widespread notion that self-care is purely about the self. It feels as though it’s become such a closed-in, individualist notion, and the self is more porous than that. We’re so connected to one another. For me, it was a potent form of self-care to be involved in community work. I think it’s actually not possible for my body to feel hopeless when I’m acting as though I have a great deal of hope. It’s amazing medicine.