For the past two years, I’ve had this tacked up next to my writing desk. 

I discovered Tessa Hadley when I read her short story, “An Abduction,” in The New Yorker (I guess this makes me a late adopter). She had me from the first line: “Jane Allsop was abducted when she was fifteen, and nobody noticed.” 

Next I read one of her novels, The London Train. She lulled me into a feeling of security in the narrative, and then she veered off and turned it into an entirely different book from the one I’d expected, all without making me resent the trick at all. I found this profile of Hadley, and the quote above leapt off the page. I took her words as my new marching orders, though I’d heard some version of this advice before.

I can’t seem to attribute the dictum: “Write about what scares you the most.” It, or some version of it, is everywhere. I think I first heard it from a professor in my MFA program, who I think said he heard it from a professor of his. I guess it’s a saw, and that’s because it is good advice, but I’ve never been able to fully grasp it, or to articulate what scares me the most. Death? Humiliation? Loneliness? Where’s the fun in choosing just one?

I like Hadley’s advice because I can gauge it. It’s about how I feel. If I’m writing something that generates a yucky feeling in my throat, that has me reducing the font size on my computer screen so the nice lady sitting next to me at the coffee shop can’t see it, that fills me with horror at the idea that my mother or high school history teacher might ever read it, then I know I should keep going.

I’ve been sending a story out. I wish I could say it has been accepted by a prestigious literary journal, but the next best thing happened. A journal I’d be thrilled to have my work appear in sent this:

That’s right. Brutality. I’ve never felt edgier. I think I’m on the right track. If I ever get this thing published, I can’t imagine letting anyone in my family read it. In fact, I’m getting a yucky feeling in my throat right now.