![]() ![]() Like you, there was a certain point where I didn’t know what to write. What was the earliest form of Motherhood, and what happened in your life from then until July 2017? I became excited about writing a whole new book on psychedelics. After that realization, I began to view my prior self, who only wanted to expand the column, as unwise and impatient and habitually self-disempowering. I resisted this for ~1.5 years, then got over my laziness/exasperation, and realized I would enjoy it more, and learn more, if I started over, using only some of the column in the book. But my publisher felt the column needed more of me to be publishable as a book. I had material that didn’t fit in the column, and I was turning in longer-than-requested pieces every week. I began to want to slightly expand the column into a book while writing the column. In changing from that idea to all new material, wasn’t there the temptation to use the material you had already written in ‘Trip ’? A temptation that might come out of either laziness or exasperation with having to write some of the same things again? I do have a memory of, years ago, you emailing me and saying that you were thinking of publishing your Vice column as a book. But then when I realized the book was not (as I had proposed) non-fiction or an oral history, but rather more of a novel, that feeling of doing something bad or wrong came back into me, and I enjoyed working on it again and forgot about the publisher. I usually have the feeling that I’m doing something ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ when I’m writing, which makes me excited, but to be writing to fulfill a commission made me lose that feeling. It felt a bit like a homework assignment, and became un-fun. How did you find it different?įor a while I felt self-conscious, too aware that I was supposed to be making something that the publisher would like. ![]() It was more collaborative, with me showing editor/agent plans, outlines, and drafts throughout. I like writing under a contract, with deadlines that keep me focused and interested. ![]() Without a contract for those books, I didn’t have the motivation or money to structure my life around writing a book. Taipei and Trip were my first books written under contract, that I didn’t finish before showing a publisher. Reading it, I thought, ‘I wish I could write an essay as good as that.’ I wonder, did it feel different to write under contract? Motherhood and Women in Clothes were the first times I wrote a book under contract, rather than selling a finished book, and I found it felt different. I was partially inspired by a Stephen Elliott essay in the Believer in which he didn’t know what to write about anymore.Īnyways, I love that essay of yours in Granta. I’d been considering retiring from writing since Taipei was published, and I was glad I was able, after multiple drafts, to examine and share that in my essay. She was open to me writing about not knowing what to write about, while also writing about Japan. Then we went through more edits and, in August, read each other’s books.ĭid Granta commission a piece on that subject or did you write it and then send it to them or what?Īn editor there, Yuka Igarashi, emailed me soliciting me, in fall 2013, for their Japan issue. You emailed me that month, recommending a Walter Benjamin essay, and you mentioned, ‘Just finished my book, Motherhood, which won’t be out till next Spring, and am just reading a lot and taking it easy.’ I responded that I’d also just finished my book. I finished the fifth and last main draft of Trip in July 2017. ![]() At first, I wanted to just expand the column into a book, but that evolved into writing a whole new book, which I began in February 2016 when I got a contract for it. Then my friend Gian suggested I write about Terence McKenna, since I’d been talking about him and his ideas obsessively, and so that summer, 2014, I wrote a column for Vice on McKenna and psychedelics called ‘Tao of Terence’, which was the earliest form of Trip. The earliest form of Trip was a column I wrote for Vice on Terence McKenna and psychedelics in summer 2014.Īfter Taipei was published in June 2013, I didn’t know what to write about, and in spring 2014 I published an essay in Granta about not knowing what to write about. When did you start writing this book, and what was happening just before in your life? ![]()
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