Hi, Friends.
I’d planned a longer newsletter—one I still want to write, perhaps in the new year—but I and everyone else in my house have Covid, or well 3 out of 4 of us still can’t pull a positive on a test, but we definitely have it, though luckily a mild version of it (thanks science, vaccines, boosters!), the sort I keep working through as I get to my end of year deadlines but have to stop and be like why are my legs/head aching and why does my throat feel like this and why does it take me four times as long to read a single paragraph? This is the first time I’ve gotten Covid, and also, as of this writing, still not officially gotten it.
In what was supposed to be the shorter part of the original newsletter, I thought it would be fun to look back on what I’ve done this year, writing and teaching wise. Often these end of year wraps are presented as a set of wins, but unless you’re a real newbie here, you know mine will include my losses, that I have to do this as transparently as I can to show you what a writing and teaching year is really like. I promise I did all my counting before I got Covid symptoms, so this should be accurate!
Here we go:
112 students taught in 8 classes (some repeats). 11 one-on-one clients for coaching and manuscript reads.
15 applications to residencies and grants. And would you look at that, also 15 rejections for residencies and grants. I was waitlisted at one, but cannot stay on the waitlist, because I’m now teaching in NYC those weeks. A few of you graciously sent me funds for application fees, and I still have some left, and I am going to keep applying in 2024 because you can’t win/escape your daily routine to become unhealthily obssessed with your work for 2 weeks if you don’t play.
4 submissions, a rather low number for me, but it’s because I was busy completing 1 novel draft, which maybe you’ve heard me talk about here, maybe? 👀
I came out of 2023 with 2 publications, starting the year with my essay on tracking time and asking what it means to write enough, at Catapult (RIP), and a piece of flash fiction, “The Math” in the latest issue of Water~Stone Review. This story was solicited aka the guest editor asked me to send a piece in. Okay, it’s only in my last read-through of this that I’ve realized how funny it is that the title of the only piece of fiction I published is called The Math. Numbers on my mind, clearly.
The number of times I thought what the fuck am I doing is uncountable and excludes the number of times I’ve thought I should have gotten a degree that would provide for a good anchor job as outlined by
on this podcast, here, but is definitely at least 1-2x a month.So far, according to my tracker (see link to Catapult essay above), I have spent 37% of my time writing, and 31% teaching; the remainder is taken up by things like writing this newsletter and freelance jobs and what I call writing biz: the admin side of things; even writers have to send practical emails and fill out forms and whatnot. It’s not a shabby balance there, though who wouldn’t want that writing percentage to be more than half my time? I made more money this year—my math says 44% more than last year, though don’t get too excited, it’s still a good amount lower than what your average college graduate makes1—but also found myself working 7 days a week through the fall to pull in that increase. A sustainable life with more writing in it is I’m aiming for, and am going to try and figure out, again, in 2024, what that could look like.
I’m always cranky and overwhelmed by having to repeat this hustle at the top of every year with wildly unpredictable results but I am grateful to have been cheered through all of this by all of you. This newsletter’s subscriber count remains small but mighty, but has grown 52% in 2023, mostly during Revision Season.
In the past few weeks I’ve listened to or read a few things that have stuck with me, including:
This article about mothering, and art-making. Read if the quote below resonates. Don’t read if you’re feeling sensitive to various artists, especially women, talk about their choice not to mother in ways that feed into the false binary that no, I don’t think we should stop discussing.
But this accusation, equating the embrace of motherhood with not just a rejection of art but a betrayal of it, will be grimly familiar to women artists who grapple with how to sustain their creative lives after having children and to justify the choices and compromises they make — because whatever those choices are, they are wrong.
Michael Cunningham on First Draft podcast, in which he says, with as much kindness as one can say this thing, that if you cannot handle rejection, the writing life is not for you. I’ve never heard it stated so plainly, and I don’t disagree.
Meshell Ndegeocello on Death Sex and Money on the impossibility of authenticity, mothering, creativity as escape, and of course, music.
I'm learning the power of the sound waves and the power of the word and the human voice. Its effect on your molecular structure and its ability to bring about a memory. There's nothing more powerful than a love song.
Like, I'm gonna cry right now. There is music that I can hear. And it just transports you like a time machine. To that moment.
Like many of you, I’m haunted by images of those who manage to survive amidst immense danger and grief in Gaza, the nauseating rise in numbers of children who have been orphaned or murdered in Palestine, and the stories that are emerging from those Israelis kept hostage by Hamas, particularly the youngest ones who are so eager to return to their lives and yet who are finding that they cannot of course just go on. I won’t link to any of these stories or images directly—they are not hard to find—but I do share the full range of sentiments of James Elder of UNICEF as expressed here, about our global failures to protect innocents.
That’s all the probably-Covid brain has for you today. If you’re a paying subscriber, you’ll get an In Process from me next week, with some novel updates post my conversations with beta readers.
Wishing you all a peaceful end of 2023.
Talk Soon,
Danielle
PS: The listing for my newest class, on novel openings, is now live at Center for Fiction. To get class listings first, be sure to subscribe to Course Offerings.
I know this was a stupid, demoralizing thing to look up. I know I’m in a place of privilege to, because I’m in a two-income household, with a spouse with a stable gig, to be able to survive on such numbers. But I always want to prepare those of you who are considering writing as careers that writing itself, even when combined with teaching, especially part-time, does not pay well. Take it from me and Michael Cunningham; transparency is often a bummer, my friends.
So few people are willing to talk about the difficulty of keeping your chin up when you're trying to make a living as a writer. (I, too, make it as a freelance writer, mostly because of my ghostwriting gigs.) Thank you for bringing these thoughts and conversations out into the open.