Wild
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In July, I went to New York City and had familiar experiences: sidewalk squealing as a horde of rats scurried across my path, subway surfing on the uptown express, and staring dumbfounded at the lights blinking along the East River, vaguely recalling a time when I lived in this place, when its thrum seemed essential to my existence.
I don’t know exactly when I stopped needing New York, stopped loving it. But this conclusion felt exactly right to me, reminding me of the creative writing classroom aphorism endings should feel surprising and inevitable. If I go back and trace the lines, look closely at the moments and movements of my life, it’s obvious how I got here and also a bit unexpected. I left New York when I was 22, not wanting to be broke and unsuccessful in a city full of wealth and fame. Then I spent a year in D.C., which didn’t fit--too many politicos, not enough artists. Fate intervened, and I migrated to the Midwest where life was slow, where I learned how to write (sentence by sentence, bird by bird), how to walk on an icy sidewalk, seal a window against a winter draft, harvest eggs from ornery chickens, spot an owl in snowy woods. I learned to cook and rest, wander and examine, to live a slow, easy life that I later translated to the South. It’s been decades since I inhabited the bite of what used to be The City. Now that I’ve lost my taste, it seems almost inconceivable I ever craved the flavor. That’s the mark of good narrative--our characters (real or imagined!) evolve, following some expected paths and also taking unanticipated left turns.
The world is full of surprises these days--heat domes and wildfires, fish with human teeth, cardboard beds in the Olympic village (will they be recycled?). There’s smoke in the air, and virus particles too. It’s partly this bonkers world that’s driven me back to my novel, which feels just as surprising and plausible as the truth of our day to day. I love the weirdness and freedom of making stuff up. On the page, every possibility is in play, and choices are wholly reversible in exactly the way they are not in real life. Why not? is my guiding principle. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
A long time ago, I wrote this: “Why couldn't each of us become the unlikely thing of our wildest dreams?” Every morning I go to my desk, still slit-eyed from sleep, believing it can be so. I hope you too are neck deep in something you love.
J.
I sent my first newsletter out almost four years ago, in , which went to just a handful of folks, and since then so much has changed. It’s been almost a year since I left my day job to pursue this work full time. I want to thank all of you—I would not be here without your support and encouragement, and of course your amazing stories.
I believe that writing is joy and that everybody has a unique voice that deserves to be heard. My mission is to connect people with their creativity, help them tell their stories in an engaging, emotional way, and build community, which is essential to being a human as well as an artist. To further support this mission, I have launched a Patreon.
If you enjoy this newsletter, consider becoming a patron at the Reader level. If you want more direct connection to other writers, you might join at the Writer level; those patrons will get monthly writing prompts and also have access to a Slack channel where we can chat about process and challenges, trade book recommendations and writing prompts, share great lines and revel in the highs and lows of the creative life. I will post frequently on Slack, creating a welcoming space for writers of all levels and backgrounds to connect, the big cheering section that we all need. Those who join at the Editor level will get access to the Slack channel, monthly writing prompts, AND a bonus newsletter from me every month focused on the craft of writing. You can even request that I cover a certain topic.
Please take a minute to check out my Patreon page, where I’ve posted a writing prompt everybody can get started on right now and a special video for new patrons. Your readership, presence, and support means the world to me. Thank you again for traveling this road with me. I can’t wait to see what we come up with next.
The next yoga & writing workshop, Ground in Gratitude, will be Thursday, September 23. This is a great way to replant your feet on the earth and find gratitude that will feed the remaining months of this crazy year. These workshops have been such a solace, providing much needed space to slow down and find clarity. Early bird registration ends September 9th!
Have you seen Summer of Soul? You have to see Summer of Soul. I got to see it in a movie theater, near strangers, which was so moving I cried, but then also the movie is very moving, so I cried more. This film features amazing musical performances (Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, Mavis Staples, and so many more), but it also has a very effective narrative structure that cleverly conveys (to this white viewer) the broad and complex experience of Blackness. I felt a lot, I learned a lot. If you’re wary of venturing out, you can catch this film on Hulu. I’d still bring tissues.
This tweet by Sequioa Nagamatsu feels like the most honest and concrete statement about what revision is—reams of paper, dozens of drafts, rewriting every sentence over and over. I don’t necessarily tell folks who are just starting out on a book that this is what lies ahead, because it is definitely intimidating! On the other hand, this is what is SO GREAT about revision: you always have the chance to make it better. The work is worth it—you will see improvement and feel proud.
It’s also helpful to remember this when you read; sometimes we think an author just has a magic touch, that a fully formed book came tumbling out of their fingers. Nope: they revised it twenty gajillion times. They tore their hair out and laid on the floor and cried and considered going into banking. But they kept at it, and that made all the difference. Keep writing, friends.
My smart friend Caroline sent me to this brilliant essay by Richard Hugo, which is framed around poetics, but has themes applicable to all varieties of writing. Pour yourself a glass of iced tea and dig in.
To Go Poems
Somehow every summer I become convinced the season will never end, until one startling day in August I realize it will, that someday soonish, it will be fall. Before we go, some summer odes.
August Moonrise by Sara Teasdale
Midsummer by Léonie Adams
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