Writing like David Sedaris

🔥 Results from our 4th Thematic Prompt Challenge

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I rode my bike to the boat pond in Central Park, where I bought myself a cup of coffee and sat down on a bench to read. I lit a cigarette and was enjoying myself when the woman seated twelve feet away, on the other side of the bench, began waving her hands before her face. I thought she was fighting off a bee.

She fussed at the air and called out, ‘Excuse me, do you mind if we make this a no-smoking bench?’

I don’t know where to begin with a statement like that. ‘Do you mind if we make this a no-smoking bench?’ There is no ‘we.’ Our votes automatically cancel one another out. What she meant was, ‘Do you mind if I make this a no-smoking bench?’ I could understand it if we were in an elevator or locked together in the trunk of a car, but this was outdoors. Who did she think she was? This woman was wearing a pair of sandals, which are always a sure sign of trouble. They looked like the sort of shoes Moses might have worn while he chiseled regulations onto stone tablets. I looked at her sandals and at her rapidly moving arms and I crushed my cigarette. I acted like it was no problem and then I stared at the pages of my book, hating her and Moses—the two of them.

The trouble with aggressive nonsmokers is that they feel they are doing you a favor by not allowing you to smoke. They seem to think that one day you’ll look back and thank them for those precious fifteen seconds they just added to your life. What they don’t understand is that those are just fifteen more seconds you can spend hating their guts and plotting revenge.

My school insurance expires in a few weeks so I made an appointment for a checkup. It’s the only thing they’ll pay for as all of my other complaints have been dismissed as ‘Cosmetic.’

If you want a kidney transplant it’s covered but if you desperately need a hair transplant it’s ‘Cosmetic.’ You tell me.

I stood around the examining room for twenty minutes, afraid to poke around as, every so often, a nurse or some confused patient would open the door and wander into the room. And it’s bad enough to be caught in your underpants but even worse to be caught in your underpants scratching out a valium prescription on someone else’s pad.

When the doctor finally came he looked over my chart and said, ‘Hey, we have almost the exact same birthday. I’m one day younger than you!’

That did wonders for my morale. It never occurred to me that my doctor could be younger than me. Never entered my mind.

He started in by asking a few preliminary questions and then said, ‘Do you smoke?’

‘Only cigarettes and pot,’ I answered.

He gave me a look. ‘Only cigarettes and pot? Only?’

‘Not crack,’ I said. ‘Never touch the stuff. Cigars either. Terrible habit, nasty.’

I was at work, defrosting someone’s freezer, when I heard the EPA’s report on secondhand smoke. It was on the radio and they reported it over and over again. It struck me the same way that previous EPA reports must have struck auto manufacturers and the owners of chemical plants: as reactionary and unfair. The report accuses smokers, especially smoking parents, of criminal recklessness, as if these were people who kept loaded pistols lying on the coffee table, crowded alongside straight razors and mugs of benzene.

Over Christmas we looked through boxes of family pictures and played a game we call ‘Find Mom, find Mom’s cigarettes.’ There’s one in every picture. We’ve got photos of her pregnant, leaning toward a lit match, and others of heads. These pictures gave us a warm feeling.

She smoked in the bathtub, where we’d find her drowned butts lined up in a neat row beside the shampoo bottle. She smoked through meals, and often used her half-empty plate as an ashtray. Mom’s theory was that if you cooked the meal and did the dishes, you were allowed to use your plate however you liked. It made sense to us.

Even after she was diagnosed with lung cancer she continued to smoke, although less often. On her final trip to the hospital, sick with pneumonia, she told my father she’d left something at home and had him turn the car around. And there, standing at the kitchen counter, she entertained what she knew to be her last cigarette. I hope that she enjoyed it.

It never occurred to any of us that Mom might quit smoking. Picturing her without a cigarette was like trying to imagine her on water skis. Each of us is left to choose our own quality of life and take pleasure where we find it, with the understanding that, like Mom used to say, ‘Sooner or later, something’s going to get you.’

Something got me the moment I returned home from work and Hugh delivered his interpretation of the EPA report. He told me that I am no longer allowed to smoke in any room that he currently occupies. Our apartment is small—four tiny rooms.

I told him that seeing as I pay half the rent, I should be allowed to smoke half the time we’re in the same room. He agreed, on the condition that every time I light a cigarette, all the windows must be open.

It’s cold outside.

Hey subscribers 👋

You just read the essay Diary of a Smoker by the inimitable David Sedaris.

But wait…is he really inimitable?

I recently went down a Sedaris rabbit hole, buying his books and watching his Masterclass, trying to understand the man and how he puts together his essays. They seem to have this special mix of emotional depth, humour and relatability.

I wondered: what would happen if I closely analysed the strategic and tactical qualities of a Sedaris piece and then used what I found as guideposts for writing my own?

If you read my publication often, you’ll know that me and few other writers have been recently coming up with thematic writing prompts to respond to (you can see our previous prompts and submissions here, here, and here). The Sedaris-style guideposts seemed like the perfect ingredients for our next thematic prompt. So that’s what we did!

Here’s the video of me breaking down Diary of a Smoker and presenting the prompt.

Our previous prompts have all been relatively short and simple, whereas this one had many layers and rules that, ultimately, I found were too restrictive on me. So much so that I actually couldn’t produce anything I was happy to publish. It’s been a learning experience for me, for sure¹.

BUT, the more important news is that two writers DID submit responses to the prompt. And as has been the case with every prompt we’ve done, I’m so impressed with the quality of the work they have produced.

Sarah and Nat have both written something really special here. The gist of this prompt was to write about a big universal theme not by dealing with it directly, but by writing about a more specific personal topic or situation. I think Sarah and Nat have nailed it.

See what you think. And if you have anything you want to add or ask, please leave a comment below.

Here are the submissions.

Submission #1

The Art of Almost Being Fine

I was queuing for coffee at Java Lounge last Tuesday when it happened. The barista, a girl with purple hair and tired eyes, asked how I was doing, and I opened my mouth to deliver my usual "Brilliant, thanks!" But nothing came out. Not for three full seconds. Just me, standing there clutching my reusable cup like a comfort plushie whilst my brain scrambled for the right response.

"Fine" I finally managed, but it sounded hollow even to me. She'd already moved on to steaming milk, but I walked away shaken. For thirty-seven years, I'd been delivering that performance flawlessly. The fact that I'd stumbled over such basic lines felt like forgetting how to breathe.

That evening, I found myself googling "why do I feel like I'm acting all the time", which led me down a rabbit hole about masking. The articles talked about neurodivergent people and trauma survivors, but I kept thinking… aren't we all just performing normal?

The trouble with being good at something is that people expect consistency. When you've spent decades being the person who handles things gracefully, who makes conversations easy, who never makes anyone uncomfortable, the world comes to rely on that version of you. They don't know she's a character you've been perfecting since childhood. What they don't understand is that some days, your understudy has to perform the whole bloody show.

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The morning I had to give my AI talk, I woke up looking like I'd been in a fight. My eyes were so swollen from crying that concealer was useless, I looked like a panda who'd lost at poker.

Standing in the bathroom mirror, I practised my opening lines. "Good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to be here". My voice cracked on 'delighted'. I tried again. "Good morning. Thrilled to be with you today". Worse. Each attempt sounded more forced than the last, like a malfunctioning robot programmed for enthusiasm.

My friend had texted earlier "Still happy to step in if you need. No one would blame you". But something stubborn in me refused. These ninety people had carved time from their schedules. They deserved better than disappointment, even if I felt like a fraud.

What surprised me wasn't that I managed to deliver the talk, I've been performing competence for years. What surprised me was how good I was at it. For an hour, I became someone who was passionate about technology, engaging, even funny. The audience laughed when I said, "AI doesn't need therapy, doesn't call in sick, and never cries in its car. Honestly, I'm jealous". Several people approached me afterwards to say how much they'd enjoyed it.

"You made something terrifying feel accessible", one woman said. "I actually feel excited about learning this now".

Walking to my car afterwards, I felt oddly proud. Not of the content, I'd rehearsed that material for weeks. I felt proud of the performance itself. While my actual self was barely holding together with gaffer tape and stubbornness, my professional self had been absolutely magnificent. She'd carried me through when I couldn't carry myself.

That's when I realised that sometimes the mask is stronger than the face underneath.

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I've been trying to remember when I first learned to perform normal, but it's like trying to remember when I learned that you don't actually tell people what you think of their haircuts. The skill developed so gradually, so necessarily, that it became invisible.

Last month, my therapist asked whether I thought masking was holding me back. She leaned forward in that way therapists do when they think they're about to unlock something profound. "Don't you want to discover your authentic self?"

I'd been expecting this question, it's what therapists are supposed to ask, isn't it? Help you peel back the layers until you find your "true" self underneath, like some sort of psychological archaeology.

"Here's the thing" I told her. "I don't want to stop masking. I want to get better at it".

She blinked. This wasn't the breakthrough she'd been fishing for.

"The people who say they're 'done with fake'" I continued, "usually mean they're tired of other people's performances, not their own. They want permission to be difficult, to make their emotions everyone else's problem. They confuse authenticity with abandoning courtesy".

Real authenticity isn't about dropping your mask. It's about choosing when to wear it, and knowing why. It's about recognising that sometimes the kindest thing you can do, for yourself and others, is to be the person the situation needs you to be, even when that person feels foreign.

My mask isn't a prison. It's a skill. Some days it's the only thing standing between me and complete collapse. Other days, it's what allows me to show up as the best possible version of myself.

The morning of my talk, my authentic self was destroyed. But my performed self? She was magnificent. And maybe that's the most honest thing about me, I'm someone who can find strength in the performance when the performer has nothing left to give.

Everyone else is looking for their true self. I'm learning to appreciate all the selves I've got.

Rehearse, don't reveal.

By Sarah Ennett | You can read more of Sarah’s work at her publication Sarah Seeking Ikigai

Submission #2

The Power of a Meaningless Apology

I was sitting on a swing when my then-five-year-old sister came yelling at me. For some reason, she expected me to watch over her stuff while we were hanging out at the playground.

An hour later, she realised her water bottle was nowhere to be found.

I might have been seven, but I always had a knack for spotting bullshit. This was an example. I watched as she screamed with her eyes closed and jaws wide open. There were no tears in sight, but the commotion was loud enough for multiple adults to tell me to “just say you’re sorry.”

I felt their eyes staring at me and my cheeks started to burn. I muttered the words, ran to my mum’s car and demanded we go home. I crossed my arms throughout the entire ride and refused to speak to anyone the whole night.

The first taste of injustice was sour.

Things in my family hit rock bottom when I turned ten. My parents were not speaking to each other and my biological father had what I later found out to be anger management issues. Dinnertime was like a lottery, except we were playing for peace and not a million dollars.

I remember a day in 2008 when he came home and immediately complained about how he was doing so much for the family. He slammed his briefcase onto the floor, shouting about how he wished he didn’t have kids. I looked at my sister and kept quiet.

But that made him angrier. “Other people’s kids would greet them when they come home. And mine? I pay for your food, your housing, your education and all I get is this?”

Someone would whisper to me, “just say sorry.” So I did.

Fast forward to my 20s, I found myself being stared down as I was standing by my room door. It was 31st December, 11pm. Instead of celebrating the start of the new year I was dealing with yet another explosive tantrum over God-knows-what. The specifics never made sense anyway. He pointed his finger and jabbed me repeatedly, demanding that I apologise for making his life miserable.

I paused. This time, I had something better than “sorry” hidden in my back pocket. But I wasn’t sure if I had the guts to take that option. I wondered what was the worst thing that could happen, but glaring at his scrunched face made me feel momentarily so disgusted that I couldn’t hold back anymore.

I took a step forward, looked him in the eye and said “Good.”

That night, our neighbours cheered as they watched the annual fireworks display when the clock struck twelve. I was busy packing my things to get myself to safety. I called my boyfriend, who knew that this day would eventually come. I moved in with him for a month.

It didn’t take me long to block my biological father on all messaging apps, emails and social media platforms. It also didn’t take him long to set up new phone numbers to reach me. When he realised he couldn’t get a reply, he printed a hardcopy letter and told my sister to pass it to me.

She told me, “I think you shouldn’t read it.”

I left it alone for a week, but my curiosity got the better of me. I wondered what he had to say. Was there a chance that he would feel a tinge of remorse?

Instead it said, “I don’t deserve this treatment from you. If you don’t apologise, you will never be welcome back.”

I laughed when I finally found something I was truly sorry for:

Reading that letter.

By Nat Lee | You can read more of Nat’s work at her publication 10x Creator

There you have it! Absolutely fantastic!

Thank you Sarah and Nat for being such good sports even in the face of a more complex prompt. I’ve got some thinking to do about what the next prompt could be. Until then, thanks for supporting Creative Thought Partner.

Stay creative! See you soon!

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1. I found the Sedaris prompt too constraining. I think this points to a hypothesis I have about constraints: that in every project there exists a “constraint sweet spot.” If you have too few limitations on what you can create it’s overwhelming and you never get started. If you have too many limitations it’s crushing and you also stay stuck. But if you can set up just the right type and degree of constraints around a project, then, maybe, making progress will feel easy. Perhaps even inevitable. I’m curious—what do YOU think about this hypothesis? Let me know in the comments.