I hope you're not reading this...
[content warning: gross college bacchanalia]
I hope you’re not reading this…
I hope instead you’re soaking up the glorious last days of summer.
I hope you’ve shut off your phone, hidden it inside the closet inside the closet, the wall behind the wall—so deep that you not only forget where you put it, you forget you have a phone at all.
But if you are reading this…
Know that the newsletter didn’t even want to get written. The house was loud with men last night, but instead of wailing about how they’d interrupted my new moon witchery, I dove into it with them, regaling them with tales about my disgusting youth.
“Your generation did go hard,” my boyfriend said after I told him about the bar where the moment you walked in people would crack an entire 8-rack, then douse you with it, where a friend of mine once urinated while sitting at the bar, where…
(you get the picture.)
My guy is two years younger, but there is a difference there I can’t deny. When you were born in the lean mean 70’s, even if only by a hair, things are different, subtly different, than they are for those born in the bubbly round 80’s.
I set my alarm early this morning to write but I did something wrong, and it didn’t go off. And so here I am with a newsletter to write and a friend to meet in a mere 27 minutes from now. We’re going to the beach and I’ve packed nothing, not even in my part of my brain that visualizes packing before it actually packs.
This is very unlike me.
But I think perhaps there is something to be gleaned from this.
Because I’m sending the newsletter out anyway.
Because even those I’m dashing out these words while scarfing down oatmeal, I know they have value.
I wanted to share about a book I’m reading that I’m so excited about, one that is already helping me break free of dumb rules about writing that I’ve been putting on myself like a CHUMP. Lately, over the years, whatever.
God, I hate creative limitations. And yet, I am no less immune to their siren song!
Earlier this month, I saw novelist and poet Sarah Elaine Smith read from her debut novel Marilou is Everywhere at the Out of State Plates Literary Series at Twenty Stories. (For those of you in Rhode Island, this series is a must-attend: the night was a brilliant discussion on craft hosted by Sarah Frye and I walked away feeling totally inspired about what was possible in my own writing.)
I even woke early the next morning, like 4 am or something, and instead of rolling over or scrolling through social media for hours, I got up out of bed and went to a snuggly corner in the living room, turned on the light, and began to read Sarah’s book.
Sometimes what you are reading is so good that you find yourself both in that moment, wholly absorbed in the story, but also whisked back in time to your first happy moments of reading. The pile of clothes I used to lean up against much to the horror of my mother. The soft glow of my childhood room when my dad read to me about cats in hats and girls named Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who would not throw the garbage out.
Sarah’s book is that kind of book, and so while I still don’t know what the hell else I’m bringing to the beach even though I’m supposed to be at Bri’s house in five minutes, I know I’m bringing Marilou.
And so, you can imagine my excitement when I discovered that Sarah offers a novel-writing course. I’m signing up today so the course will begin tomorrow. Who’s with me?
xoxox Sarah