How Substack gave me an Existential Crisis

Too many figs to pick from

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Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar is one of the best novels I’ve ever read. The story follows Esther Greenwood, a young woman starting off college who has so many big dreams for herself, becoming a famous poet, lecturing at universities, and traveling the world to name a few. She certainly has the mind and determination to achieve these goals. As a matter of fact, the biggest obstacle keeping her from what she wants are the goals themselves, ballooning, fighting for every second of her fleeting free time.

For a book in which every page contains something profound, sad, or profoundly sad, one passage has lately been boiling in my mind. Plath writes, “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story… I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Esther literally watches her prospects wither away from her. To pick the fig that would be a happy life with a husband means discarding the fig of traveling around Africa. If she hesitates too long, both dreams will shrivel up and die before she gets the chance to pick one.

The Oldest Fig Tree in the Garden - by Simone Cottrell

I’ve always ruminated on what my “purpose” is as a writer. With two novels published in vastly different genres, and with works-in-progress of a similar range, I struggle between embracing all my interests and becoming a “master of none,” or narrowing my focus and getting good at one specific genre. Now that I’m on Substack and have been greeted with more creative freedom than ever before, this dilemma has inflated, haunting my days and nights. Don’t get me wrong - I have loved my experience with this platform so far. After an unexpectedly popular note I made regarding the subject, I got into contact with dozens of amazing writers who have introduced me to several topics I previously knew nothing about. Substack is a citadel for passion and brilliance, and that’s why making my mark so intimidating.

So here I am, left wondering what my role is as a content creator. In life, I scramble to give all of my interests the appropriate amount of attention. I love reading and writing, and it is these two passions that make up my mantra for why I want to be an author, but within these two pillars stand countless bricks that are my micro-interests. With literature, I adore books from Joyce’s Ulysses to Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars. I want to explore sci-fi and fantasy writers just as badly as historians and expats.

With writing, my own output speaks to all the hills I want to climb. Currently, my articles on Substack haven’t followed a consistent theme besides the aforementioned pillars of reading and writing. I’ve dubbed my page as the “Stream of Consciousness Substack” in acknowledgement of my erratic fascinations. All of my published and work-in-progress novels make up a wide range of genres too. Of the three books I’m debating on writing for my Substack page, one is a dark fantasy, the other a western, and the last a historical fiction novel set in Ancient Rome. All three ideas are as enticing as they are daunting. Then again, by tomorrow I’ll likely brainstorm a fourth idea, delaying my commitment to a project even longer.

The consistent piece of feedback I got from other authors on the platform is to write what interests me, and an audience will build. One of my dreams is to look back on my career as an author and see a diverse bibliography, with prose and characters of such quality that they allow readers to explore outside of their literary comfort zones. At the end of the day, I wonder if these limitations keeping me up at night are just as fictitious as the fig tree. Though Esther can’t achieve all of her goals in one lifetime, certainly she can grab more “figs” than what she’s giving herself credit for.

I read The Bell Jar years ago, yet its spirit haunts me to this day. Both protagonist and author suffered from ambition, misunderstanding, and depression alike, the latter of which losing her battle to mental illness when she was just thirty years old. If anything, Plath and Greenwood’s journeys remind me that my plight towards fulfillment, that painfully allusive concept, is not so bad in comparison. All of my writing and literary dreams won’t be fulfilled. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day. However, Substack is a helping hand reaching out for a few more figs than I can carry on my own, and for that I am grateful.