Meet: Chloé Williams

NYC-Based Writer

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Join us as we chat with Chloé about her earliest memories of writing, who she’d have at a 6-person dinner party, a line from a book she always comes back to, and more!

For those who don’t know you, can you share with us a little bit about what you do, and where you’re based?

I’m a writer based in Brooklyn. I post a lot of writing all over the place essentially. I have two newsletters one free, one paid, where I sorta mull over a specific theme or look at whats been circling my brain for the month and explore it in personal essay/creative-nonfiction form. They come out the first and second friday of each month. Between each newsletter more or less, every other day I post other little writings on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and for my gen z-millennial cusps, tumblr.

Can you remember your earliest memory of writing and realizing, this is something you really connect to?

I wish I could say I was a child prodigy, or I always knew, but my earliest memory of connecting to writing in a genuine way was in college. I was in a creative writing course and I really loved the class. We all had great banter and discussions and my professor and I often would have moments where we were talking over a reading and I could tell I said something that effected him. Until then, I had no idea what genre I was interested in, but I was compelled by the memoir unit and I wrote a piece about my siblings. It was hard because I had to admit that there was a time in our lives where we didn’t speak to each other. It was no ones fault, so it was kind of everyones fault even though we were kids essentially. Right before the end of the semester I got an email from my professor. He had noticed I hadn’t signed up for any more creative writing courses and gave me a gentle nudge with, “I hope you’re sticking around.” I was devastated to tell him I was transferring. On the last day of class we could, if we desired, read one of our edited pieces and I read my short non-ficition piece. When I finished the whole room sighed. I remember that shock, the collective appreciation for my work. How it felt to tell the truth without restraint, and find that people were grateful for it. After a moment of quiet, my professor said, “It really sucks…to see such talent walkin out that front door.” It was over for me then. I knew what I wanted to do even if it hurt to do it.

With your writing, you have this incredible way of expanding on these experiences that are clearly very specific and intimate to you, yet end up resonating with so many individuals. As a writer, how does that make you feel, and has it influenced the way you approach writing?

I suppose when you write something that resonates with a collective it can be a happy accident. I find it very overwhelming and surprising at times. Things you think everyone had felt aren’t a shared experience. Then you write something you are sure is brand new and find many people know what you mean. I used to be outrageously lonely. I’ve said this before, but sometimes I felt like people couldn't see me. I mean that literally. Someone would bump into me or even try to sit in the seat I was already sitting in. Writing was not a remedy to that, but a place to go to where I could be seen. To find then that by seeing yourself you can also more clearly see others is like closing a gap. Suddenly you connect with the world in an entirely different way where perhaps you hadn’t felt so close. I appreciate anyones willingness to say to me this too is how I feel in this world. This knowledge though does effect my approach to writing, and has changed it with time. There is a difference in being authentic and being relatable and it is very obvious once you see it. I have to really parse out a thought and say is this what I think people feel in these situations? Or is this how I feel. I have huge documents of text I cut where I have only described what I think people will relate to rather than how I see the world. I like to think I am particularly good at catching myself in a lie.

We always have someone, or something that’s inspiring us at various moments in time. What’s been inspiring you lately?

The change of season. My siblings. Growing up. Therapy and the lifelong act of looking at who I am. Forgiveness. Grief. The unique language of romance between two people. Persephone (my birthday is the first day of spring.) Hades. (All my ex boyfriends were born in fall.) Kitchens. Beds. Commuting. Mundanity and it’s beauty. My creative friends and family who are all slowly moving away from part time creatives and into full time artists. My looming 6 year anniversary of being single and my two year celibacy streak. Lastly, my ex—always. Both the wounds he ruthlessly inflicted and the loyalty for which he genuinely believed in me to achieve what I have now done.

What’s one line from a book you always come back to?

Picture this: you’re 22 and you discover at the tail end of summer that your nearly 2 year long situationship has ghosted you because he met another woman. Your friend says her neighbor wrote a book called: Three Women and she thinks you’d like it. You read the first chapter that contains this line: “Men can frighten us, other women can frighten us, and sometimes we worry so much about what frightens us that we wait to have an orgasm until we are alone. We pretend to want things we don’t want so nobody can see us not getting what we need.” I remember I saw a man I knew holding this book, Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, and I was so mad. I thought, this isn’t for you! That line will not resonate so deeply, you will skip over it without another thought and my life has been shattered by it. It was presumptuous of me, but I take these words very seriously. They crushed me like you would a sponge after you finish washing the dishes. Yet they drained me of so much heaviness I had soaked up and had been carrying from my relationship. I so easily understood why I could never go back. I had been pretending all along and I was terrified of the man I was with. I had been waiting to orgasm at home and calling it pleasure. Sometimes I refer to my brain as an elevator and my inner monologue as my elevator music because I’ll get in a loop where I am thinking the same phrase over and over again. This is certainly a repeat offender.

What is it about writing that you find allows you to express yourself in ways you can’t with/through anything else (having a chat with a friend, painting, etc.)?

I am not afraid of what I write. In any other case I am afraid. Will the words come out right when I am speaking and will the tone be understood as I had intended it? Will a photograph, a painting, a collage, capture the microscopic forms of meaning and convey to an audience the precise image I have in my head of what it feels like to be in this moment? The visual frustrates me. I feel so much gets lost in my translation. My brain is telling my hand to draw a line and already that line is not how I imagined it. Speaking involves a skill I have never had which is to say, I am shy, I mumble, and I talk way too fast. I need time to mull things over. Writing though can’t promise anything either, but words, they come, and I only have to think of spelling. Otherwise, they are at my disposal and I don’t like to mince them. I want to tell you what I mean. I want to be understood and I have the time to do so. I’ll edit a paragraph, a sentence, and I can feel the image in my head and the words click into place with each other. I feel no reason to be afraid then, of what others might make of me.

Sometimes, the act of writing can feel daunting—where to start, what to write about, how long should something be, etc. For those who are finding themselves in this boat, what would be your advice for them?

This question itself is always very daunting to me because I always have an answer I want to give but refrain from doing so. I am going to give it now: you only need to listen. You probably already know what story you want to tell, something is saying write me, write me down, write this please! Yet for some reason it feels like you aren’t allowed to. You aren’t old enough or the center of your creative gravity is drawing you to the middle of a story instead of the beginning. You have everything you need already which is the desire to write at all. Do not let that feeling go to waste. Writing is a practice of listening very closely to yourself and detangling your perception of what is smart, what sounds good, and what is true. I mean this really and truly you just have to listen to that desire in you to write and it will show you where to go. Start anywhere that you are compelled to. And for younger people, I want you to write even though your feelings about being 13 will change, even though what matters at 22 doesnt matter when you’re 25. Hindsight may bring wisdom but this moment brings honesty. That is what we read for. There will always be teenagers, twenty somethings, thirty, forty, fifty somethings, who are desperate to connect to the world. By denying that story you deny them and yourself the opportunity to see and feel this world more clearly. Yes, maybe hindsight will offer you a different truth than the one that arose the first moment you wrote it down, but many things can be true at once. How you feel now is not any less real than what you will feel later. Be brave!

Of course, we have to know—how do you navigate writer’s block? Any tips for us?

Again this is a daunting question for me because the answer is the same. I try to listen to myself. Writers block is, to me, a communication of a kind. For whatever reason the words aren’t there. Have I been cooped up in my apartment too long? Is my internal compass pointing me towards a different activity? Or are the words really not there right now and in trying to force them to come I am most certainly preventing their arrival entirely? Writers block is a symptom of something else for me and I’m not a writer who sits at her desk for hours on end to get her 10,000 words. A big aspect of overcoming consistent writer’s block has been figuring out how I work. I am someone who does a lot of writing away from my computer. Paragraphs and paragraphs come to me in minutes and then I don’t write anything more for two or three hours. When the symptoms of a block arise I try to remedy it with whatever I’m craving. Sometimes I open up a different google doc and retreat to my daydream world where the pressure is less severe. Where in trying to tell a story I stumble into what I really feel or wish to say. Sometimes I give up. Maybe what I need is a break. I trust that I will write the piece eventually and make the deadline. When I relieve the pressure that says I have to know what I’m trying to say right now more often than not the words strike me. Listen to what your body is telling you.

If you could have a 6-person dinner party with anyone (dead or alive) who would you invite?

This is hard because many people I admire I have a feeling we wouldn’t get on very well. John Steinbeck for example. He’s on the list anyway. If I annoy him so be it. He annoys me sometimes too when I read his work. Cheryl Strayed certainly. Her words changed my life view. I had a different relationship with the world and other people in it after I read Tiny Beautiful Things. Philip Levine because he was the first poet I studied and truly admired. Thats three writers but 7 writers in a room could get…tense. I’d say I’d love to have a friend there too, particularly my one friend Kelsey Barnes who is also a writer/editor that I admire. She is really great at interviewing people. Me not so much, and so it would be very much the same as if I were asking Stienbeck about his dialogue. How do you do it! How do you do it so well! Okay now I am really not gonna pick another writer. My grandfather because he can tell a good story and his input on life is one I always appreciate. Him and Steinbeck would get on and he could put in a good word for me. Lastly, I’d invite Hozier. I would only ask him once to play the new album. If he didn’t feel like it I would be okay with that. That's still alot of writers but if you met my grandpa you’d understand why he is enough to break up that energy.

Before we let you go, what’s a book or piece you recently read, that you’d recommend to a friend?

The Average Fourth Grader is a Better Poet Than You and Me too by Hannah Gamble. I can’t explain the effect this had on me. So I will let you all find out for yourself.

Let’s Get Deep

What’s your theme song?

Sentimental Teardrop by Slow Leaves. A big thing this year for me has been overcoming my aversion to saying what I want. This song had a big role in that. I had this idea that in saying you wanted you immediately disqualified yourself from getting it. Like how they say you find love when you learn to love being alone. Well I want love! Being alone is fine. Pros and cons of course, but I have days where my lonlieness and desire for someone there crush me. Does that mean I won’t have it? That I’d failed a test? I used to think so. The song also says so much of what I am afraid to say! I do want to talk dirty and then feel embarrassed by it!

Night In or Night Out?

I am at a perfect mid point and always have been. Every so often, my friends and I throw into our Google Calendar “night out.” In which we plan ahead of time to go out past 9:00 and drink until about 2 or 3 AM. Which likely gives you an idea that we are more night-in people, but I certainly love getting casual spontaneous drinks at my favorite bar after work. I just happen to go home early often.

When do you feel most you?

When I first wake up in the morning. Especially if I am lounging in bed and no one else is awake yet. Someone once said I was the epitome of sleepy girl energy. My perpetual bed head is more powerful in the morning as a result of course and my dark circles make the most sense then.

What’s something you’re obsessed with right now?

Greek mythology.

Call or Text?

I love receiving calls.

When’s the last time you cried?

The other day in therapy. I was talking about my friends and how many of them are in really healthy long term relationships with people I really adore. After watching your friends make those 20-something year old mistakes I find their happiness moves me profoundly.

When’s the last time you laughed (like, big belly laugh)?

This is the hardest question of all as I belly laugh often. Particularly as a result of my old co-workers Dalia, Avery, and then my sister who I have a groupchat with. Dalia is the funniest person I know. We are constantly creating bits. Some of them have lasted years. One of which is we phonetically spell out the sound Woodchuck Todd makes in Easy A at the pep rally. The other day Dalia looked up how often we said it in our chat. She sent a screenshot of just the sheer amount of times we’ve referenced such a stupid joke and said “the grip Enggengengnegn has on us.” I was doubled over in my apartment. Naturally it is not very funny written out like this and explained so you will have to trust me.

Favorite follow on TikTok?

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music. If there is a way to say that without sounding pretentious I mean it in that way. From kindergarten to high school I took music lessons of some kind and I still can’t read sheet music. Musicians are one of the many wonders of the world to me. The quinn app too. I love them and what they are doing for female centered pleasure.

What’s one thing you would tell your 16 year-old self?

You are a real person in the world. I don’t know if this has yet to occur to you. People talk about teenage girls like this isn’t true, but it is. You are a real person in the world and there is a weight to the joy and anger you feel. Kids will laugh when they find out you are learning a One Direction song at your piano lessons and though you suspect this already I am here to confirm that none of it matters later. In 2020 Rolling Stone will write an article titled “How One Direction Became One of the Great Rock Bands of the 21st Century.” I’m sorry though, for how terribly the world hates teenage girls and their joy, how much they laugh at you. And for how little they perceive your real anger and pain. I don’t, however, want you to use this eventual indifference, this future leveling out, as an excuse not to care about the things which by 20 won’t matter. I want you to use this as courage to reach through the depth of your heart to the bottom. Sing very loudly to Midnight Memories in the car with your mom, cry at your prom because you did not get asked by anyone and it made you sad. Fight for your starting line up spot on the field hockey team because you think you deserve it and your coach doesn’t like you for a reason you will never figure out. Shake your bitter teenage fist toward the sky and laugh in spite because you are real and because you can. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. I promise it, I love you. I was never laughing at you.