In Process with: Abby Rasminsky

On keeping the faith to inch one's way back to the work

Left: Abby says this is a photo of her not writing, but I dunno, I totally want to clink glasses with her and get into it, and that seems pretty close to doing writer things, at least for the sake of this newsletter. Right, and this is a direct quote: "Desk where I am getting nothing done??"

Hello, Friends!

I’m so so excited to launch our In Process guest writer series with

Abby Rasminsky

of

People + Bodies

. Abby’s newsletter is one of my favorites on Substack, one which I frequently reply to the emails with OH MY GOD ALL OF THIS!, and that I’m entirely comfortable doing so in that all-caps, overwhelmingly enthused way. What I admire in Abby’s work and in

People + Bodies

in particular is how often she’s willing to sit in the space of not knowing—a particularly writerly quality, essential to our work as professionally curious people. She remarkably genuine in her curiosity, and tender, too; when I open that email and see her signature greating: “Hi, loves,” I feel like I’m getting a message from a friend who has long known me and who is thinking about me, who doesn’t have the answers but will sit with me and laugh over how insane it all is: trying to parent and write and find the moments of meaning while getting through. A lot of her work is subtly funny, and then it catches you in some tangle of your feelings, and that’s the good stuff, the honest stuff, for me, that keeps me coming back to the space Abby creates with her writing.

Abby’s a widely-published (New York Times! O, The Oprah Mag! other cool places) essayist. I particularly adore this essay on evolving views of the self and back pain and a witchy French woman with a big promise and years before I wrote my own essay about not selling a novel, Abby had (unfortunately for her) already covered that unsettling experience.

Like me, Abby teaches and writes and parents and is often waylaid by time. We happen to both have gone to Oberlin College, and though we were likely at the same parties, we don’t recall hanging out then (a shame! Get us a time machine!). She has an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia and has lived in cool places such as Vienna and recently, Cambridge, England, where her novel was good to her and she to it.

You can learn from her here, and follow her on Instagram here, and read her extensive Cup of Jo archives here. More about her work as a writer and teacher can be found here.

I’m so thrilled to have Abby as my kick off to the In Process series.

Below the paywall you’ll find her answers to the two questions, a sneak peek at her novel-in-progress, and lots of really honest, tender wisdom about going through the process of it all.

What have you been working on this week?