I’ve been thinking for a while that I would like to start posting my book reviews/personal essays/various musings somewhere online instead of just talking my boyfriend’s ear off, but until now, I haven’t been sure which online space would be right for me. Instagram is too visual, the less said about Tik Tok the better, and I would never start a podcast because I hate the sound of my own voice and I don’t have any microphones. And then, ta da! Substack called to me like a voice from heaven. A lot of writers that I admire are using Substack and producing work which is more colloquial and immediate than their novels and more officially published work, so here I am!
Or that’s the official version at least. The truth is this: my first novel, Gender Theory, was published in June and I’m currently about two thirds of the way through my next project. For the first time, I’m writing full time and being paid to do it, and disappointingly I’m suffering from a serious case of second album syndrome. I’m spending my days fighting with my manuscript, questioning my own talent or lack thereof, and reading novels that are far better than anything I could ever hope to produce. I need to scream into a void and the void is Substack. Sorry about it.
So why the name? One good egg is paraphrased from a dedicatory letter written by Ford Maddox Ford at the beginning of what is widely considered to be his greatest work - The Good Soldier. He was writing this letter to his wife Stella over a decade after TGS’s first publication, and on reflection, he wrote -
“So, on the day I was forty I sat down to show what I could do--and The Good Soldier resulted. I fully intended it to be my last book. I used to think--and I do not know that I do not think the same now--that one book was enough for any man to write, and, at the date when The Good Soldier was finished, London at least and possibly the world appeared to be passing under the dominion of writers newer and much more vivid … So I regarded myself as the Eel which, having reached the deep sea, brings forth its young and dies--or as the Great Auk I considered that, having reached my allotted, I had laid my one egg and might as well die … The Good Soldier, however, remains my great auk's egg for me as being something of a race that will have no successors and as it was written so long ago I may not seem over-vain if I consider it for a moment or two. No author, I think, is deserving of much censure for vanity if, taking down one of his ten-year-old books, he exclaims: "Great Heavens, did I write as well as that then?" for the implication always is that one does not any longer write so well and few are so envious as to censure the complacencies of an extinct volcano”
I found this letter very inspiring, despite the fact that I have tried to read TGS twice and failed both times (lol). I would like very much to lay my one egg (or, as Ford really means, write a very very good book) and after I do so, I would like to consider the text and say to myself - "Great Heavens, did I write as well as that then?" I’m not there yet, but I might get there one day, and don’t you want to be able to tell your friends that you followed me before I was famous?
Thanks for reading this introductory post and please do subscribe - and buy Gender Theory if you haven’t already to keep me in chardonnay to sip chic-ly while I update you all on my smart little musings.
A final note before I sign off: I am not good with computers and it has taken me an embarrassing amount of time just to figure out how to make this post. Despite an illustrious (read: chaotic) stint as a digital media intern, I am the Gen Z version of Carrie Bradshaw when it comes to technology and you’re going to have to bear with me. The road might be long.
