"Like driving in the wrong direction on a one-way street."

Maternal Indecision, Platonic Obsession, And Choosing The Adventure Of A Life Without Kids

The cultural category of “mom friend” implies that a friendship has been formed not necessarily through shared interests and affinity, but through a shared experience of raising children. And only some “mom friends” become friends sans the qualifying prefix.

I’ve found that the same is true of “writer friends.”

The Most Valuable Part of My Writing Life

Unless you are a writer who doesn’t care whether or not your stuff is ever read by other humans, you cannot function as a writer without “writer friends.” Many “writer friends,” (like “mom friends”) are made through the shared duress of various writer milestones. And then there are the “writer friends” who transcend into regular friends. And those are the friends who proofread your high-stakes emails, helping you decide whether or not your exclamation points are making you appear friendly and flexible or unhinged and desperate. The friends who insert the coffin emoji into a google doc comment as a way to tell you a particular line is funny. The friends who you will talk to for hours about anything BUT writing because they understand that talking about writing is kind of hell.

Emily J. Smith

is one of THOSE friends for me, and I am so beyond thrilled to celebrate the launch of her first book, Nothing Serious, which the New York Times called a “rom-com,” and which one of Emily’s and my friends calls (more accurately lol) a “traum-com.” Nothing Serious is my favorite kind of novel in that it’s difficult to categorize.

Lynn Steger Strong

, another one of my favorite authors of books that defy neat encapsulation, says that “Nothing Serious seduces with its yearning in a world that so often feels as if it has no space for yearning, compels and entrances with its questions and its mysteries, and satisfies with its humor and its honest.”

If you’ve been craving a book about relationships, performance of selfhood, the hell of defining oneself through the male gaze, platonic obsession, and MURDER, Nothing Serious is that book.

Sara: Emily! Your book is about a million things. How tech infiltrates our intimate relationships (and our relationship to ourselves). It’s about a murder. It’s about #Metoo. It’s a motherhood story that is NOT a motherhood story. AND it’s about one of my favorite topics: falling in platonic love with another woman.

Let’s tackle motherhood first. One of the ways Edie assesses her own “success” as a woman is through comparison, and motherhood is a big factor when it comes to mandated female milestones AND comparison. Can you talk about that a bit?

Emily: Oh gosh, yes. Edie is 35 years old and as single as can be, not necessarily by choice. She’s been very much focused on her career to date and doesn't feel any desire for children, per se, but feels she’s behind in this area compared to other people her age who are "settling down" and starting families. I certainly felt this when I was in my thirties, this feeling that I should be doing what everyone else was—so used to hitting all the milestones, checking the boxes—but found myself not necessarily wanting to. A big theme in the book overall is learning to trust (or even just discover) one’s "want" over the "should." I think this is especially challenging for women when it comes to the decision about children, arguably one of the biggest decisions of a lifetime, and one I continue to find wildly under-examined in literature and media. Motherhood is so pervasive in culture that unless you are absolutely sure kids are not for you (which I’ve found quite rare, I think many women are actually very torn on the decision), you can feel like you’re insane for choosing not to have them, like driving in the wrong direction on a one-way street. A turning point for Edie is meeting another woman who was ambivalent but ultimately chose not to have kids, to see this other example of a life up close. In the meantime, though, over the course of the book, she freezes her eggs, punting the question down the line.

Sara: I feel like there’s not nearly enough representation (in fiction or any type of media) of the very real hell of what this writer calls “the purgatory of being a fence sitter” re: motherhood indecision. You and I have discussed this OFTEN, but I’d love to get your thoughts! On the essay if you want, or just the topic in general.

Emily: It’s insane how little the grueling process of deciding is represented. There has (thankfully) been a rise of vocal childfree women in culture but oddly a lot of vocal childfree women say they always knew they didn’t want kids. What I'm most interested in are the women who struggled with the decision and the pressures around it, and ultimately still opted out. I've noticed, as I've spent the last, what—eight years?! Jesus—"on the fence," is that a lot of undecided people often end up having kids because, at the end of the day, they consider having children a new experience and they don’t want to miss out or regret not having done it. I push back on this for myself (this is also in the novel). As our lord Sheila Heti reminds us in the essential text on this topic, Motherhood, not having children is also an entirely unique experience—one that, at least to me, seems wildly interesting and underexplored—it’s just harder to see it that way when it’s framed as the lack of something.

For example, there is no way I would have been able to become a writer in my mid-thirties if I chose to have children. I do not have a spouse who can support me financially, all my time would be spent working my tech job to pay the bills and taking care of my child. As is, I've managed to live a kind of artist mid-life, with lots of space for creating and thinking and friendships and—I mean, I'll say—just, like, lounging when I need to (which is often!). Up until my mid-thirties, I had always been on a very specific track, climbing the corporate ladder, preoccupied with titles and salary, exercising obsessively, very intent on "proving" myself by traditional standards. I had a major shift in my thirties, and now this feeling of freedom feels so rare and covetous—it is certainly something, not just the lack of something. Ultimately, I’ve realized that for so many of us, it is not a binary question. I have a desire for kids, sure, but my desire for other things is ultimately stronger.

I've found the pressure goes into superdrive when a woman hits thirty-five. It can feel like the “last chance” to try, and for many of us this is the first "last chance” of our entire lives! Almost every other decision can be taken back or adjusted over the course of our lives. It’s a very intense period for this decision—thirty-five to forty—which is why I wanted to make my main character thirty-five.

Sara: There’s something so specific about falling in friend love - or parasocial love - with another woman. And it’s something I’ve experienced many times. It’s different from falling in romantic love, because you’re mostly falling in love with the core of someone’s personhood. Like, divorced from any consideration of romantic attraction or like, partner-viability. I’d love to know a bit about your history with this genre and phenomenon!

Emily: Sara I’m laughing because I know you intimately know about my history with this phenomenon bc I text you about it constantly and I’m so grateful you’re asking about it. I basically have a parasocial “love” interest going in some form or another with at least one woman writer at any given point in time. I find it so generative and energizing to identify people who you deeply admire and then kind of immerse yourself in their work. It’s very inspiring for me to see real examples of the type of people and work I aim to be like and that feeling does create some form of love, I guess, or at least a deep admiration. Obviously, Edie, the main character in the book, takes this to another, much more personal level, which causes her to make some wild decisions, but the seed of that feeling—being so drawn to another woman’s mind, wanting to understand and learn how she thinks—is very real to me. I’m proud (or maybe embarrassed) to admit that I have finagled my way into friendships with some of the women whose work I deeply admire. But I generally try to keep my obsessions to the work, not the person, because that’s all we’re really seeing, any speculation on them as an actual person is just that, speculation (something I regularly have to remind myself of).

Sara: There’s a section in Amanda Montell’s book, Age of Magical Overthinking, where she talks about this scarcity myth in terms of women and their ability to succeed in the world (like, find mates and jobs ha). And how this sort of kept her in this cycle of insecure jealousy re: other writers in her wheelhouse. And her life expanded in really incredible ways once she just started reaching out to those writers and expressing her admiration/love of their work. After all, she reasons, the very reason we’re drawn to another woman’s art is likely because we share some commonalities, right?

Emily: Yes! I love that so much. It’s funny because I spent all of my twenties in very male-dominated spaces, even in college, so my relationship with other women almost didn’t occur to me. When I started reading more women and surrounding myself with women in my thirties, I was basically overflowing with gratitude for their work, which allowed me to finally start to see and understand myself. I almost couldn’t help but burst with appreciation because it was really life-changing. I was a very late bloomer in terms of feminism in that way. My feminism up to that point was very second-wave—fitting in with the guys, the last woman standing in male spaces. I totally agree that my life expanded hugely and profoundly when I started openly appreciating the work of women, and forming deep relationships with women.

One of the first essays I wrote was about how watching Tina Fey and Amy Pohler and other women comedians in their milieu support each other felt incredible. I didn’t see that in tech at all, women lifting each other up. This was back in 2014 or something, it’s kind of amazing to see how much we’ve grown as a culture since then.

And absolutely we’re drawn to the work in which we see parts of ourselves, at least I definitely am. I think it’s most impactful when it feels like someone is kind of being “you” better than you are, articulating your own thoughts perfectly, for example. That’s when the inspiration becomes fiery for me.

Sara: Can you give readers a little taste of the particular female obsession in Nothing Serious?

Emily: So, the main character, Edie, is a 35-year old woman in tech, miserable on the dating apps. When the book opens, her best friend and long-time crush, Peter, is newly single for the first time in years. She assumes that now he’ll see what a horror show the dating apps are and how perfect the two of them are for one another and her misery will be over. But instead he lands his first online date with Anaya, a brilliant and beautiful feminist writer. On meeting her, Edie feels a deep, almost overwhelming connection to this woman and begins to read her books obsessively. She sees herself in the passages—things she’d always thought but had never articulated—and like we were saying, feels as if Anaya is a better version of herself, a version she wants to get closer to.

Sara: One thing that comes up for me in my own little obsessions (I think) is a suspicion that the woman I’m in love with is like me but BETTER. Maybe she’s funnier. Maybe she’s smarter. This rarely is a “she’s hotter” type of situation, which I think is interesting. We’re so primed as heterosexual women to view another woman’s attractiveness as threatening. But in the case of my platonic crushes, it’s not a factor. What say you?

Emily: Yeah that’s interesting, I’m the same—hotness is never a factor or motivator for me either. What I tell myself, though, is that if a woman is too hot then I don’t consider us similar enough, like clearly she doesn’t understand the woes of frizzy hair or whatever bullshit I’m insecure about at the moment. Also if a woman is very clearly concerned about her looks, like always decked in makeup or perfectly blow dried hair, I just think there’s a fundamental difference between us that kind of spoils the essential piece of feeling similar to the person. Granted, this is all in my head. Obviously, I can and probably am very similar to women no matter how they present themselves and I am not above caring about how I look (the number of hours I google hair creams and the dollars I spend on haircuts is beyond), but yes these are the things I tell myself.

Sara: Omg that’s hilarious and probably quite apt. The “too hot” factor. Well, and this also makes the shoppability factor quite dangerous. If I’m in love with a woman because her book or podcast or film or TV show changed my life, I am WAY more likely to care about what she washes her face with. This is just a lot more powerful to me as a consumer than influencer shoppability. The parasocial nature of things is fascinating to me. I sometimes dream about Hannah Neeleman (for example) AND many of my parasocial crushes, who I shall not name here lol. It’s just bizarre to me that it doesn’t really matter how you feel about a stranger online (positively or negatively); if you’re interacting enough with their content, your subconscious is likely to throw them into your dreams.

Emily: Oh god, this is why (as you know!) I spent hundreds of dollars on the Poog Gift Guide. A gift guide Sara, but I just bought all the facial products for myself, I couldn’t help it. The dream stuff is intense and very telling. I am a huge believer that our deepest truths lie in our dreams and what’s lingering in our subconscious absolutely makes its way in. I make a rule to not open my eyes until I recount my dreams, like narrate them to myself. If I don’t do this immediately, it slips away, which, to me, is a travesty. There’s no better way to understand what’s going on, how I’m really feeling at any given point in time. We both know that my parasocial crushes frequently make it into my dreams, mostly by way of rejecting me in some form or another.

Sara: There’s something also interesting going on with platonic love in that it’s not really an event or a relationship that’s mediated in a woman’s life. When we fall in love with another woman (either parasocially, or as is the case with Edie, IRL), we’re not sisters, wives, daughters, or mothers. Part of what makes it thrilling I think is that the intimacy (even if it’s one-sided) feels like it taps into our most essential selves.

Emily: Yeah! I think there is a real clarity that comes with it, like we’re discovering ourselves in other women. Maybe because culture generally for women is so very prescriptive, a part of us grows up very familiar with following rules or forming ourselves in relation to certain instructional ways to be (I’m thinking of all the YMs and Seventeen Magazines stacked on my night table as a teenager). And then when we see someone who represents (in our minds) the essence of who we are in some way, whether comically, intellectually, or just how they think about the world, it’s almost freeing. Like, fuck all that other prescriptive stuff, this is how I want to be and show up. In this way, it’s like we can apply that prescriptive mindset—which I think is very acute in women since culture is so frequently policing what we should and shouldn’t do and think and look like—to our own desires, to how we want to show up in the world, vs how we’re told we should show up.

I have always been very into role models in this way, even and especially as a kid. But most of my role models as a kid were men—posters of Michael Jordan on my wall, for example. I’ve always thought that if we can get to a point where men have posters of women on their walls, not sexually, but as role models, we’ll have finally made real progress on equality. People generally think fandom is childish, but I think it’s such a lost opportunity, to isolate the phenomenon of fandom to youth—it’s so fun and energizing to adore someone.