Try Morning Seeding & Tending for Free––one week only!
Week of March 27-31. Also, LOTS OF SUMMER RETREAT NEWS!
Dear Writers,
I have been so sick for the last few weeks that for a stretch, I was incapable of reading, writing, walking, eating much, and I couldn’t even talk because I had laryngitis. The only things I could do were listen to James Taylor’s Greatest Hits (but only the first four tracks) and watch a David Attenborough nature video. Something about forests. Lying on the couch, my head on a pillow because I was too dizzy to sit up straight, I was reminded that fires can be the forest’s way of razing the detritus and making space for new growth. The older trees have a kind of fire-proof bark. I watched, horrified, the images of great trees burning, ash covering the forest floor. But sure enough, a few months later (in fast-action filming) the entire understory turned spring-green, full of ferns and new growth, birds, insects, small mammals.
photo credit: Andrew Larson
It was a needed metaphor. I’d arrived back from AWP at 4am on a Sunday, exhausted, having lost not just the regular three hours from a Seattle-Hartford flight, but an extra fourth hour since it was the day the clocks sprung forward. On the final leg of my trip, I’d gotten two alerts on my iphone telling me that I’d been exposed to COVID. In addition to already having a sore throat, I arrived home to a late-winter Climate Change-y nor-easter that filled our 100-foot pine trees with heavy, wet snow to the point where we had to concede that the tree-whisperer we hired last summer was right: we need to take them down STAT before they fell onto our roof and killed our children. (One, badly cracked, hung down ominously about fifteen feet lower than usual, right over our house, like a gigantic, needley finger of God.)
Exactly five days after I flew home, my normal cold turned COVID-y, even though I never tested positive. Sick as I was, I could only believe that going to AWP had been a giant mistake. I’d lost almost two weeks of work due to time in Seattle and time horizontal on the couch, I’d lost my sense of taste and smell, and my brain no longer seemed to be processing anything at all. The whole ordeal had cost over two thousand dollars, and for what? To be one in a sea of 12,000 writers, all of whom seemed way more accomplished and confident and (at the moment) healthy than I.
Watching the fire burn, I felt the truth of the images in my heart. Whatever was being destroyed in me at the moment would come back with the energy of a crocus. I did know that I would get better, even though it seemed hard to believe. Though right now, I have no idea how to begin my revision for Pimmit Run, I know the ideas will come to me. They always do.
I had to remind myself that going to AWP wasn’t all bad. In fact, it was great. I got to see Susan, my bestie from college. It turns out that she’s been listening to the same obscure podcast as me! History of the English Language with Kevin Stroud. I got to spend time with my new VCFA-grad friends, which felt rich and delightful. I went to oodles of panels, ran up and down multiple flights of stairs, drank way too many nitro brews, walked around the bookfair, heard Min Jin Lee’s keynote address, which was really a conversation, much of it is re-capped in this LitHub interview.
Also, I walked right past Min Jin Lee (Pachinko, Free Food for Millionaires)! She wears the most exquisite suits! Made me want to buy a suit and wear it with high-heeled chunky boots just like her).
I also saw and heard Rebecca Makkai (see below, second from left, in profile) who wrote The Great Believers, one of my favorite books ever, speak on a panel of writers on navigating the publishing world. I ordered her new one I Have Some Questions for You from Broadside Books, our local indie bookstore. I'll read it after I finish Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful and Jennifer Rosner’s Once We Were Home (see below).
I saw a fabulous panel on debut novelists over 50, another with the assistant editor for the Modern Love column, and I got to wander around the ginormous Book Fair and meet lots of literary magazine people, small presses, and I even met one of my VCFA faculty members in person, as well as fellow alums I’d only ever met before on Zoom
Here are some of the things I learned:
-Min Jin Lee saying that “the field work” e.g. the research she did for Pachinko and Free Food for Millionaires is what gave the book “depth and texture and joy.” Somehow this rang so true for me. I like to conduct interviews for my novels, because in talking to other people, you have another set of eyes on the ground, a real non-me point of view. As much as I might try to be objective, to see the world from another’s perspective, my characters are always going to be some kind of version of myself.
-Don’t worry about publication. As Angie Kim (Miracle Creek) said, “You don’t need to be in a hurry. It doesn’t matter if you get an agent or get published now or years from now. I was nearing 50 when I finished my first book.”
-It’s always about the actual act of writing, and the joys of being a part of the literary community, being a good literary citizen. That’s the kind of thing agents and publishers pay attention to. Since a big piece of what agents and publishers need to do for their debut authors is garner outside affirmation in the form of blurbs, the kind of promotion that happens naturally in this world of social media sharing, being a good literary citizen matters.
-Tell writers that they matter to you. At AWP, one of my new VCFA friends met Rebecca Hart Olander, an amazing poet from Northampton whose daughter, now 30, read my YA Plastic Angel when she was young. “It meant so much to her,” Becky told me later when I ran into her at a party.
Well, hearing that meant so much to me! It made me wish I’d braved the crowds to get my books signed by the authors at AWP. Here’s what I would have said. Min Jin Lee, do you know that your honest and candid notes in the Acknowledgements of Pachinko led me to go to graduate school? And Rebecca Makkai, do you know that I loved your novel so much I’ve given it as a gift to at least ten people? All of whom loved it as much as I did?
Just as we never know the effects of our writing, we never know the effects of a thanks. So here is mine. Thank you, reader. Thank you for your time and attention. In the end, that’s all we ever have to give.
Love, Nerissa
Morning Seeding & Tending—Free Next Week!
My daily Morning Seeding & Tending group is going strong! Every weekday at 10am sharp, a group of us gather to write for an hour on Zoom. Some days it’s me and one other brave soul. More often, there are four or more of us. We blink at each other, mutter some greetings, sometimes, and then I read a prompt—a secular prayer, usually (AKA a poem) and then I send it to the group via email and we set our intentions for the day in the chat. What do we write? Whatever we like! Some days I work on a novel, attempt to get my “first draft” quotient in for the day of 1000 words. Some days I edit, some days I submit to literary journals or work on a query letter, some days I write something to you. I always know I have an hour in the morning to get SOME writing done.
Some folks come almost every day. Some just once a week. The low cost of the group ($20 month via Ko-fi subscription) means that no one feels like they’re not getting their money’s worth. Writing with a group of others is powerful, just like meditating in a group always felt more bolstering to me than meditating on my own. I know there are others out there aligning themselves in the same way I am.
You can sign up here to join the group. Every month, you’ll be charge that $20 fee. When does the month start? Whenever you want it to! How about now? What will you do with your hour a day?
For this month: try it to see if you like it! Come for free the last week in March (March 27-31). To receive the Zoom address, write me at Nerissand@gmail.com with “Try MS&T” in the header.
Adirondack Retreat is BACK!!!
Finally! After a four year hiatus, the beloved weekend retreat in Keene NY is back, June 23-25. Come write with me in the high peaks! Retreat includes three delicious home-cooked meals, the best views in the world, and lots of time to write. Eight spots available.
Summer Writing Camp
For this one, I need your help. It will either be the week of July 3-9, or the week of July 10-16. Please fill out this short survey to let me know your preference! As soon as I hear from you, I’ll put it into the Book.
Great Stuff I Recommend:
Linda Castronova’s newsletter Starry, Starry Kite. This beautiful newsletter comes out once a month. It’s a tribute to Linda’s sister Beth who died last October and who was writing fiercely and bravely about her battle with cancer. Read this first post, and you will learn about a love that is so big it defies mortal boundaries.
Jennifer Rosener’s new book Once We Were Home. Actually, to tell the truth, I haven’t read it yet because it was sold out at Broadside Books, but I ordered my copy and I can’t wait to read it! Watch this space for my review when I finish my copy. Jennifer is a former neighbor and a dear friend whose first novel The Yellow Bird Sings was one of my favorites.
Also, Tár. Wow. Tom and I watched this incredible film with the stunningly great Cate Blanchett over the weekend. Without giving anything away, this movie has a maze-like quality. Things aren’t quite what we believe them to be. The film seemed to be asking questions about consciousness itself, and about how we hide things from our own consciences. What we were not told, what we were not shown on the screen seemed as important, if not more so, than what we were shown. And what we were shown was so beautiful, sad, tawdry and artful. It’s a very long movie—2 hours 38 minutes––but I want to see it again. Fortunately, I can because my son made us subscribe to something called Peacock, where it’s currently streaming.
That’s all for now. More soon. Happy spring, everyone!
Love, Nerissa