Whoops! It’s November
General Musings
Whoops!
It’s the most apt title for this newsletter because over the last two and a half months, I’ve been hoarding seconds like a dragon hoards jewels, unable to let go of even the smallest, and fearing to misplace them. And for that I’ve neglected my newsletter, trying to prevent precious time from slipping through these claws.
It’s been busy. Not interesting. Just busy.
I’m grateful to have found a school excited to sign me up to teach a variety of awesome classes and to have the time and space to work on my second novel with an amazing advisor through Emerson college.
I am busy though, so I’m going to have to cut this short with a brief announcement that my short story Coffee Love and Curly Fries has just been published in The New Absurdist!
I am very excited to have this piece published. It’s a story that has been floating around in my head for many, many years–since I was in high school. I just needed to wait for the second half of the story to walk by in pristine Nikes and a backpack full of coffee-stained and past-due homework. So I hope you enjoy Coffee Love and Curly Fries.
Craft Concern
I am crafting.
I am concerned.
Concerning craft, I have no wisdom right now, as I need to rush back to slamming my head against the writing wall, but I would like to present one unwieldy metaphor before I do.
The work will come together, but for now, I find myself in a writing space that I imagine might be similar to finding oneself in quicksand.
If someone created a mindmap of ‘90s/2000s kids greatest fears, “quicksand” would be confusingly bold.
QUICKSAND would be big and all caps-ed in the center of other odd culturally specific fears. Bloody Mary appeared in the bathroom mirror, the words: “Got Milk?” (my guts will never be the same), and the illegality of turning the light in the car on at night while dad is driving would be there in that list of collective 90’s kid fears.
But quicksand is way up there!
For some reason, there is a lot of my brain space dedicated to what to do when I inevitably find myself being slowly consumed by quicksand. I can’t remember to finish an email or take the graded papers off the hood of my car before driving away, but I can hear the steps to survive a quicksand attack as if I were in that crowded elementary school auditorium right now.
Don’t struggle
Let go of the heavy stuff
Lay down on your back
Calmly, purposefully, slowly backstroke to solid ground.
Maybe it was a useful assembly. Maybe it was a valid concern because despite my skepticism about the relevance of instilling a fear of damp sand into a generation, sometimes writing is like being mauled by quicksand.
And what then?
I suppose, in the midst of this writerly quicksand, the trick is to consider those invaluable lessons from the school gymnasium. They taught us the escape route, so when the quicksand catches, I’ll remember the safety advice seared into my brain (I’ll try “Just Say No” if it doesn’t work and “Stop-Drop-and-Roll as a last resort).
When the writing turns to quicksand:
Stop struggling against it.
Let go of everything heavy that’s dragging you down
Lay down
Calmly, purposefully, slowly get back to the work, and there will be solid ground.