A year of pretending changes reality
Writing, reading, and watching in February
A little over a year ago, I wrote about pretending to be a writer, about how pretending to be a writer would allow me to do writerly things.
These days, I introduce myself to people as a writer. I’ve learned so much about writing over the past year, specifically about what it’s going to take to build a writing career.
Perhaps the most important and surprising to me has been building a writing community. In my case, it’s a couple small groups of people who are wildly supportive of me and my work. They ask me how my writing is going without expecting me to say anything more than “well, I opened a document today.” They respond when I endlessly hound them to read something I just drafted. They push me to try harder, dig deeper, and bleed a little more for my writing. In short, they believe in me and that is the widest ride I’ve ever been on.
I’m finally starting to understand what a writing life looks like, both the consistent discipline of writing and learning more about writing, but also the reading, note taking, reflecting, applying for grants, submitting work, research, and on and on. My goal now is to collect 20 rejections. I’ve got a ways to go. My challenge is trying to figure out how to organize my writing life so I don’t lose track of projects and whole pieces. It’s daunting.
In the meantime, here are a few things to share….
If you’re in Canada, Those Who Stayed, a six-part documentary series about Ukrainians who stayed after Russia invaded is showing on CBC Gem tomorrow. 23 February marks the two-year anniversary of the war. There is no end in sight.
I recently finished reading The Overstory by Richard Powers and am still wrapping my head around the bigness and the beauty of his novel. In terms of structure, it was so tightly tuned that I was marking the spots where narratives intersected so I can go back and check them again. The language was poetry all the way through, a great read.
CL Glanzing gets it - in term of what living in a country with free libraries can do for ones’ reading. I’ll add a library where most of the books are in English for my own happy happy joy joy situation with the EPL.
Currently, I’m reading Yellowface by RF Kuang and thoroughly enjoying the unreliable narrator giving behind the scenes peeks at the publishing world. Tonight I’m going to see American Fiction and this feels like the perfect prelude. Puts me in mind of other books about publishing like John Boyne’s Ladder to the Sky and Less by Andrew Sean Greer.
My daughter found a 30 year old package of lucky stars from Taiwan. They’re a kind of mini-origami project and she’s as obsessed now as I was then.
We watched You Are What You Eat on Netflix a couple weeks ago and find ourselves renewing our efforts to stay eat plant-based most of the time.
There’s been a lot of movie watching because the kids and I were all sick. They liked Spaceballs (to their credit) and we all enjoyed Oppenheimer. I’m mainly pleased that two more people in the world will giggle when I say, “Comb the desert!”
I’ve been thinking about the difference between silliness and funniness. Funny is great, guffaw eliciting stuff, but I think I really like silly. Silly feels a bit sly, less likely to be hurtful, and most likely to be joyful. I described a series of meme’s I sent to a friend as Christine’s Curated Collection of Silliness and feel like maybe that should be a thing.
I read this and am copying you. I started a writer's group....so far we are two, but have a slot at the local library...so who knows how it will end up. Thanks so much for inspiring me!