I started writing this post before New Years, several versions of it, because I wanted to talk about my long lost love affair with that particular midnight. I have… a lot of feelings surrounding that day, but that is the subject for another newsletter. So, here we are, 31 days late, and I’m still writing about intentions.
I always liked New Years for the simple reason that I like reinvention. It was my holiday, the one night out of the year when all the stars aligned, and I could go out in my flashiest dress and high heels and go to the party where the worst people never showed up. It was a clean slate and a good excuse to kiss the boys I wanted to kiss. New Years was peppermint schnapps and Marlboro Lights. It was “Off” by Aimee Bender. It was good luck under a blue-black sky before the inversion rolled in. But we got older, those particular parties dried up, and everyone I’d ever loved moved to New York. I quit the parties, or the parties quit me, and another year ended alone with a water glass of Martinelli's.
Last year, I failed my New Years resolution of getting rejected. It’s not quite as bleak as it sounds. One of my goals was to get 200 rejections from literary magazines/fellowships/whatever, and while I’m too tired to look up the actual number, I know it was under 100. The idea of aiming for rejections rather than acceptances came from a talk Traci Brimhall gave at Bowling Green State University where she explained that she and her friends used to compete for the most rejections in one year. The winner would get a prize (a book or something), but amidst all of those “This piece just isn’t right for us,” you would get at least a few acceptances. Well, as I’ve already said in my last newsletter, I did not get any acceptances in 2022.
At the beginning of this month/year, I decided this would be My Year of Work. Not the year I amass countless rejections. Not the year I get an agent or publish my novel, but the year I improve my craft. My only goal is to write, to take risks because no one is going to see these pages. To consume good art and good books and not worry about whether something is good or bad. A year of practice.
I’m using “work” a little loosely but the truth is that some things need to get done. I need to finish my dissertation and graduate, and at this point in my academic career, I can only say that the effort to bridge the gap between here and there is, to say the least, work. Call it burnout. Call it Seasonal Affective Disorder (they’re discussing the best vitamin D brand over on r/Missoula). All I know is that I would rather skinny dip in the Clark Fork in this (gestures to -11 degrees) here weather than rewrite Chapter 14 of my book. Instead of writing, I have spent an inordinate amount of time reading about bath bombs.
So, can I say that we’re exactly off to the races here? I cannot.
We’re starting over again in February.
I’ve been thinking about what needs to change, or what factors might contribute to a more creative life. (One of my best friends wrote her critical dissertation about this and the answer was not a CW PhD)1. I keep thinking I need to separate my writing life from my work one, so I’m going to run an experiment next month. More on this in a couple weeks.
If you have any tips, rules, or routines that you’ve found to be particularly useful, I’d love to hear ‘em!
K
The real answer is money and a solid SSRI, obviously
Start over every day if you have to. That's just how it works. ✊🏽