September 21, 2022

Dear Reader,

Book tour dates at the end of this M.P.L.

Do you have a persona?

Or should I ask, Are you aware that you have a persona?

Lucas Goodgame—the protagonist of We Are the Light—feels like he is living in his own hagiography. Everyone in the town of Majestic, PA thinks Lucas is a hero. Everyone except Lucas himself. Still, he tries to rise to the occasion and play the role whenever he can. The pretending—beneficial though it might be for the community and Lucas—costs him. Big time. The novel explores the lengths that Lucas Goodgame's psyche will go to protect him from those costs and enable him to maintain his shaky persona—until suddenly one day he can't.

The Man Formerly Known As Q

For a long time, I used to tell people to call me Q. Q was a bit of a persona that I created as a young teacher. And in some ways becoming Q was beneficial for me and probably many of my students as well.

The first freshman girls soccer team I coached began calling me Q back in my mid-twenties. It felt weird at first. I wasn't sure I liked it. But I really enjoyed working with this team. They were wonderfully vibrant and goodhearted young people. And as I was a new teacher at a high school with a storied tradition and strong culture, I figured it was best to find a way to be part of it. Matthew felt like a fish out of water in this community. The town was unlike any place I had ever experienced before. So I became Q.

The nickname was harmless in and of itself. It's what I later did with that nickname that became complicated.

I felt deeply inferior at the start of my teaching career. I was tasked with helping to get young people into colleges that would have never accepted me back when I was in high school, which—at the time—hadn't been that long ago. I felt like I had to be more than I was. Using the nickname my soccer team gifted me, I continued to tweak my persona.

Q was a tireless extrovert. Q was always willing to put the needs of others above his own no matter what. Q almost always said yes. Q often secretly felt like he needed to be more than he was and—while smiling in public—Q internally punished himself for failing to measure up. I think I did some good as Q, especially when I was a teacher. But I could only pull the trick off for a few years before I started to feel sick and needed to exit from the teaching profession.

Alicia and I sold our home and traveled for six or so months. Then I earned my MFA in Creative Writing while living with my in-laws.

As I worked toward my ultimate goal of becoming a full-time fiction writer, I did a few years worth of isolated thinking in my in-laws' unfinished basement, where I had set up a writing desk in a dark corner. No one bothered me down there. My mother-in-law worried that the mold might make me sick, but that dank solitary space felt like paradise. And in this way, I slowly came to terms with the fact that I am a hardcore introvert. Being alone feels safe. Being alone gives me strength.

The funny thing about introverted writers is that many of us are always trying—albeit sometimes in our own nontraditional ways—to connect with people, which is one of the reasons we publish. It's why I'm writing the M.P.L.

Alicia will tell you that I crave community. There is a true part of me that desperately wants to connect with others. When I am at my best, I think my writing celebrates this instinct. That was true when I was at my best as a teacher too. We Are the Light unabashedly champions the importance of community. But for whatever reason, my hardwiring makes it difficult for me to be around large groups of people for extended lengths of time.

Not a problem when I am writing alone in a room. But it sometimes gets tricky when I send my work out into the world.

I believe the pull between these two poles—my need for solitude and my yearning for community—creates an internal friction that can really fire up my writing.

I was once professionally known as Q the writer. I think I fell back into the old persona as a sort of defense. Especially during the Silver Linings movie days, which were often strange and intense for me. I was extremely grateful for the experiences and opportunities. I very much wanted to rise to the occasion and be who I needed to be—who the world wanted me to be at the time—but I found it hard to maintain the persona under such pressure for long stretches.

For a season, I was occasionally around A-list celebrities, both during the Silver Linings Oscar run and also afterward while I was working on screenplays. I was shocked to see very famous people privately struggling behind the scenes with many of the same issues I covered above. Some of those who seemed so calm, cool, and collected on the screen appeared to be suffering the most off-camera. Again, there's a certain tension needed to create art. So maybe seeing this tension of opposites in others shouldn't have surprised me, but it did.

In retrospect, I think I wanted to believe that there were some people who had found a way around the problem of persona and were exactly who they were by nature all of the time. Maybe there were some people who never had to pay a price. But I have come to believe that changing and/or hiding parts of ourselves to better fit in is just the norm, especially the higher you climb up the social hierarchy—and we better keep measuring what we are sacrificing against what we gain.

Are you who you really are all of the time? If not, are you consciously aware of what you are gaining and sacrificing?

My analyst and the Jungian work I have been doing both teach that utilizing a persona is a healthy part of daily life, as long as we know when we are using one. I think maybe when I was teaching and early on in my writing career, I believed I actually was Q, instead of Matthew Quick. I mistakenly assumed that I could will myself into being an eternal extrovert, even though I am by nature the dictionary definition of an introvert.

I can still pretend to be an extrovert for brief amounts of time, but I try to remember that there is a ticking clock whenever I do so. And if I stay in extroverted mode for too long, my extroverted carriage will turn back into a introverted pumpkin, so to speak. It's important to know this, so that I can make a timely exit and remain mentally well before the clock strikes introvert meltdown.

There were some people in the film and publishing industries who flat out refused to call me Q. They always called me Matthew and I think I subconsciously appreciated this. Something inside of me just stands up when people use Matthew. Sometimes, the people using my actual full name were the most powerful people in the room—names you would immediately recognize. In retrospect, I've started to wonder if these few people were so powerful due to their abilities to see through personas like Q. I've also started to wonder if what they were trying to get from me and my art was something purer than my Q persona could yield.

About a year or so ago, I began asking people to call me Matthew. My professional contacts all easily made the switch.

Some of my closest friends and family members have—upon my request—also made the transition. I'm grateful whenever people use my full name as I have never liked being called Matt. Matthew feels like me. Matthew feels grounded, real.

I still use personas. We all do, whether we admit to or even realize it. But I'm trying to be more aware and masterful, making conscious choices, rather than allowing insecurities or worries to subconsciously drive. I often fail. I try to be kinder to myself whenever I come up short. Maybe balancing all of the above is the work of an entire lifetime.

Lucas Goodgame is also working on coming to terms with the limitations of his old persona, which you will see when you read We Are the Light. He's trying to grow, like we all should. He's in a bit of a chrysalis for most of the novel. A lot of interesting things are happening in that transitional state.

Book tour dates: HIT THIS LINK 

(More dates and information forthcoming. Some events require registration and or tickets. There are free virtual events. And I am going to many cities. Please keep checking the events page for updates.)

Please also feel free to tell the people in your life that We Are the Light will be published in less than six weeks. I really appreciate your spreading the word. It helps more than you might think.

Have you pre-ordered your copy of We Are the Light yet? Signed copies are available for pre-order through Downtown Books in Manteo, NC. Just hit the SIGNED COPIES button on my website.

Okay, friends.

Until the 21st of October 2022, please remember that wherever you are in the world, whatever your current battle may be, your man in Coastal NC is sending you good vibes. Always.

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MATTHEW

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