Ok, now what

Reflecting on the work that needs doing and some newsletter announcements

Hello! I’m Apoorva Sripathi, a writer, editor, and artist. If you think my work is valuable and would like to support me, follow 💌shelfoffering on Instagram, share this post, and consider becoming a paid subscriber. Thank you.

‘Woman Sitting’ by Joseph Johnston Lee, who is also a polymath like me. Image credit: University of Dundee Fine Art Collections

This is a strange time to be writing¹, but an even stranger time to be living. I made rice the other day in our new pressure cooker lovingly sent across countries and continents by my mother. And after careful washing and soaking, I overcooked the rice into a glutinous porridge – a white starchy goo that swelled to an overwhelming shape and seemed to ask me – “now what”?

Now what?

This is the fundamental question that has been looming in the landscape of my work. In the case of the starchy goo, I did what every enterprising, well-meaning but hungry person would do: turn it into something else. This has come to define my work – and my life by extension – where I start with a topic, let its contours be defined, and drag them till they are hazy². I think of this as snow, where each individual snowflake has a crisp and unique structure but together, they are powdery and yielding. As Lucy Sante wrote recently, “My conscious mind lacks the bandwidth, so I relegate many of the tasks to my back office.” And my back office powers all my endeavours, all the writing, cooking, drawing, and creating.

But despite this quiet sense of fostering powering me throughout, I see the work as a cumulative effort of all the work I’ve done before and after. And it has to start somewhere. Last year, I wrote about recognition and language; about the true nature of circumstance; on not having to prove yourself or your worth and to operate in faith; on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ vital words: “writing is how we interpret so much of everything that is around us.”

I cannot think of a life otherwise. I write because it is the only way to live and any other way of life is unsatisfying and frankly, worthless. From a diary entry I made on 17 January 2024³: “What’s the point? Now what? You wonder how to continue despite it all? Why write, why live? But you do it anyway, day in day out, time and time again, because there is no other way to live. Existence is futile. The only thing we can do is to live write.”

As I was working on this newsletter, on my recipe column, on my illustrations for our literary magazine, on my poetry, on my fiction, I came across Jenny G Zhang’s piece on writer’s block, where she writes about writing being “work and labour and discipline”. Which can be dismaying to hear. This shit is supposed to be easy – this is the tyranny of popular opinion re: writing. But good writing takes time. Even shit writing takes time and effort. I have always said and maintained that to produce a couple of good things, you have to create some really crap things. Great things can take an era. An epic is an epic because it is long, impressive, and takes a long fucking time⁴ – you have to labour over it with a Herculean effort, but the effort is pleasurable. If you cannot derive pleasure from writing, then what is the point?

Patches of self-doubt are but natural and every time I go through it, I have a few resources at hand, chiefly two screenshots of emails sent from the driver of my poetic inspirations, Louise Glück:

Via Twitter by the poet Claire Hong and viaTwitter by the writer GennaRose Nethercott

Writing doesn’t get easier, but labouring over it does at times. “Periods of blankness and silence” can be desolating, disorienting our self-doubts, but what I think offers a hand of help is situating oneself in an ecosystem of other writers and artists who are going through this as well, a collaborative wellspring of inspiration. I’m taking this tangent because not only did Jenny and Lucy’s offerings reach me at the right time, but because my own wellspring seemed to have been depleted recently.

Without going into too much detail, I discovered that someone I know and helped (till very recently) was siphoning from my work – work that I consider akin to life and self – without so much of a smidge of attribution or credit. I confronted them privately because I have come to firmly believe in not grandstanding. That notoriety it brings is both fleeting and frightening and I want no part in it. Unfortunately, it is not wholly a private matter because they are publicly taking and therefore benefitting from my ideas, thoughts, style, approach, and all the energy I’ve poured into creating my writing self. Situations like this make you feel helpless and make you exorcise the demons of value and self-worth. As Subrina Heyink wrote in her newsletter, “and she is not the first person to plagiarize my work. But she is the last person who will destabilize me and remove me from the gratitude I feel for my work practice.”⁵

These last few weeks, I have been reflecting on self-worth, value, and friendships but also marinating in gratitude. No one does anything alone, neither is anything of value created in isolation. I may write alone at home but I feel connected by an invisible but taut string of collaboration by the good people writing alongside me, all of us pouring into ourselves and into the collective. I have also been thinking about firing one last response, but who wins and who loses in this private war of words? Does it really matter when one is secure in the truth, in the knowledge of what happened, and in oneself? So why am I writing about this here? And now. After reaching out to them privately, I was attacked⁶ for painting myself to be the victim, for building narratives in my head – the fragile and insecure responses I had never come to expect – for being a writer with an unlimited amount of value. But then I thought, I have to do the work. I have to “risk reconciliation…or facing my part in things” as The Feral Astrologer recounts. I have to face myself in these things even if no one cares.

The work has to be done. The work is ongoing.

Announcements:

• To come back to the overcooked rice, I quickly turned it into a cross between khichdi and pongal. So I had a brainwave to start a new column⁷ called ‘shelf help’, where subscribers can write in asking for help with their cooking questions (or writing or art) – whether it’s repurposing leftovers, what to do with overcooked rice, or how to turn everyday cooking into something more joyful, I’ll be happy to answer these questions and point you in (hopefully) the right direction. The answers will be available for paid subscribers only but if you leave me your name and mailing address, I can send the response to you over email. The form will be available from this Saturday to everyone!

• More and more, I’ve had legacy weighing on my mind: what do I leave behind, even if it’s something insignificant? Success isn’t just popularity but authentic joy at pursuing creativity and I want to move towards that intentionally. So if you are a paid subscriber (I’m happy to open it towards free subscribers for a small fee⁸), I’m looking to organise let’s say creative huddles. That could be a small writing group where we all write a short essay based on a prompt. Or we all draw with oil pastels in silence. We can exchange feedback if you like! Reach out to me if you would like something like this. I would like to show up for other creatives more!

• I’m also thinking of writing more well-researched essays once a month and more shelf care to pepper throughout so I give myself time and energy to come to you with better work.

• Our literary magazine chlorophyll is due to launch this month, after many unwanted delays. We’ll go live in a few weeks so please keep an eye out for us and follow us on social.

• I’m also working on something more physical, details of which I’ll let you know by this month or maybe next.

1. Personally at least

2. Eagle-eyed readers will know that I write about everything and nothing, even when I all want to write about is butter.

3. If it comes across as painfully angsty, it’s because I fucking am!

4. All this swearing!! I’m re-watching both Veep and The Thick of It.

5. Shared to me kindly by Devin Kate Pope

6. In response

7. It’s new for me but people like Tamar Adler have been doing this for a while now!

8. Again, I’m not the first to do this but I’ve been inspired by Alicia Kennedy and her series of workshops, which you should check out.