An interview with DW
I wish you'd talk, talk Wish you'd talk, talk Wish you'd talk, talk Wish you'd just talk to me
Like the bloggers before me, much of what I share on Substack takes inspiration from other writers’ Substack pieces. In this case it’s Rayne Fisher-Quann’s “in conversation with myself” linked here.
I can only share an original thought when it is preceded by the disclaimer that I have never had an original thought.
I had the opportunity to sit down with a real “friend of the blog” the other day to chat about her year. Unfortunately she couldn’t make it, so instead I talked to myself, about myself. It was a delight.
DW: Hi Dani
DW: Hello
DW: Thanks for sitting down with me to talk
DW: It’s my pleasure! Though I should note, we aren’t sitting down for the entire duration of this interview.
DW: Yes, that’s true. Part of this has been written while lying down in bed and the other part has been written on a walk.
DW: We tend to write a lot on walks, huh?
DW: Well we’re always thinking on walks, and only sometimes do the thoughts warrant being written down. And I thought I was the one asking questions?
DW: Why enforce such rigid binaries? Why can’t we both be both interviewer and interviewee?
DW: Why can’t ‘we both be both’?
DW: Both of us, each being both an interviewer and interviewee!
DW: Fair enough. Back to writing while walking—
DW: Right! I wish there was an easier way to write out my thoughts on a walk without pulling out my phone’s notes app. Especially now that it’s December and my fingers get really cold.
DW: Don’t you have those special touch screen gloves?
DW: Yes but they don’t work as well as I’d like them to. They make it harder to be precise on the keyboqrf.
DW: I see. So shall we begin the interview now?
DW: Haven’t we already started?
DW: Good point.
DW: So what did you want to talk about?
DW: What did you want to talk about?
DW: You’re the interviewing DW, I’m the interviewee DW.
DW: You just said this was an egalitarian interview where we both ask and answer questions! Ours is a mutually discursive conversation.
DW: I’ve been using the word discursive so often recently. I like that it means both meandering and wordy in a less-positive way, and also lengthy and thorough in a complimentary way.
DW: I don’t know if “discursive” is frequently used in a complimentary way…
DW: Well I hope it is. But I’m also someone who tends to write too much, I’m known to be verbose and discursive and rambling and…
DW: Don’t I know it. Where have you been using the word “discursive”
DW: Mostly in my grad school applications. To describe the connection between two different things. Like “this research pursues new analytic frameworks to mediate the discursive relationship between x and y...”
DW: What are you talking about?
DW: I don’t know, it was just a vague idea of the types of sentences I’ve been writing.
DW: Do you want to talk more about your applications?
DW: No. And not just because I’m writing this instead of editing them.
DW: Writing for fun instead of writing for school…many such cases.
DW: Did you know that “many such cases” is a Trump-ism?
DW: Yes I did, I am you.
DW: Right. But like, we don’t talk about that enough.
DW: That “many such cases” is a thing Trump said?
DW: Yeah! I thought it was from Binchtopia
DW: That podcast truly has a chokehold grip on your lexicon
DW: It does, I fear.
DW: Moving on…
DW: Onto what?
DW: Well this is your first Substack post in a few months, and likely your last of the year.
DW: Correct.
DW: So what are you thinking about?
DW: We really do love to ask people that question.
DW: “What are you thinking about?” ?
DW: Yeah. I feel like I ask it a lot.
DW: When?
DW: When I’m trying to get to know someone, or when I’m trying to connect with someone I know very well.
DW: Well can you answer it?
DW: It’s a bit vague, though.
DW: Well I mean it like in relation to Substack and your writing.
DW: Yeah I gathered that.
DW: So—
DW: So here’s what I’m thinking about my writing, I guess? I haven’t been super consistent, my intention to have a daily writing practice hasn’t been…
DW: Successful?
DW: I was going to say actualized. I have yet to actualize this plan to the fullest extent. But I do still journal and keep active in the notes app—though more frequently it is the latter while I wish it was the former.
DW: So not a lot of journalling?
DW: No. I tend to always have it on my person, but it’s mostly been used for like stand up material because I’ll bring it up with me at open mic.
DW: How has that been going?
DW: Well I haven’t been a lot recently because I’ve been away visiting friends and then doing lots of work and had a concert one of the nights and…well, basically November has been very busy. But I’ll get back into a rhythm in the new year, hopefully.
DW: And how have the actual performances been?
DW: Listen, I’m climbing cringe mountain, as the hosts of Las Culturistas would say.
DW: Can you elaborate?
DW: I mean I’m not good, per se. Granted I think I lack any real perception of how I’m doing. But I enjoy trying! I enjoy writing bits way more than performing.
DW: That’s really interesting. I feel like your inner theatre kid would really shine in the performance aspect.
DW: I think the most recent time I went was my best so far? But I need more practice.
DW: That’s what the future is for.
DW: I feel like that advice can be interpreted as either an encouragement of procrastination, or an earnestly hopeful outlook on currently not being good at something you want to be really good at.
DW: Don’t take the first wisdom!
DW: Duh! The only thing I procrastinate on is getting my driver’s license.
DW: 2025 is THE year, right…
DW: 2025 will be the year. Or a year. 2025 will be a year, that I can promise.
DW: What about your other writing projects?
DW: Haven’t made any huge dents. I’ve been getting ideas for scripts and dialogue which is really fun because I was in a mostly fiction space for most of 2024, and I haven’t really touched poetry or songwriting super frequently in the past few months. I think I’ve written like 1 complete song and fragments of another since April.
DW: What was the song about?
DW: Men.
DW: How do you feel about the fact that like 90% of your songs are about romance/dating/men and not other topics? Even when they aren’t personal or anecdotal, they are fictitious stories about heterosexual dating culture?
DW: Well clearly I’ve thought about it since I’m asking that question.
DW: You’ve thought about it, but how do you feel about it?
DW: That I’m a student of the Taylor Swift songwriting school?
DW: Be serious.
DW: I’m not saying that in a pejorative way! What’s wrong with having a tendency to use one creative medium to express your emotions about one facet of your life? It’s not like my other projects don’t pass the Bechdel Test. Also, even when the song is “about some guy” it’s also, more often than not, about me and my feelings.
DW: That’s fair. I think it’s interesting that your personal life, in this regard, seems to be something you process through songs, but other ideas are explored in essays or fiction. But, a lot of your projects do talk about men, even if in a critical way. So maybe they don’t pass the Bechdel test.
DW: I shouldn’t have brought up the Bechdel test.
DW: Yeah, this is becoming a kind of circulatory convo.
DW: Instead of a discursive one?
DW: Yes.
DW: Proceed with the questions.
DW: So what about the pieces you have published, which one has had the biggest impact on your year?
DW: Oh so now we’re getting to the real meat and potatoes of this interview
DW: I mean, I’m asking because I know you wanted to talk about it.
DW: Bunk Notes?
DW: Of course.
DW: Well, what do you want to know about it?
DW: You know. But do you want me to ask a question to guide your public-facing reflection?
DW: I don’t know if this is what you were getting at but I just feel—okay, well in the months since, I’ve thought a lot about it. I don’t want to retract anything I wrote, but I understand now that, in my haste to publish something that felt so urgent to me, I didn’t really thoroughly consider how people would feel about reading it. I got a lot of really positive feedback from people who felt really seen and validated, but there were also people who were hurt.
DW: So, no questions from me?
DW: No, sorry, you can ask.
DW: I’m just curious what happened, because you have always said that you think it’s the ethical responsibility of a writer to reach out to people who might see themselves depicted in the pieces written.
DW: Yes. The ethics of creative writing and self-narrativization are a big focus of mine.
DW: Right. You’ve often discussed this phenomenon in your creative writing workshops and in conversations with peers, explaining and agreeing with others that it’s wise to be proactive when publishing something personal—especially if it broaches touchy subjects—because, while it is your perspective, it doesn’t mean it is only about you.
DW: Yes.
DW: And you said that is especially the case when writing about personal relationships.
DW: But I think this time I forgot that it should also include professional relationships. Or the relationships that are both personal and professional. Or the relationships between writer and reader who are only connected through the subject matter of the piece.
DW: So you do have regrets?
DW: You’re wording these like answers waiting for my confirmation instead of questions eliciting my honest reflections.
DW: We all use words to shape the truths we uncover. ‘Do you have any regrets?’ —how’s that?
DW: I think that, again, I was impulsive. I have never written something the way I wrote that piece. It felt like the most cathartic yet natural expression of so many things I have thought about and felt strongly about for years. And I thought that if I didn’t publish it immediately, I would sit on it forever and it would be yet another essay/poem/song I’ve written that I was proud of for how well it communicated my feelings, but too afraid of sharing because of how intense those feelings were.
DW: Do you not think there’s value in writing for the sake of writing? Why do you have to share it?
DW: I know I’m not like G-d’s gift to Substack, I just thought it was good and I wanted people to read it. It was selfish, but I think I’ve gone on record as saying that writing, especially writing a personal essay, is a selfish endeavour.
DW: It’s also a vulnerable one.
DW: That too. I’ve reread the piece only once since publishing, and I think that the vulnerability, and particularly my sense of insecurity, is the piece’s through-line more than anything else. I was not trying to write a hit piece, I was just trying to process how I felt. I didn’t see it as a piece of narrative journalism, I saw it as like a diary entry.
DW: Really?
DW: No, I don’t know. Definitely not a hit piece, but maybe “diary entry” isn’t really fitting either.
DW: I think most people’s diary entries don’t talk about Jia Tolentino.
DW: Speak for yourself!
DW: So you’ve learned some lessons?
DW: Yes. But the awareness that people may disagree with or dislike or be hurt by what I write wasn’t exactly like a new lesson learned, more like the affirmation of a persistent anxiety of mine.
DW: So what did you learn?
DW: That I have to simultaneously 1) be more sensitive and 2) grow a thicker skin.
DW: Those seem contradictory.
DW: Yes they do.
DW: Hmm. I think what you’re saying is that you should be more upfront with people before publishing, but also stop caring so much about what other people think?
DW: I guess. But I do care what other people think.
DW: That’s why you need a thicker skin.
DW: Yes, but also I think being permeable to everything—including harsh feedback—makes you a stronger writer and maybe a stronger person? Didn’t I talk about that in the Bunk Notes essay? That I’m sensitive?
DW: I remember that part. But don’t pivot away from what we’re talking about.
DW: This is what we’re talking about.
DW: I know but like I want to dive in more to the goals of simultaneously maintaining sensitivity and building a thick skin.
DW: I think what I mean is that I want to be okay with the fact that people can think/feel/respond to what I’m writing about in ways that don’t make me feel good. Of course I want to have my cake and eat it too, I want to write and share everything that I feel and never have to face the reality that what I feel may alienate me from people and them from me.
DW: Right. But of course you can’t have it both ways.
DW: I know. So it’s a matter of knowing where my line in the sand is drawn, and what I do when it gets crossed.
DW: You use that phrase a lot, what do you mean by it?
DW: I mean that I want to feel confident in the things I’m unwilling to sacrifice, and know what to do when I feel I have to endanger one of those things.
DW: By things do you mean relationships?
DW: Yes. And community.
DW: Ahhh, I don’t know if we want to keep going down that conversational thread.
DW: What? Alienating myself from my communities by sharing my thoughts, beliefs, and feelings?
DW: It sounds like you do want to go down that discursive thread?
DW: No, absolutely not.
DW: Same.
DW: I do worry all the time though how many people think I’m like a crazy evil person?
DW: Oh?
DW: Like whenever someone is upset with me? Gut instinct is like “oh, it’s because you’re evil!”
DW: I meant “Oh?” Like “Oh, that was a harsh segue”
DW: But it’s not. That’s like the root of some of my biggest fears and why I don’t want to face the reality that people could think poorly of me based on the things I write and share publicly.
DW: Oh I see.
DW: But I don’t know why I have to make it such a morality thing. Like why do I feel like an irredeemably evil person whenever I make a mistake?
DW: OCD?
DW: Don’t pathologize me.
DW:
DW: I mean like, no you’re not wrong.
DW:
DW: But then again, what if I’m actually evil?
DW:
DW: Like what if I’m making it all up to justify my behaviours, which are, in fact, evil? What if I’m pretending?
DW: Girl we don’t have time to do this whole thing.
DW:
DW: Can we get back to the interview?
DW: Yes. But you think I’m a good person right?
DW: I’m not entertaining this reassurance-seeking behaviour. You know better.
DW: Yeah…..
DW:
DW: Sorry about that. I’m good to move on.
DW: So what else have you been writing recently?
DW: Mostly an essay and research proposals about feminist narratology.
DW: That’s cool! Have you been writing anything personal?
DW: A little bit.
DW: Are you going to make me spell it out?
DW: Huh?
DW: What’s new in your personal life that you may have written about?
DW: Oh, so you want to talk about my relationship?
DW: Well I am you, so it’s clear that you want to talk about it, too.
DW: I do. I love talking about relationships.
DW: Not just relationships in general, your relationship.
DW: Yeah, I like talking about that too.
DW: Do you like writing about it?
DW: Yes and no.
DW: Elaborate:
DW: I don’t know, I don’t dislike writing about it, but I just haven’t really—at least not in any of the ways I typically would write about these things.
DW: You’re being so vague.
DW: You’re right. Maybe I like speaking about my feelings in this regard in a broad, vague way. I used to relish the specificity, seeing the little details as these Easter eggs to be understood by a specific narratee—the person who I had feelings for who I wanted to read what I wrote and understand what I was saying without ever talking to them directly. I liked being cryptic.
DW: You couldn’t help using the word “narratee” to show that you’ve been reading lots of Susan Lanser.
DW: And what about it?
DW: Do you realize that you’re being cryptic by not being cryptic?
DW: Yes. That’s fair. I’m sorry I just couldn’t help but think about how I used to write about dating/romance/love interests/heartbreak/crushes/etc. In some ways, the periods of time where I’ve been most prolific were periods of time where I was really hurting over someone. And I don’t know if I like the stereotype that this kind of reaffirms, you know? Ugh sorry, this is taking us back to the whole Bechdel test convo from before.
DW: Well, it is clearly relevant to you, right?
DW: Sure, maybe. It’s mostly relevant when I’m actively thinking about the things I write, which is usually only when I’m actually writing.
DW: About that, can you elaborate on what you were saying before? About the way have, during certain “prolific” periods, written about the events in your love life.
DW: Sure. I don’t know, I wrote a lot! It was cathartic for me to, yes, process and communicate a feeling, but I think I got even more satisfaction from feeling like it was actually a good song. And the more I felt that it communicated a complicated feeling—so the closer I felt at the time to the weight of the subject matter—the better a song I thought it was. Now I look back and think that most of those poems and songs are fine. Some better than others, some I catch myself singing in the shower. Maybe a select few I would think about performing at an open mic or recording a demo of—just for fun. But there’s no album to be dropped; I’m not trying to become an indie pop star who tells intimate, confessional stories through highly specific and introspective lyricism and sonic influences from folk music and musical theatre soundtracks—that market is oversaturated!
DW: Lots to unpack there!
DW: I mean, I didn’t want to be an indie pop star back then, either. But I would have been happy to sing for my supper, if it meant someone that would listen. I needed someone to hear what my head and heart couldn’t stop talking about. My housemates were my biggest cheerleaders. I would come down to the common room at like 10 pm with my ukulele in hand, looking like I had just been crying (which I was) and would peek my head around the doorframe and say: I wrote something! Or sometimes I would borrow my housemate’s keyboard and tinker around while they sat meters away watching TV. They would listen and let me spill my guts and share my feelings, over and over, never saying anything new but believing I had completely figured out the newest angle of dissection of a two-month situationship. My friends let me sing the same song over and over, and made me feel like I sounded beautiful each time. They let me treat puppy love as the greatest discovery I had made, they took seriously what I held sacred. And then they celebrated with me when it stopped being so serious.
DW: Do you think this is a big part of friendship, listening to them say the same thing over and over when you can tell it feels so new to them each time, even and especially when it isn’t.
DW: Very specific question, and yes. Of course, the degree to which this is helpful varies greatly by circumstance. I think it’s important to know when to cut off the perseverating conversations, for their own good. And in the years since, I watched and listened to my friends as we’ve all taken turns needing soft places to land when we’re crashing out and down, and tough love to bring us back up to the surface for fresh air.
DW: That’s a nice metaphor you’ve crafted. You mentioned before that you would relish in specificity, but such hyper-specificity that it was cryptic.
DW: Yeah, I think that I thought it made me a good writer—leaving breadcrumbs that no one was hungry for.
DW: Do you still find yourself speaking in code?
DW: Now? I don’t know, hopefully I’m not because I’m certainly not trying to. I don’t feel the need to speak in code.
DW: So why don’t you be more specific?
DW: Remember that line in Paris where Taylor Swift sings “Romance is not dead if you keep it just yours”
DW: Of course.
DW: I feel that. But I also feel the inverse, the “ugh I want to talk and brag about this because I’m very happy”
DW: Is this a hard launch?
DW: A hard launch of what…that I am very happy? Sure!
DW: and?
DW: I’m very happy in a way that feels uncomplicated. I don’t have to shroud how I feel in protective narrative layers that obscure an emotional truth I hope will be reciprocated by the reader, or at least if they found the substance behind the style, I would feel truly known. That’s why you speak in code, so you know to trust the people with fluency, and beware the people who can crack it.
DW: But in all this rambling about protective layers, could it be that you making the conversation about the discourse itself actually diverts the conversation away from the emotional truth you proclaim to no longer conceal?
DW: Maybe. But that wasn’t intentional.
DW: Really?
DW: I don’t know! Not consciously? I don’t feel like I’m hiding secret messages, but maybe that’s because I’m not hiding secret messages in public writing to people who I could never share my feelings with in private settings. I’m not taking the draft of an emotional text message I never sent and changing the pronouns to make it about a fictional character, or changing the tone to make it into a tight 2 for my standup set. I’m not writing around something that I don’t want to admit to myself, I’m only writing around something that I don’t want to write about in the way that I have written about things in the past.
DW: What way is that?
DW: Secret code! Hidden messages! Bearing it all without incriminating yourself! I’m in my authenticity era, and part of my authentic persona is that there are some things that are just too real for me, and I’m so real for not being able to be that real on social media. I value my privacy, which is chic.
DW: You’re kind of annoying, you know that?
DW: I know you are but what am I?
DW: Touché. But don’t you think that all of this is connected to what you mentioned earlier—about the things you write being perceived by others?
DW: What do you mean?
DW: Well before you said that you write to process how you’re feeling, but now you’re talking about writing as a way to communicate said feelings with others. So now you’re still writing to communicate an idea to a reader, but you’re not obscuring emotional truths by encoding them or meandering around them, but you also don’t want people to interpret them as anything but your own personal introspective processing of emotions and experiences?
DW: No! Well at least not like how you just phrased it! Yes, I mean, I write to process and I write to communicate. I also write fiction to explore experiences that have little to do with me, and I write fiction to explore ideas that are close to me but can only be metabolized through something external to my own world. I feel lucky that there are people who read my work, but I can’t tell them how to interpret anything—and I wouldn’t want to! Earlier I was merely explaining that, though I am well aware that I can’t control how people will read my work, I still worry about it. I worry about hurting feelings and betraying trust. That’s never something I ever try to do intentionally. Maybe my tendency to speak in code is a product of this anxiety; if I complicate the delivery of what I want to say, maybe it won’t ruffle as many feathers. A riddle will stump people more than it will offend, right?
DW: I understand the noble angle of this tendency, but have you considered that it might also be a preemptive coping mechanism? It seems that, through your writing, you intentionally confuse people so that you will be misunderstood on your own terms—which is preferable to being misunderstood when trying to speak clearly about what really matters to you.
DW: Of course. That’s true.
DW: How do you reconcile that?
DW: We don’t have time to get through all of that—which is another way of saying: I don’t know? Must I have all the answers?
DW: So back to your relationship—
DW: You always manage to bring it back to a place of relationship
DW: Are you worried about how your lack of speaking-in-code will be perceived?
DW: I know that my boyfriend will read this and I’ll probably show him some of this before I publish. Even if I don’t, these are all things I’ve said, in real life.
DW: Is this not real life?
DW: I meant in person, like face to face—which, yes, is more “real life” than Substack.
DW: Anything else you want to write about? Any other big life changes?
DW: *shrugs*
DW: Are we doing stage directions now? Dialogue tags?
DW: I thought about it as more of an action beat?
DW: What’s been your beat, recently, huh? Any new hobbies or habits?
DW: Barre class. Sorry, Jia Tolentino’s “Always Be Optimizing”, but it’s such a great workout class. That’s it for hobbies, but for habits: a new shopping habit of mine has been going to the Bulk Barn close to one of my work locations and getting a snack for the week.
DW: What snack?
DW: Dried mango. I used to stock up on the Trader Joe’s unsweetened unsulfured, but Bulk Barn has a really good selection. Very sour—which is what I prioritize in a dried mango.
DW: Are you vying for a sponsorship?
DW: It’s getting late.
DW: Don’t say that, I’m sure Bulk Barn dried mango is
DW: No, I meant like, it’s getting late…we should start to wrap up…that whole thing.
DW: It’s only 6:45 pm?
DW: Yeah, but like five weeks after you started writing this.
DW: “You”? You mean we! WE started writing this.
DW: Remember that moment from girls season 2 when Donald Glover’s character said: “it was really well-written, but I felt like it didn’t go anywhere”
DW: Yes
DW: Well…
DW: I’m not trying to go anywhere.
DW: Good because this isn’t. We aren’t. Well, we aren’t at this moment. It’s time to say bye for now!
DW: The good thing about a newsletter is that it’s kind of just…not newsworthy? At least ours isn’t.
DW: Haha. True.
DW: But I hope this has been an okay interview.
DW: It has been!! Don’t worry, you’ve done a good job relating to the subject. Really, I’m impressed.
DW: Your earnestness is hard to decipher from your playful cynicism without hearing your voice out loud.
DW: I guess that’s part of my charm? Any last questions before we go publish?
DW: Please, we’re not gonna publish without at least another hour of editing. Our impulsivity muscles are relaxed these days.
DW: Right. Well, any last questions before we go edit?
DW: Well, what are you thinking?
DW: I’m thinking…well, actually, I’m wondering: do you feel like you know me a bit better now?
DW: Yes, I do. Do you?
DW: *smiles and nods*
DANI WOHL is an aspiring writer, by trade, and currently also other things, by training.
DANI WOHL is the creator of this Substack. She also has bangs now, so people can tell that she’s a woman with a Substack.