Endings & Beginnings & (Angry) Ramblings
**Hello readers, it's been a while! This post has been in my drafts for months, and I just didn't feel up to sharing it, or anything really, especially after a kinda rough September. Looking back at this post now, it still feels relevant and a bit nostalgic, so I thought I'd share it anyway. Then I'll try and do an actual December/end of year update afterward in its own post. Thanks, as always, for reading**
Late August 2023
I don't know where August has gone, or July for that matter, but here we are.
It's been a summer of change, and adjustment, and trying to get settled in our new place. I'm working on devising new systems and routines so I can feel like a semi-functional adult most days. (Apparently some people don't need elaborate systems to function? What's that like? Please teach me your ways.)
Our new place has so much sunlight and is so much more relaxing than anywhere we've lived before, so it's been such a blessing to just finally...chill the eff out. Or try to anyway, despite all the terrible things happening in the world. But I'm trying to find the glimmers and focus on the little things even harder lately.
We're becoming enthusiastic bird watchers, and we put up feeders in the backyard in the hopes that the local birds won't be too afraid of the neighbors' cats to come visit us. The bees are also still working hard at the last of the lavender. I found one sleeping this morning, clinging to a lavender stalk still wet with dew, and I almost cried. It's fine, everything's fine.
There's also a flock of starlings that arrive every evening on our roof and our neighbors', searching for food in the gutters and cracks between the tiles. They drop bits of moss and weeds and twigs into our backyard, basically cleaning out our gutters, and one evening we sat and watched them for a while, just taking it all in.
Writing has definitely taken a backseat with everything else going on, but I'm slowly feeling the pull back to it. I even started drafting a completely new WIP the other night, based on an old short story that I've always wanted to expand, and I'm really enjoying playing in a brand new world (and genre). I feel like I shouldn't share too much about it yet, out of fear that the spark will leave me. But maybe I'll share a bit more as I get further into it. (Like say, an aesthetic board I made late one night this past week? That counts as writing right 👀)
I've been getting really positive feedback from my CP's on Venice Book, so that's been amazing, and I'm looking forward to diving into those revisions soon. Heist Book's plot is still giving me sass, but I'm not giving up on it. I've also been dipping my toe into the short story submission world, and sent off my first one last month. (I also just got the rejection this week, but hey first one under my belt!) There are a few other spooky-themed editions/zines I want to submit to in September as well, so that's been fun to work towards.
I also decided to send off the last batch of queries for Raven Book, which is scary and exhilarating at the same time. This is probably the worst time of year to send queries (although is there ever a good time?), but I just felt ready to finally kick them all out of the nest and go for it. I'm hoping then at least I'm in everyone's queues for when things pick up again in September, and I'm already hoping to get Venice Book ready to query by the end of this year (maybe). Gotta work on the next thing, right?
I would like to declare my love for this caution cone someone's chucked in the middle of the brook
But it's been a weird time lately, with even more conflicting advice circulating online, and lots of angst and anger (most of it totally justified!). I've seen several veteran agents saying how this is the hardest time to be querying/on sub, and that things are slower and more dysfunctional than ever. With private equity assholes buying up a big-five publisher, and AI seemingly worming its way into everything these days like Google docs and Twitter, and Twitter still somehow becoming even more of a fraught landscape where we can't share anything anymore (for fear of AI or someone stealing it), it's a really scary time to be pursuing publication. I'll admit to completely losing faith some days, and wondering why I'm doing all of this, putting in all this unpaid labor when I'm barely getting paid enough at my day job.
But I keep coming back to these stories, and all the friends I've made online who make it all worthwhile. I somehow keep feeling that (small, weak, but still there) spark of inspiration when I think of a plot point or character detail, when I connect the dots in the web of the story I'm trying to weave. I've also been trying to hold onto those glimmers, and those synchronicities that seem to keep popping up with my stories. Coincidences or happy accidents, whatever they might be, they're so encouraging, and make me want to keep following the bread crumb trail wherever it might go.
I'm mixing several metaphors here, but basically, I'm still here. I'm still trying. I think part of it is also the sunk-cost fallacy, that I've put so much effort and time into this for so long now, I feel like I have to keep pursuing it, to make it all worth it? But there is still love too, and a curiosity, to see where it all might lead one day.
Even though this is a really weird time to be pursuing this path, or any creative path. Or anything, really. Does anyone else feel like they still can't make long-term plans? That everything is just so uncertain and scary that you don't want to build up your hope too much?
As if climate change wasn't bad enough, I'm feeling this even moreso with COVID. I've been masking everywhere indoors and on transportation ever since this all started, and it feels like no one gives a shit anymore, including our governments who just want everyone to stick their heads in the sand and pretend everything is fine. Everything is not fine, and I have so much rage, and nowhere to put it. Like, what are we doing people? If we can't even do the minimum of masking to protect each other, how the hell are we going to survive climate/societal collapse? (Short answer, we're not.)
The sad fact is, if everyone had just masked consistently back in 2021 (or even 2022), we'd be out of this mess by now. The science on masking (with high-quality respirators like N95/KN95s) is rock solid. We know for sure that it does help prevent transmission and infection. But no, the virus keeps evolving because people can't/won't accept a minor inconvenience to help even themselves, let alone others.
As a historian, and as someone who learned about these kinds of viruses (against my will) for several years before the pandemic (from my ex, who was a virologist), I just see future humans looking back at this period as one of the stupidest and most selfish periods in our collective history, if not the most, and that's really saying something. What will younger generations think, our own kids and grandkids (if they're still able to survive in the future), about us abandoning each other to this fucking thing, and dooming them to a life of chronic illness—and that's if they're lucky?
To give you an example of how serious this virus is, since our public health messaging is complete SHIT, when my ex was studying viruses in the lab he worked in, most days they isolated each part of the virus and worked on each bit separately to study it. So, the proteins, or the mitochondria, or whatever, each by themselves suspended in a solution, since they weren't dangerous that way. When they did have to work with the live and intact viruses, it was a whole different deal.
They wore full hazmat-style PPE gear in a climate-controlled and secure part of the lab. Then they had elaborate safety protocols for how to put on the PPE, how to handle the virus-containing materials, how to decontaminate the area after they were finished with their lab work, and how to dispose of the PPE and anything that touched or contained the virus (which involved destroying everything in industrial-grade incinerators). Then they had almost surgery-grade hand-washing procedures, and I always made him clean up extra well once he got home too.
Those viruses were categorized as biohazard level 3. Like tuberculosis, or yellow fever, or the godddamn black plague.
Welp, guess what—COVID IS IN THE SAME CATEGORY.
It's classified as a BIOHAZARD LEVEL 3 virus. And yet for the last three goddamn years, people have just been out and about raw-dogging the air, breathing in other people's germs, and not giving a shit?? Are you fucking kidding me???
The latest studies have PROVEN that Covid attacks our immune systems. It kills your T-cells—just like HIV. So long-story short, it's essentially airborne HIV. Even if you have a mild case. Even if you're asymptomatic, which is about half of all covid infections. It attacks every single organ, every single blood vessel, every single cell in your body. It's a vascular disease, not just respiratory.
But you still won't wear a goddamn mask? Or test before going out/meeting with others?
When you see public health messaging saying "wear a mask to protect immune-compromised people" that's all well and good, but A) people already don't give a shit about protecting even the most vulnerable among us (goddamn chemotherapy wards in hospitals have stopped masking for fucks sake, which is just mindbogglingly stupid and cruel), and B) ANYONE WHO HAS EVER HAD COVID IS NOW IMMUNOCOMPROMISED. But they don't know it, because our public health messaging has been incomplete/bad at best, and purposefully ignorant/lacking at worst.
They've stopped reporting deaths and case numbers because it's so bad, and because no one's counting anymore. So even if you do see bad numbers (and cases are worse now than at any point in 2021 or 2022), that's with incomplete data. Imagine how many people aren't reporting their test results, or even testing?
And now they're barely making new boosters available, or they'll make us pay an arm and a leg for them. Because capitalists gonna capitalize.
I'm just....so incensed, and I hate everything.
So yeah, that's where my brain's at most of the time nowadays. Which also feeds into the feeling of what-the-hell-is-the-point-of-anything-anymore, which is the Bad Place mental health-wise. But I'm trying to claw my way out of that pit of despair as much as I can.
To try and salvage this post from the rambling mess it's become, I hope you're all doing well and finding solace in your creative pursuits. That's all we can do, isn't it, is just take each day at a time, do what we can to minimize harm to each other and keep each other safe, and try and find joy in between.
I've listed a few things I've been inspired by below, but let me know what your favorite things are right now.
Stay safe, and keep masking anywhere and everywhere you're sharing air with others. (Please, for the love of all that's good, keep masking. It's the least we can all do, and it's the only way we'll get out of this.)
~M
Links & Things
Chuck Wendig has done it again summing up how weird things are right now for writers (and everyone, but especially writers).
De Elizabeth has nailed it once more with her newsletter on how, yes, we just have to keep going and write the next thing, because that's all we can do, but we can also acknowledge how exhausting and frustrating this all can be. (I think I need to get her advice from her other newsletter tattooed on my face too, that hope is not a jinx.)
Jennifer Carnelian's latest post really hit home for me. I wish I could quit Twitter completely, but it's been such a source of positive community and learning (and the latest COVID research) for me that I don't want to give it up just yet. OR at least until it really becomes completely unusable. But her words about following your gut and limiting all the outside noise is really hitting me as I try to figure out a way forward with all my projects.
I've been enjoying the sustainable and calming messages of this newsletter The Daily Good, and this essay rang especially true.
Ijeoma Oluo is a beacon of light with all of her work, and I so appreciate her newsletters too. This one is giving me strength and inspiration right now.
I also loved this post by Vanessa Montalban on superstitions in fantasy and in real life, and how we can infuse our writing with them to give it both magic and realism.
Favorite Reads
Even though I'm still working through a Very Healthy TBR list, I totally impulse bought these two recently. I tore through MADDALENA AND THE DARK by Julia Fine, which is just....gah...exquisite. It was dark and gothic and nailed all the Venetian details, which I really appreciated. To be honest the pacing was a bit slow for the first half, but once the proverbial shit hit the fan, things really escalated and oh man that ending. Brutal and beautiful all at once.
I stopped into my local bookstore this past weekend since I hadn't been in yet, and spotted this absolute beauty HOW TO BE A RENAISSANCE WOMAN by Jill Burke. It's fascinating and so insightful, and very intersectional too which is fantastic. Things really haven't changed all that much in the last 500 years when it comes to expectations for women and their bodies, and that's both comforting and horrifying.
I've also been reading a few friends' WIPs, which is always such a privilege, and makes me angry that they're not all already on shelves!!
Tunes
Hozier's new album has been altering my brain chemistry, in a good way. Here are some of my favs:
I'm also trying to listen to more music in Italian as well as French, and I'm loving these singers:
I just discovered this singer, and her voice is incredible!