Transparent Tuesdays

Issue 255

You guys,

As of next week, you will no longer see Transparent Tuesdays in your inbox. I’m changing the name of this newsletter to Call Me Charlie.

It’s no secret that I write under a pseudonym. I frequently talk and write about the joy and freedom of pseudonymous writing. You know my real name is not Charlie, but in a way, I’ve been asking you to call me Charlie for the past five years.

Call Me Charlie is also the working title of my memoir, which I plan to publish under my real name (though my real name will remain a secret for a little while longer). In celebration of the name change and also a reflection of the past five years as Charlie Bleecker, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite pieces of content.

This was arguably my most controversial newsletter post—that time Sam went to Canada—the only post to which I received multiple angry responses from strangers telling me, fairly, to suck it up and get my act together. If I were to rewrite this post, I’d remove the following line because it’s self-condemning:

“WHY IS THIS SO HARD AND WHY AM I SUCH A PIECE OF SHIT????”

One of my favorite podcast episodes was my memoir deep dive on Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp, which was simultaneously an analysis of the book, Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth. I’m sharing this episode because of how much you can feel my enthusiasm for what I learned, though in my excitement I said the F word about seven times too many.

And here’s a post I wrote back in March of 2021: A Post-COVID Supermarket Fantasy. I’m sharing it because it’s light and fun and most of you probably haven’t seen it.

I was surprised at how hard it was to find pieces of writing that I really liked. Mostly, my favorite writing is the most recent thing I’ve written, because anything before that I want to change at least some aspect of it.

I also realized, thanks to Michael Dean’s recent post about what an essay actually is, that I am no essayist. He writes, “A great essay hits you with the power of a book in a fraction of the time.” My pieces don’t do that. My pieces hit you with a story and a struggle and hopefully elicit some big feelings. On my website I had an entire writing section dedicated to essays but most of them are just bits of memoir-style writing. You guys… they’re blog posts.

Two years ago, my old boss from LA called me. I told him I was publishing an essay a week and he said, “Riddle me this, Bleeck, what the fuck’s the difference between an essay and a blog?”

Andrew had followed my blog—which is simply “a regularly updated website, written in an informal or conversational style”—that I’d written for nine years. Now I was talking about essays.

I’m a writer! I wanted to shout. What I have to say is important! Real writers write essays, not blogs!

At one point Sam even said to me, of my writing, “They’re not really essays.” But I wanted to be taken seriously, so I told him he was wrong and I called my writing essays even though I’m a blogger at heart and a blogger in practice. So call me a writer, or a memoirist, or a blogger, but above all, call me Charlie.

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Until next week,

Charlie

P.S. I’d love to get some face-to-face time with you guys. Even just one Zoom call, I’ve found, makes me feel infinitely more connected with a person who comments on something I’ve written. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now, ever since Nate Kadlac opened up his calendar for 1-on-1 calls, and I quickly booked a call with him, and now we’re friends. Friendship and connection cannot happen only through comments and emails.

Is there something you want to talk about? Writing, parenting, publishing, hard conversations? My calendar is open, albeit barely. If my very slim window of availability doesn’t work for you, just reply and we can find a time that works for both us.