Good Writing Is Everywhere, Especially Online
Introducing my favorite online writers that inspires and excites.
Heather Havrilesky
I first encountered Havrilesky’s writing on the relationship advice column Ask Polly. Turns out, her most accessible work is also her main gig, where she writes weekly response letters to troubled women (mostly) for the online publication The CUT (a derivative of New York Magazine for the social conscious, lost, millennials).
Early pandemic times, her writings out of context resonated with me more than ever before. It was anything but proper.
My goals aren’t ambitious enough for my taste, and my downtime is too cluttered with distractions. I’m like a dog that needs a long run followed by a long nap. I need more work and better play.
This excerpt was taken from advice to anonymous titled “I’m Constantly Worried My Boyfriend Will Leave Me!”. Don’t expect me to explain my browser history, which made her a guilty pleasure read despite the curtains not matching the window.
Havrilesky definitely met her word count on school assignments though. Her tangential rants slide just far enough, and always circle back to double down on her point. She is me but older, wiser, and probably a therapist (Take a shot every time she uses the word vulnerability). She is me, but chose writing as her calling and fulfilled her creative potential. My love for her writing very much comes from my love for her the human.
Curious, I picked up her first book Disaster Preparedness: A Memoir and found growing up in North Carolina, in the 1970s, with siblings, divorced parents, and an estranged father, all very foreign experiences. I was hoping for similarities that landed us on the same team but instead found myself looking in from the sidelines. Why did I wish to see myself in her past so much? Is it because I wanted my future to emulate the physical and mental state she is in now? She turned fifty-one just last week and sure looked bomb.
Havrilesky’s writing is firm in their tone, obscene in their language, and sensitive in their approach. She’s the type of writer I’d like to work on becoming. Her language — always precise, her opinions — always blatant.
I do think op-eds like Ask Polly is her best format. Reading her other books, they are a compilations of anecdotes. Ideas weren’t congruent from beginning to end and left less of an emotional impact. Her writing throws a good punch but won’t last the fight.
Jay Caspian Kang
My favorite piece by Kang remains The High is Always The Pain and The Pain Is Always The High, published in The Morning News. The personal essay catapulted his freelance career, and ten years later, he’s in agreement it’s still his best work.
I recommend everyone to read it on their own. Even if you don’t naturally gravitate towards stories of addiction, gambling, or living on the edge, the themes still resonates. The narrator is valiant, convincing, and incredibly human. It comforts us in knowing we don’t need to have everything figured out. Some questions are designed to be answerless.
Kang embraces the his own hypocrisy. Self-proclaimed “(a) hater with a heart of gold”, he admits there is irony in him trying for fame on Twitter, and having done so most successfully through voicing his disdain for celebrity culture.
In my university years, I felt more of a personal connection to him. His writing always toggled an anger that I appreciated as an invisible relentless student. But tact and etiquette are areas he lacked. As I began my professional career, I found myself appreciating dealing with people that were more harmonious and absolute in their ideas. The discrepancy of ideation to action I found in Kang, mirrored parts of myself, parts I did not like. It feeds misunderstanding, miscommunication, I appreciate coherency and accountability more today in a way I couldn’t before.
