hello

I like the idea of having a newsletter (again), a place to write about books or share writing-related thoughts. I deleted my substack about cats because I tired of writing on theme, didn’t love the pressure of trying to publish with frequency, and also because I became obsessed with checking the stats (not in a I want to have millions of followers! way, more in a, see, everyone hates you! way), and I didn’t like that feeling. I can’t help it, it’s pathological for me but I would wonder who unsubscribed, and I didn’t want to think of it that way. Any time I write, even newsletters, I battle to silence the critical voice in my head. The voice is a combination of several of my exes, every professor and manager I’ve ever had, and the person in my MFA workshop who once said as feedback on my story, I’m just not interested in this topic. I’ll try this: low frequency posts, and people can just look here to find them, or not, no pressure to read it in their email inbox or at all, and I won’t know the better if they do or not. I’ll just put the words down and they can live here.

reading

I’m reading A Little Luck by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Frances Riddle. I enjoy being inside the narrator’s thoughts; it’s written at very close psychic distance so I get to spiral with her as she struggles. The narrator, with a new name and appearance, travels back to her home country for the first time under the guise of work as an educator. She’s also a writer so the book you’re reading is her “logbook” of the trip. The book uses this neat technique of short, interspersed chapters with increasing information, so the first is a few lines about an incident with a train, then the next time a few more lines about the incident, etc, until you realize the significance of the train incident.

The abyss calls to you. Sometimes you don’t even feel its pull. There are those who are drawn to it like a magnet. Who peer over the edge and feel a desire to jump. I’m one of those people. Capable of plunging headlong into the abyss to feel — finally — free. Even if it’s a useless freedom, a freedom that has no future.

re-reading

I recently re-read Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson. I love Kevin Wilson’s writing and felt a connection to his work even before I read that he has similar disorder to the one I have. I loved Nothing to See Here, his prior novel. Now Is Not the Time to Panic hits on all things I love: kids making weird art, growing up in the late 1990s, small towns, a mystery of connection. I remembered that he wove together two time periods in the novel and I wanted to see how he’d done this, as it’s something I’m working on with my current novel-in-progress. My novel is set between two timelines and I’ve struggled with how to weave them together, since I wrote the “past” portion first, but didn’t want to just drop the “past” as a blob up front. That seems like too much. I went through chapter by chapter and noted when and how he switched from 1996 to 2017 (“present day”). He did it by starting in the present, switch to past for a large chunk, and then as the novel builds, the switches between the two become more frequent until you never go back.

writing

This summer I signed up for an asynchronous poetry workshop called To Light A Candle by m. klein. They send you poetry prompts through the regular mail which was fun, and the low-pressure facet of it all inspired me. They included the poem “What Is Love If Not Rot?” by Jane Wong, and the prompt suggested writing a poem with dashes, so I tried that. In typical fashion, I ended up turning my dash poem into a prose piece, but this unlocked the work.

making

I went to an art festival and nearby were shiny buildings. I kept thinking about the shine and wanted to make something shiny for my place so I made a shiny box covered in tiny mirrors.

end

My micro chapbook Commuting was published last month as part of the Ghost City Press summer series. You can download it for free here. You have to enter an address to download it but you can make one up. Or you can drop me a line and I can send you the PDF. It’s about reluctantly commuting around Seattle by bus, and the difference between the landscapes of Seattle and my hometown, Phoenix. I made the cover from one of my favorite childhood pictures where I’m afloat on a sea of sad late 1970s carpet, just me in my little plastic boat.

xx