Writers & Readers: Even being mid is hard
An interview with writer Tembe Denton-Hurst on Herculean efforts and tapping into different muscles of the brain.
Hey friends,
The weather here in Brooklyn has been perfect—sunny but crisp. Recently, I’ve been going on morning walks to soak it in. I follow the same route to a small park in East Williamsburg where I hope the green of the trees will push my day in a positive direction.
(After all, being in nature is supposed to help boost creativity and lower stress!)
This park has a small free library, and one morning I brought a copy of my book and placed it inside before sitting on the other side of the round field to journal a little.
To my surprise, within five minutes someone approached the little library and began considering the books inside. I couldn’t help but stare, squinting to try and see… would they choose mine?
How fun! To see someone who was drawn in by the cover or title! To see someone connect with your story in real-time! (We rarely get to see this as authors unless we’re at an event, panel, etc.)
I watched as this person took out my book (!), read the back, and then set it down on the sidewalk outside of the little library and walked away.
It was so bizarre!! And while you can’t take these things personally, it reminded me of something Tembe said in our interview for today… about how some readers (or just people in general) don’t realize that even writing that book on a shelf—or in a free library—that you don’t choose for some reason or another takes a crazy amount of effort.
Let’s get into the interview…
Before we dive in, here’s a little bit about Tembe:
Tembe Denton-Hurst is a book-obsessed beauty and culture writer and author of the novel HOMEBODIES, which the New York Times called a "sharp, charming, and passionate debut."
She also writes the Substack , where she shares her hottest takes and the books she’s reading. When she’s not writing, Tembe can be found on her couch in Queens where she lives with her partner and their two cats Stella and Dakota.
(Fun fact, Tembe and I share the same agent!)
Hey Tembe, thanks for doing this for me! (And happy belated bday!!) I want to start with the same question I’ve been asking the others. What have you learned about the writer-reader relationship since publishing HOMEBODIES?
I’ve learned that it’s wholly individual. Some people have read and reached out to tell me how much the novel meant to them while there are thousands of people who have read the book that I’ll never speak to.
I’m my first reader, and so I write for myself first but I eventually do write for an audience.
My imagined reader is similar to myself in that she has a handle on the cultural references and undercurrents that are present in my character’s world but I’m also trying to generally tell a good story so that it can be engaged with by anyone who decides to read.
That makes sense. We have to be entertained or moved first before someone else will find our work entertaining or moving. What’s something a reader has said to you that stuck in your mind?
Someone told me I made them rethink the way that queerness can exist on a page and that was mind blowing for me.
There are so many books that have changed what I thought was possible in literature so it’s incredible to feel like I did that for someone else.
It made me realize that what I’m doing makes sense and that my instincts about queerness as ordinary and a backdrop for a story is valuable and necessary in contemporary fiction. It was a reminder to keep doing my thing.
I love that. It really is so validating when someone says something about the world you’ve been creating that makes you feel like “Okay, this is good” or that confirmation that you have to just keep doing you.
Okay, I want to switch to your professional experience for a minute. How has your work in the magazine and media world affected the way you think about “audience”?
I don’t think it affects the way I think about audience as much as it impacts my writing process.
I self-edit a lot as I go. I don’t vomit all over the page. I sketch and then fill in and fill in until it all makes sense and then erase whatever feels indulgent.
Writing for magazines has made me restrained, at least with my second book. With the first I just went for it.
I wish that was the case for me…. I throw a ton of words on the page even if they don’t make sense and then have to do so much editing on the back end. It’s hard to parse through sometimes.
What about your substack? Would you say writing there is different than magazine writing or fiction writing?
They’re different muscles and activate different parts of my brain. Fiction is absolutely the hardest and requires the most energy.
Magazine stuff is easier in some ways because I know what the structure is and I have to fit the work in a specific frame but it’s still anxiety-inducing because there’s so much visibility.
Substack is a safe space for me to write stuff that has nowhere else to go or to be the voiciest. It’s stressful too though, because I hope that people like it or it feels worth reading. Substack is probably where I think about audience the most.
What’s one thing you think most readers don’t realize about being a writer?
That even mediocrity takes a Herculean amount of effort. For something to be “fine,” or “not bad,” or “pretty good,” it requires the writer to do lots of things well, like characterization and plot and pacing.
To produce anything coherent requires a minimum level of competency and skill.
I can’t stop thinking about this. It takes so much work! I think sometimes I forget to honor that.
Do you read differently now that you’re a writer? If so, how?
I’ve been a writer as long as I’ve been able to read so I can’t really separate the two. Writing a novel though, I’ve learned to read for structure, tone, and pace.
I can better understand construction after doing it myself and can appreciate a book when it does those things well. Finished work is the best writing advice one can get!
Do you think readers care about who the writer is?
I do.
I think if a reader loves a book and finds out that the author is cool or has great style or an aesthetically-pleasing life it only adds to the fantasy of the work they’ve created. But I don’t think it matters much in the reverse.
So there you have it.
I hope you can get outside this week and find some nature. And I hope that if you’re working on something this fall, you can take note of the effort you’re putting in, honor it, and keep on doing your thing.
Charlee
P.S. As for the free library… On my way home, I put my book back into the little library again—maybe this person had taken it out because they were doing a loop and coming back for it? Who knows. Either way, the next day, it was gone. I’m going to choose to believe it’s with a reader who’s immersed in the story now!