Begin Again: How to Face This Year
Hint: with a lot of love plus some reading, writing and community
Happy new year, writers!
Below, you will find:
-a seasonal miracle story
-my reading list for 2025 so far
-how to enter the Raffle for Your Little Blue Weekend
-my review of the Dylan movie A Complete Unknown
-a recipe for the most delicious way to eat Brussels sprouts I’ve ever found! Which is saying a lot
Seasonal Miracle story first: Over the holidays, I dimly recalled an article I’d read or a conversation I’d had with someone about a book I’d never heard of.
Somehow, in this conversation (or maybe article), I came to the conclusion that this was the book that would lift me from the gloom that I was feeling as we approached 2025 with its looming portents and unpleasant realities.
But then I forgot the names of both book and author. Oh, well, no worries—I had a tall stack of books after Christmas, see below.
Then, my family went to the Adirondacks for the weekend, saw A Complete Unknown at the Palace Theatre in Lake Placid (more on that below). When I returned, there in my mailbox was the very book I wanted to read: This Is Happiness by Niall Williams, who turns out to be an Irish-born Brian Doyle, writing the kind of uplifting gut-punchy fiction I crave.
The book arrived in an Amazon envelope with no gift tag or evidence of who sent it. (It was not my own shopping amnesia either. #1, I wouldn’t have bought that book from Jeff Bezos. #2, it wasn’t in my Amazon order queue.)
So I posted the video above, and heard back almost immediately from the great Jeff Passe of my Thursday Fiction group. Then I remembered! It was he who recommended BOTH A Complete Unknown AND This Is Happiness. Go Jeff!
Reading List for 2025 So Far
Enter the Raffle For Your Little Blue Weekend
DRAWING WILL BE JANUARY 31!
What do you win? A weekend at my Little Blue Studio––which I often AirBnB on weekends at a rate of between $520-600 per weekend––to do with as you wish. Bring a partner, bring your writing, enjoy the high life in Northampton MA (we’re a little over a mile from downtown). Can’t get away in the next few months? No problem! We will find a time that works for you! Offer good for five years.
Ways to enter the raffle:
-Join Morning Seeding & Tending (with this, you get Community Writes, too)
-Attend the January Retreat and get 8 entry tickets.
-Become a paid yearly subscriber to this newsletter (you get Community Writes with this)
-Become a Wind Beneath Owl’s Wings (Founding Member) subscriber and get 10 entry tickets*
Below is the AirBnB Listing for Little Blue.
*If you become a founding member, you also get to be in Community Writes and Morning Seeding & Tending for as long as you retain your founding membership to Symbols & Cymbals.
Ways You Can Begin Again!
Come to the New Year’s Writing Retreat, January 10-12 for focus, snacking, and walks in Childs Park for inspiration!
Daily Schedule:9:00 AM: Gather in Nerissa's cozy studio (or on-screen for our virtual friends) for a quick chat and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it 5-minute lightning prompt.
10:00 AM: A second prompt arrives to shake up your creativity.
12:00 PM: Break for lunch because, let’s face it, you can’t write your magnum opus on an empty stomach.
1:00 PM: Third prompt of the day to keep your pens and keyboards humming.
1:01 PM - 3:00 PM: Deep writing time—channel your muse or at least pretend to while eating another snack.
3:00 PM: Sharing hour! This is your chance to dazzle us or share that sentence you love-hate.
Meals:
We’ve got your snack needs covered: coffee, tea, fizzy seltzer, and light bites to fuel your brilliance. Lunch? Nerissa’s signature hearty grain-and-veggie salad will keep you energized. Prefer your own food? Bring a bagged lunch to pop in the studio fridge or nuke in the microwave. If you’re feeling adventurous, take the lunch break to zip into Northampton (a mere 1.3 miles away) and grab something local.
Why Winter Retreat?
Because winter is for cozying up with your writing dreams, wrapping up the old year, and plotting the new. It’s a weekend to wake up your muse, deepen your writing practice, and maybe even make a few new friends while you’re at it. Let’s retreat, write, and snack our way into brilliance!
Join my Community Writes Tuesday evening group! For the price of becoming a regular subscriber to this newsletter, you get a writing group with a feedback-free open mic. We begin with a prompt at 6pm, then we write for an hour. At 7pm, there will be a half-hour-long open mic, with up to six readers reading for 5 minutes apiece. Friendly feedback in the chat. (Free to any member of Morning Seeding & Tending––part of the $20 a month the program costs.)
Or, for more accountability, join Morning Seeding & Tending, which also gets you Community Writes Tuesdays. Subscribe via Ko-Fi to become a regular member, or try it for a month via my website. We are a jolly yet non-naggy accountability group of dedicated writers who show up, set intentions in the chat, listen to a prompt (or not) and then get the writing quotient for the day done. “Done” being, at times, better than “brilliant and immortal.”
3. I have a spot in my Thursday Fiction Group, though this is open to writers in any genre. Groups are all accessible on Zoom as well as in person thanks to my excellent Meeting Owl camera with mic. See image above, though these people aren’t actually in the Thursday group. But Jeff Passe is!
My Thoughts on A Complete Unknown, reprinted from The Nields Newsletter
The Palace Theatre is one of those old, gorgeous Art Deco halls from an age when going to see a movie felt decadent. The perfect place to see a movie that takes place in the early 1960s.
I was entranced from minute one. In tears at the portrayals of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger (Ed Norton, who should win an Oscar for his uncanny and moving performance). I was a Timothée Chalamet doubter (I mean, I’ve always liked him, but I couldn’t see him as Dylan), but glad to say I was proved WRONG. He was perfectly enigmatic and captured Dylan’s innocence, hunger, genius and frustrating cluelessness about his fellow human beings and their feelings.
Also, guitarists—did Dylan really play so many of those early Freewheelin’ songs in drop D? If so, thank you, Chalamet, for showing me exactly how to play them!
Yes, I know there were many factual liberties taken. Who cares? The gestalt was exactly right. It’s an act of incredible generosity for a movie maker to take such care with getting the details right for a period piece like this one. The very New York City street signs were that old schoolbus-yellow they used to be! The view from the GW Bridge! How did they do that? Not to mention reproducing the old Viking Hotel at Newport instead of the swanky upgraded one we stayed in, back in the 90s. And how did Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez) completely GET Joan’s voice? I mean, THAT is hard to do.
My family loved the movie too. As the resident Dylanologist, I got asked a lot of questions, but the most interesting one was from Tom. Why, he said, was it such a big deal that Dylan went electric in ‘65 at Newport? Were people really that mad? What were the stakes in that moment for the likes of Alan Lomax, Peter Yarrow and Pete Seeger? What did they think would happen to folk music if Dylan plugged in? If folk music is meant to be “pure,” shouldn’t it, by definition, remain obscure? If so, why the worry about Dylan defecting from the genre? Well, because regardless of his questionable personality and obviously shabby treatment of others, everyone somehow loved him in a possessive way. There was something so irresistible about this cranky, obfuscating kid that made everyone want to say, “He’s mine. He’s on our side.”
I’m dying to know what you all think, since you are fans of folk music, clearly, and also at least tolerant of electric music—in fact, many of you may prefer pop and rock to folk. Here we are, a hybrid ourselves, after all, and you seem to be reading this newsletter. I had this thought, as the camera panned out above the stage at Newport, that Mangold the director was saying to us, Can you believe this silly tempest in a teapot? Why can’t people just let the times a’change? Clearly, the times were doing just that, anyway. And in the end, this is just the artistic journey of one person, who, contrary to what he says half-jokingly to “Sylvie Russo,” was not God.
But maybe that was just my thought.
Brussel Sprout Caesar salad
I got this from the New York Times Cooking newsletter, as I get most of my recipes. This is c/o Melissa Clark. I’ve modified it a bit. I also prepped the dressing ahead of time. Because I added anchovies, I needed less extra salt than the recipe calls for. You definitely need SOME salt in order to properly massage the raw half of the sprouts.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
2 pounds brussels sprouts, stems trimmed off
⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more as needed
Salt and freshly ground black pepper (do not use too much salt!)
1 small baguette or chunk of sourdough bread (about 8 ounces), preferably day-old, torn into bite-size pieces (about 4 cups)
½ cup grated Pecorino Romano, (about 3 ounces), plus more as needed
1½ tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, plus more as needed
3 garlic cloves, finely grated or minced
Optional per Nerissa: 2 anchovies
PREPARATION
Step 1
Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Cut about 1¼ pounds brussels sprouts in half lengthwise, and put them on a rimmed sheet pan along with any leaves that fell off as you were cutting. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon oil and a [small] pinch of salt and black pepper. Toss well, then spread sprouts in an even layer. Roast until golden brown and tender, about 12 to 20 minutes [I’d roast them a bit more than this, but that’s cuz we like them a bit toasty], tossing halfway through.
Step 2
On another baking sheet, toss bread pieces with 2 tablespoons olive oil to coat evenly. Spread in an even layer, sprinkle with salt [or don’t!], and bake in the same oven as the brussels sprouts, until crunchy and evenly browned, about 14 to 18 minutes [less than this is what we found], tossing halfway through. Taste a crouton and add more salt if needed. Let croutons cool on the baking sheet.
Step 3
[You can do this part ahead of time] As the sprouts and croutons roast, use a food processor fitted with the slicing disk, or a chef’s knife, to thinly slice the remaining ¾ pound brussels sprouts. Place slices in a large bowl.
Step 4
Make the dressing: In a small bowl, combine cheese, lemon juice, garlic, [anchovies], ¾ teaspoon salt and several grinds of black pepper. Slowly whisk in remaining ⅓ cup olive oil until emulsified. Taste and adjust seasoning by adding more salt, lemon juice or pepper, if needed.
Step 5
Pour just enough of the dressing over shaved raw brussels sprouts to coat them. Using your hands, massage dressing into the sprouts. Taste and add more dressing if needed.
Step 6
Add croutons and roasted brussels sprouts to the bowl and toss well. Taste and season with more cheese, salt, olive oil and lemon juice to taste. The salad should be lively in flavor and nicely coated in dressing, but not oily. Serve immediately.
That recipe looks AMAZING...happy new year lovely Nerissa! Here's to supporting and leaning on one another, whatever this year may bring...