Hi Friends.
It’s been a while since I’ve written like this, outside of revision season, outside of an announcement of changes in this space. It’s kind of nice to have this [gestures to a blank width of things] space again.
Though, too, it’s been a while since I’ve written in that sort of way, without a dogged focus as I worked through the novel draft, which I sent to my readers in early October. The plan was always to take some time off while they read. The plan was to do things like think about teaching plans for the rest of the year/start of 2024, about this newsletter space and how I wanted to use it. To read more, I thought. To return to thinking about short stories while I waited. To clean the damn shelves next to my desk.
What happened (insert your version of god here, laughing): I took over a workshop for someone. I began working with a couple of really bright writers on their MFA applications. I did not become any better at reading; in fact, I was reading so much of other people’s stuff I did not really want to read much of anything. I (happily, with much honor) read a friend’s novel manuscript. I started (and then quit) PT for my shoulder. I started going to therapy in person again for the first time since 2020. I got a kitten, and my hands were always on a laser pointer or holding a stick with a stuffed bird attached to it. I taught my classes. I ran my coaching group. I applied to many residencies and grants (some of which I have already been rejected from; life comes at ya fast!).
In short, October and November have had me working harder than ever, and not working, on my writing, at least.
And that felt okay, until it didn’t. The word that always comes up for me to describe what happens when I don’t write is squiggy. Is this a real word? I’m not gonna look it up, but I will define what I mean by it: I get sensitive, and restless, and low-energy, and on the worst days, despairing about the whole operation of a it, writing, yes, but everything beyond, too. I want to crawl out of my own skin, and cry, and mute the world (more than I usually do). Most of the time when I feel this way, when I get back to work this feeling disappears—nearly instantly—and that squiggy feeling stays at bay as long as I keep it up. It’s a two-part trick: remembering I’m a writer and therefore must write, and then keeping it up.
So what I’ve tried to do—with not a lot of success, honestly!—what I have been putting on my daily calendar, even though most days I do not do this, is what I call “30 minutes of something.” What’s the something? Some days it’s working on short stories, like actually writing scenes, or re-reading one I’m thinking about, or making a list of how many stories I have started and seeing if I have a collection (I do; the next step is uh, finishing them). The important thing is that whatever work I do is not for anyone else, that it’s just for me, and to make that space, which only I can do.
There were about two days when the 30 minutes was an hour of something, with the idea that the hour would become an hour and a half, and so on, but I had to backpedal on that when my schedule got packed with work for others again. As I always tell students, when the writing process—the practice of or the work itself— isn’t as linear or incremental as we’d like it to be, it doesn’t mean failure, and it certainly shouldn’t be a signal to give up, but to hold on to what you have done, what you can do, what you will do. Even if it’s only 30 minute increments, and you wish it was 3 hour ones.
The important thing is to keep doing something. We measure our progress in too small, and for that, too deeply pressured, increments I think. When I pull back I see it’s only been about a month and a half that I haven’t been consistently writing. But to the squiggy parts of me, that feels like forever. I’ve written about this before, both about this endless desire to measure what can’t be measured, and how the best thing you can do is remember that something is better than nothing.
It isn’t lost on me that I’m bad at doing Nothing of the sort that one would aspire to on weekends. A subject for another time.
Where to Find Me
Making pie, of course. It’s hard to beat a classic apple, and I’m back again with a chocolate cream pie I made once and now my children will always want me to make, and who am I to argue?
Teaching a fiction workshop again this winter with Sackett Street Writers Workshop, in person, which has been a delight. More details and application here.
Designing an intensive on novel openings that hasn’t gone live yet but will soon. It’s an online course, so accessible from anywhere as long as you have the opening of a novel that wants attention. Be the first to know by signing up for Course Offerings.
Looking at my shelves, and understanding I might never sort them, and letting that go, for now.
Having a hundred things to do as we get ready to host Thanksgiving, but last minute shopping for a bottle of Italicus, which makes a great champagne cocktail, which we’ll be kicking off our meal with.
Signing off with hopes that you’re doing the Nothing or the Something you really want to be doing.
Talk Soon,
Danielle
As usual, you have perfect timing with this post. As I struggled with my writing today, I finally said to myself, “just do SOMEthing”, which i proceeded to do. And I love the word “squiggly”. Happy Thanksgiving, Danielle!
This is the universe talking to me once again. Just a couple of weeks ago, @Cynthia Newberry Martin told me that during periods of intense interruption or work travel, she sets the timer on her phone for 30 minutes and screens out everything else. This helps her keep in contact with her writing. I've been thinking about this and now I will try it on those days when forces pull me elsewhere.