Hello friends,
How is it August already? This year continues to fly by. Which brings me a flutter of panic. Have you read the reports that we may only have two years left before the collapse of vital ocean currents, which will essentially trigger miserable weather for the entire planet? Sorry if my dread is now your dread! I’d like to put all industrial polluters, and billionaires with their private jets, and destructive warmongers in time-out for a year, and see what happens with emissions. Can we do that? Can we do something?
But I digress. I intended to be joyful in this month’s newsletter! I just returned from a week away in the mountains of Oregon, on a river’s edge, and it was wonderful and restorative. I didn’t answer emails, I was outside every day with my family, and I read three and a half books. I feel grateful for the privilege of rest. Like many of us, I needed it.
Near Mount Hood, we spent a day at an amusement park called SkiBowl for my son’s birthday. In the winter, the place caters to skiers, but in the summer, visitors can take the chair lift up in order to ride the mountain slide down. I am viscerally afraid of heights — it always sounds thrilling but when I venture on a ferris wheel, say, or high up on a cliff-side road, my vision gets woozy, my heart pounds, and I get nauseous. It’s involuntary and miserable, and of course it happened on the chair lift. But while my body was freaking out — “I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to DIE!” — the calm half of my brain still went, “Wow, this is so beautiful!” Truly a perplexing experience.
I didn’t question going up at first. My kids wanted to ride the slide; we’d paid for tickets; and the chair lift came so fast, whoop, I was on it and flying up before I could think twice or consider the consequences. And I found that this spontaneous leap out of my comfort zone (and onto the lift) led me to build endurance with being out of my comfort zone
The first ride up was terrifying and I nearly barfed, but the slide down was so awesome. Having done both once, I convinced myself I could suck it up and do both again. The second ride up was somewhat easier: this time, I used slow breathing to get me through it. My husband kept an eye on me from the chair ahead and this time hollered, “Sixteen years ago, you were breathing like that to give birth!” If he were sitting next to me, I might have shoved him off, lol. I don’t remember the third trip up — which shows progress, I think. Four rides up was all my stomach could take — I couldn’t figure out how to curb the sea-sickness and the late afternoon breeze swinging the chairs on the lift was more than I could take. But four times is pretty good, and I had a blast on the way down, faster and faster each time!
My simple point with this rambling story is that sometimes we need to leap before we’re ready. So that essay you’re still nitpicking, that poem that feels embarrassing, the book manuscript you’re afraid to let your friends read, just go for it. First of all, we may only have two years before the world is over, ref. catastrophic climate change. But also, chances are that dealing with the outcome of the leap will be simpler than agonizing over whether you should leap at all. It may not be 100% easy or comfortable, but on the plus side, you get to slide down the mountain, whee! In this tortured metaphor, the rush of speed and fresh mountain air is the satisfaction of getting published, of birthing your story, of receiving accolades, of being done — whatever your literary carrot may be.
An Editor’s Tip
I’ve been thinking about beginnings lately. How to introduce an essay, how to start a review, how to set the stage for a book. What makes a great beginning? Curious about the craft of openings, I’ve been paying close attention to those that I like or that compel me. And often, they work because the author jumps right in. (Speaking of leaps…)
By “jumping right in,” I mean that the author pulls us right into the heart of the action or conflict from the first page, sometimes even from the first paragraph or line. They don’t waste precious word count giving backstory, details, or description — they provide only the bare minimum that is required so the reader can get their bearings. Great writers seem to instinctively understand that conflict is the heart of narrative. By jumping right into a problem, or even the problem of the story, they immediately hook the reader. Once the reader is compelled, then they slow things down a bit to paint a more thorough picture.
So in your next project or your next round of revision, I encourage you to see how you can tighten or rework your opening by focusing it on action, problem, or conflict. Without preamble, turn the intensity up by creating friction from the start. Let me know if that helps to energize your story.
News
Lunch Edits is back on! After a July break, we’re returning to our normal schedule on the first Wednesday of the month, which may be tomorrow or today depending on when you read this. If you feel so inclined, join me on Zoom on Wednesday, August 2, at 12pm PST, to chat about your current project(s), your editing questions, or anything else related to the writing life. Anyone is welcome. Sometimes it’s a tiny group, sometimes it’s a little bigger, but always lively and collegial. Details and Zoom link here.
Voices of Tacoma is hosting four poetry workshops locally in Tacoma this fall and I’ll be teaching one about self-editing on Wednesday, November 15, from 6 to 7:30pm, at Moore Library. While the workshop series is geared toward generating and polishing poetry for submission, my workshop will also apply to prose writing. You can find more info about the series here and about my workshop here, with updates coming soon. These events may be shared on Zoom as well.
A Question for You
What are you working on? Did you take the summer off, or on the opposite, did you let the sunshine inspire some productivity?
Literary Links
Here are articles I liked or bookmarked this past month:
Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2023 — Lit Hub
The Best Books We’ve Read in 2023 So Far — Chicago Review of Books
How to Grieve the Loss of Someone Who Is Still Alive — Whitney Goodman, LMFT, Substack
Warning: Family History May Cause Writer’s Block — Kristin Wong, Electric Literature
Writer’s Digest Best Publishing News and Resource Websites 2023 — Writer’s Digest
How to Draw a Novel — Martin Solares, Lit Hub
How—After 15 Years—I Stopped Panicking, Started Declawing, and Finally Published My Memoir — Sari Botton, MemoirLand
Why Barbie Must Be Punished — Leslie Jamison, The New Yorker
Recent Reads
Wine People by Michelle Wildgen — A delectably written novel about wine and female friendship. In Wine People, two ambitious young women compete then join forces to succeed in the surprisingly cutthroat world of wine importing. I really enjoyed the lush prose and smart characters of this sharp story.
Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister — A suspenseful mystery, anchored by complex parent characters, with shocking plot twists. When a young woman goes missing, the detective in charge is blackmailed with her worst — and only — secret to frame an innocent man. Just Another Missing Person explores the poignant and incisive question: how far are we willing to go out of love for our children?
The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon — A stunning psychological thriller. I loved this book. The portrait of a serial killer is etched through the perspectives of the woman he’s kept captive for years, his teenage daughter, and his new love interest, as well as the women he’s murdered over the years. This is a dark, layered, powerful novel, gorgeously written in both prose and emotion.
As usual, if you’ve made it this far, I am grateful for your friendship and attention span. Please keep in touch, I always love to hear from you!
Jenny