Nobody Can Do This

Thank you to the handful of you who reached out after the last blog post with support - you are kind, and necessary. I've gotten both good/encouraging news and bad/reinforcing news since then. 

I'm using this period before the end of 2024 - a year I did not enjoy - to dig behind me for a softer place. I'm reading, cleaning, fixing. Selling stuff on eBay and Poshmark. Driving boxes of clothes to Goodwill. Reorganizing the living room. 

My to-do list for January includes deliberately fun writing, rather than thoughtfully challenging writing. After January, I'm not sure. The year is shaping up to be busy, but I have to wait for a few months to find out exactly how busy. 

For example: I found out I won a residency from an organization in the Bay Area. It looks like they're going to be scheduling the residents in January, so I don't know what time of year I'll be doing it, and it looks like they haven't announced it, so I don't think I can either, but...yeah. I got it. I applied with the Bern project, and that's pretty funny in a terrifying way, because I've set that project aside at least until spring to work on something else and heal, so will I be able to work on it as I said I would in my application? Unknown. But congrats to me for news I can't announce yet. 

--

After a hiatus, I went back to cross-stitching, both doing some new projects and finishing up some old ones. The hardest one was this - 

- which some of you may remember from an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. This piece was challenging in ways I didn't expect. I used a really old piece of linen, 22 ct, which is quite different from what I usually use, and which had stains I didn't see until it was too late. I thought I'd do the pattern's crosshatching in a simple way, but counting it that way turned out worse than crosshatching the hard way. Thus, the finished product is full of mistakes, even if no one but me can see them. 

I underestimate how much I like blackwork, because I don't like backstitching and that's basically all blackwork is, but this is the third finished piece of blackwork I've done and I do enjoy it a lot. 

--

Most of what I've been reading in the last few weeks has been in the Cthulhu Mythos, both the OG and his descendants. 

not to be construed as an endorsement of HPL's horrible values

I bought used copies of two basic anthologies on eBay and one of them stinks of cigars. That's appropriate, because if you look at the tables of contents for most Cthulhu Mythos anthologies, you will see nearly all male names right up until the late 1990s. (A handful of folks have tried to turn this around in the years since.) 

This is the second time I've contemplated writing a book in a subgenre/field that's still, well into the 21st century, totally dominated by men. I don't want that, I don't want to do that again, to put on a good-natured face about it and try to be heard about it across the publishing/promoting process. But I can't help what I want to (and am qualified to) write about. 

--

I have big decisions to make in 2025, and I truly have to live through the whole year before I can make them properly - a prospect which is extremely hard to bear. Thinking this gave me cause to remember this portion of a really phenomenal Hax column about overwhelm: 

I got the best advice on being overwhelmed my first time grading AP exams, on the first morning of eight days. The exams came at you by the hundreds, one after another. I felt a wave of despair. “I can’t do this,” I told the table leader. “Well, can you make it to morning break?” he asked. That was about 10 minutes away. Yes, I told him. “Then, make it to lunch,” he said. “The trouble is you’re looking ahead eight days. Nobody can do this for eight days.” It got me through and I came back for 10 years. And whenever I’m overwhelmed in any situation, I ask myself: Can I make it to morning break?

I can't wait a year to make these choices. Nobody can wait a year for this. But I can wait until spring. Until summer. Until October. Until January. Like sobriety: not just one day, but one minute at a time. Those minutes add up. 

Spite Is a Shallow Well

I write this from Portland, Oregon, where the majority of my writing community lives. I was here for a trio of excellent events: a concert, a film screening, and a conversation at Powell's. Luck that the first two were 24 hours apart; guided luck that the third occurred soon after. 

The conversation was between me and Shawn Levy, a fairly eminent biographer of famous actors who happens to be in my Portland friend group. (Not the Canadian director of the same name.) He was fresh from the clusterfuck of Burning Man 2023, but we had a good conversation nonetheless. I sold and signed a bunch of books and gave away a bunch of handmade chapbooks. Folks asked engaged questions and I had fun. 

To promote this event, a local TV station in Portland interviewed me. That clip is here. I thought the segment was happening because of Shawn, so the fact that they never mentioned him surprised me and stroked my ego quite tenderly. I don't know if it brought anyone in to Powell's for the event, but it did notch up the markers of eminence I can claim as a writer: sold books to strangers, was recognized by reputation during group reading event, appeared on TV to promote book. 

And it was part of the general cascade of good news that has drenched me since the release of Junk Film. It's continuing to discover new readers and (important distinction) new corners of readership. I feel happiness about this, but I also feel a particular emotion that surely has a German word attached to it: the fulfillment of spite. 

I wrote previously about reaching the end of the line on a book of essays (although I haven't, in fact; it's out again to two more presses), and mentioned that I did reach that point on JF. The rejections I got for it weren't as numerous as for Ceremonials and the essay collection - not even in the same neighborhood - but they were painful anyway because I homed in on suitable presses so carefully. And yes, I'm still obsessing over the agent rejection I got in 2021, the person who told me a big press wouldn't take the book. Perhaps they wouldn't've, but this book has proven it has an audience, and the money being made by Castle Bridge and by me - she could've had a piece of that. 

Agents always gamble, in rejecting as well as accepting; it's the nature of the job. She was always going to be the wrong agent for the book if she couldn't see its potential. These are the reasonable reactions to how events have unfolded. The unreasonable reaction is

Emoji Middle Finger GIFfrom Emoji GIFs

(couldn't get Blogger to center this!) and that is increasingly how I'm feeling about it, as I get incredible, unexpected emails from people who want to work with me or the book goes through cycles of selling copies on Amazon every time I appear on a podcast. You coulda had a bad bitch. Maybe at some point I'll grow up enough to stop feeling that way, but I'll be 42 in just over a month, so...probably not. 

This is the part where I turn my personal lesson into an overarching writing lesson. I think it's not a bad thing to be motivated partially by spite, and to feel an ugly, satisfied thrill when that spite works out for you. But it's a bad way to live your entire artistic life. You've got to find a deeper well than that. The shallow well works when you're writing a CV or a book proposal and you have to let your ego out on the page, but the deeper well has to remain accessible for when you write the next book. 

The other thing is, life happens the way it happens. Wishing it would've or could've happened another way is not as fruitful as working with the way it did. In my case, that means analysis of what "the way it did" has to teach me as well as simply counting the blessings of it. 

Appropriately, I have a bounty of other good news. I can't share any of it; nothing is finished enough to be an announcement. I can tell you that I'll be on the Dana Gould Hour again, soonish, to talk about my book. And about the inimitable Ormonds, filmmakers of, consecutively, exploitation films and religious films in the two epochs of their lives. I recorded something like six or seven podcasts in August and they're trickling out over time. 

Oh, but there is news that I want to share as far and wide as possible: I'm co-editing an anthology of Millennial writing and art on the 1982 film Poltergeist. General submissions open in October. More info about that project is here, including a link to sign up for our newsletter so you'll know the moment we open subs. 

Lots of changes coming in the spring. I hope you'll stick around until then. 

JUNK FILM DROPS TODAY!

Today, my third book releases: Junk Film, the product of about five years of research and writing about bad movies. Aside from this obvious fantastic news, I've had a streak of bad days and annoying problems lately, so I'm a little distracted. Trying to focus on the positive and be happy about the book being out. So far I've heard nothing but joy from friends who've received it and/or read it, and I'd like to think those trends will continue. 

Consider this a placeholder for a post later in the week where I share the related stuff that's going up this week (a piece in the Economist, unbelievably, which is previewed below; a podcast episode; an interview in a Kansas City paper; something in LARB related to another topic but which I suspect will sell books anyway). In the meantime, if you haven't bought the book, go here to do so. Amazon is bad for indie presses, but can be good for indie authors, who don't necessarily have other distribution channels. For this book, Amazon is the place to buy. 

Click to embiggen

I'm going to be doing watch-alongs to promote the book, probably one per month for the rest of the year, and the first one will be After Last Season on May 18. Stay tuned! 

stitched by me, designed by someone else

Slightly Popular

Somehow I've become a slightly popular movie podcast guest. The biggest shock was Dana Gould inviting me back a second time, and genuinely seeming to enjoy talking to me. We talked right up until we had to stop because he had another appointment. I will blame him forever for (indirectly) making me watch Carny, but I will also thank him forever for bumping up my Plan 9 sales significantly. 

Start around 1:23:00 if you want to hear only me. 

I was also on Monster Movie Happy Hour, which was loads of fun. We meant to talk for 45 minutes and instead talked for over an hour recorded and another hour after that unrecorded. Very occasionally I wish I had a place in the Midwest to live in during the three weeks a year the weather is nice, and folks like them are the reason why. 

If you missed it, I was also on Movies from Hell re: Death Bed and Ruby and on Castle of Horror re: Valley of the Dolls.

This week I'm recording twice more, for a local arts podcast in central Virginia (see below) and for Your Stupid Minds, which I just had to pitch, given that the name is a quote from Plan 9. We're discussing perhaps my favorite bad movie of all, so I'm looking forward to it. 

If you're reading this and you have a podcast you want me to be on, let me know! I have a fancy microphone, a good voice, and a reasonably quick wit. 

In March, I'm doing a miniature East Coast tour. On Sunday, March 20, I'll be in Richmond, Virginia, at Plan 9 Records. I'll be screening Plan 9 from Outer Space, selling the book, and talking with a local podcast host (see above). I'm not sure of the time for this event yet, but I'm hoping it'll be late afternoon, because who wants to go to a Sunday night anything? 

The following week I go to AWP in Philadelphia. I don't have any events planned, but I'll have copies of my books to sell - probably at the Barrelhouse table - and I'll be happy to step in and help in any situation where it's needed. I did this at the 2020 AWP, running an event and moderating a panel to replace absentees, and it was great. I've learned from prior AWPs that holding to a planned schedule gives me a rotten experience, while walking around with no particular plan makes me happy. I decided to go this year because I wanted to, after all, not because I needed to or had something specific to flog. 

After that I go on to New York City, where I'll be signing at Forbidden Planet on Sunday, March 27. That's in the late afternoon, and in the evening there's a TBD screening event hosted by a Forbidden Planet employee who loves Plan 9. 

And then that's it, I go home. I haven't been to New York in some years, which is funky because I have strong memories of it being easily accessible during my college years. In my freshman year I was involved with a guy at Columbia and drove there every other weekend. Now it feels as unreachable and cosmopolitan as it probably does for most citizens of this country. 

Anyway, none of this stuff is going to be livestreamed as far as I know. Sorry. I'm still trying to make plans to do a virtual watch-along of Plan 9, so we can all watch it together on our laptops. I haven't done this because the time hasn't seemed right, for various internal reasons that haven't borne the fruit I hoped they would. At this point I don't know what I'm waiting for. April, I think, is a good month to do it. 

In other news, I'm consulting on the launch of a new film quarterly run by an awesome, scrappy film community here in LA. There's a lot about that still up in the air, but I hope it will be as good as the work we're putting into it. Stay tuned - I'll be promoting it a lot if it works out as I hope. 

In other other news, I'm still trying very damn hard to sell three of my books, and/or get an agent to help me sell them, and to place finished essays about movies that I think are good. That isn't going very well, on the whole. It's a discouraging time for my submissions, even as the podcasting gains me some traction. Later in the year I'm gonna dive to writing depth, starting the next project, and I'm massively looking forward to doing that instead of promoting and pitching, which is several fathoms up, high visibility, lots of sun. Even if the current depth is less work, in an hours-per-day sense, it's not work I was cut out to do, so it wears me out pretty easily. 

--

Lately I've been wondering a little more about the future of this blog. I didn't think I'd ever be the type of person who watched her words in public, but I had no idea it would be so practically difficult to write about writing while telling the whole truth. Enemies who are friends with friends, people who don't know what they don't know, deeply unpopular opinions held for an unairable reason, etc. Also, blogging is firmly out of fashion at this point. (I'm a bit tickled that writing outflow keeps finding different places to go. It's currently in Substack-ish newsletters, which I believe is unsustainable.) 

My personal life is pretty happy, and my successes and failures in my writing life are either boring and continual (rejections, rejections, rejections) or not suitable for the public (non-scandalous ill treatment by folks with whom I'd like to stay congenial). I don't want to make this a writing craft blog, because, in brief, I am weary of writing craft on the internet. So what do I write about here? Maybe I announce things, maybe I pursue ideas that don't fit anywhere else, maybe I keep up with my reading and viewing habits. Maybe I stop. 

I'm not fussed about this choice, because my investment in this space is low. I used to feel genuine pain over its low readership but have long since detached from that. I'm staying here on my terms, and my terms are not to worry too much about consistency or content here. Plenty of other spaces for me to worry about that. 

This Spot in the Road

I think I finished my book today? Scattered applause requested, because I'm not sure yet

— Katharine Coldiron (@ferrifrigida) February 19, 2022

The book I've been working on for two years directly, and several more years indirectly, is a collection of straightforward critical essays about bad movies. Originally I planned to write about the following media: 

• Plan 9 from Outer Space 
• Cop Rock 
• The Teen Agers films (1946-48) 
• Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) 
• Death Bed: The Bed that Eats 
• Ruby 
• Showgirls/Staying Alive 

By the middle of last year, I'd written half of these and published a few. I got stuck on the Showgirls/Staying Alive essay, about which I was quite intimidated (a lot of people have written about Showgirls), and then I lost half a year to circumstances out of my control, during which I barely wrote. I also had a mini-brainwave about how I'd chosen to approach this project: I'd written criticism about these films without writing much on how the audience receives them. With this in mind, I decided to write about two other films: 

• Girl in Gold Boots
• After Last Season

Between November and February, I wrote the remaining essays from the first list, including 4,300 words on Showgirls & Staying Alive. I also wrote a 7,700-word essay on Quentin Tarantino, which required a ton of research and which I still can't believe I turned in on time. Since January I've written 2,000 words to order on Switchblade Sisters (which might end up in this bad-movie book), and I thought intensely about what I wanted to say in the essay on Girl in Gold Boots. 

For two weeks I tried to write this essay, and kept failing. I got way into the weeds, trying to sort out what it means to like a film, the difference between pleasing graphic design and actual art, and how moral value attaches to aesthetic value. It was a mess. Ultimately I splurted out 1,500 words of deep confusion about what I was trying to do, which I think is itself something, but which might also be background for the real essay. If the real essay exists, it's either going to be so methodical it's practically philosophy, or it's going to be totally bizarre. 

I was saving Season for last, because I wasn't quite sure what would happen when I saw it again, when I tried to put ideas about it together in sentences. Yesterday I watched the film in the morning, sat down to write about it in the late afternoon, and finished 3,100 words about it around 11 PM. I read these words again this morning and it's a finished essay. I'm astonished, because I really thought this essay would be impossible - the film is impossible - but it was one of the easiest things I've written in the past year. 

That means, aside from the Gold Boots essay, the book is complete. 

Which might mean the book is, in fact, complete. It's possible the Gold Boots essay won't work out. I'll give it a couple of weeks and another strong try before I really give up, but it seems ever more likely that I'm not capable of saying what I'd like to about this goddamn stupid lovable movie. 

So, as I said on Twitter, I think I might have finished my latest book today. Yay for me, I think? I'll probably write some interstitials to sculpt it into a real book and Lord knows finding a publisher hasn't gone well so far, but reaching this spot in the road means I can begin to move on from this whole period of my writing life, creatively. Move on from film crit as the only thing I do and swerve back toward the other stuff I do. Up next is a novel, my first in more than five years, so I'm looking forward to that. 

There's a lot more news, but not sharing it here means I'll have to write another post soon. 

How You Get Into the Pool

For the first time in a couple of years, I've hung a hummingbird feeder outside my office window. They've started to find it, the little birds, and they come visit me now with fair frequency. It's nice.

Most of my body hurts, and I'm moving pretty slowly. It's because I got a job a few weeks ago as a groom at a horse stable. I adore the job, and I'm so happy to be doing even the crummy chores required of me at the barn, but I won't romanticize what it's doing to my joints and muscles and spine. Going from 500-5,000 steps per day to 18,000-30,000 steps per day is a big change. I've Googled and Googled and yes, this kind of painful adjustment to a job full of physical labor is normal and in a few weeks I will be feeling better. But I'm a little worried. I'm almost 40, after all, and I can't bounce back from major exertion like I did in my 20s.

November was like how you get into the pool if you're skittish about water temperature. I wrote one thing, and then I read a book, and then I did no reading or writing for days, and then I read a little  more and wrote a little more...by the end of the month I started feeling more like myself, acclimated to the water, ready to read and write with gusto again. But it won't be like it was.

"Burned out" is not what happened to me w/r/t book reviews this year. I just realized, sometime this fall, that I wanted to do more than one thing in a given day, a given week. As I took on more and more books, I watched fewer films, talked to fewer friends, did hasty work with my other responsibilities. If I had a maid, and didn't have a book of my own to finish, I could've kept it up. (Maybe.) Because I am who I am, though - profoundly scattered among interests and desires - it had to stop.

I'm not shutting down my reviewing work completely, but I'm done pitching reviews for a little while except in the rarest circumstances. I'll keep working for my regular folks, Locus and B&FG and a few others. However, I'm more interested in curating, and working on other parts of my creative life, for the immediate future.

More opportunities for curation will be abundant soon; I've been named the new Reviews & Interviews Editor for the VIDA Review. I'm extremely excited about this, and I feel, as objectively as possible, that it's a great fit for everyone concerned. We haven't had an editorial meeting yet with the new staff, so I'm not ready to talk about volume or strategy or pitches, but I hope you'll put a little bookmark on me in your head if you have something you'd like to pitch in the future.

Some Ceremonials news: I got a Kirkus review (no, I didn't pay for it); the first interview with me about the book has gone up; and I finally found a site that had a graphic template I could use to make a tour date postcard. (Soon to be in paper form; thanks, Moo's Cyber Monday sale.)

Many more guests will read than can fit on this postcard 

I will likely come to the east coast in July, and depending on how the book does, I might do a Midwest/Deep South leg in the fall of 2020. Ceremonials releases in two months and a week, or thereabouts, and I will have lots more news and info for you as the time passes.

A couple of publications I want to share here, in case you missed them:

• An essay about Black Widow, a movie I love with absolutely no cult following at all, for Bright Wall/Dark Room. This was the fourth or fifth thing I pitched or submitted to them, and I had some heartbreaking near-misses, so it's gratifying to have something accepted.
  
• This weird short story called "The First Snow," published in a paper volume of Storm Cellar several seasons ago, newly posted on the website this week. My opinion of my own short stories has shifted so much over time that I honestly have no idea anymore if it's a good piece of writing. I'm happy with what I did, so I'm kinda done worrying about it. 

Look for a short essay on Pink Floyd's The Wall coming soon, something I thought about for a lot longer than it took me to write it, and rambled endlessly to Matt about, poor fella. Listen for a podcast with me and my NB sibling from another...nibling, Ilana Masad, coming soon. Get ready for multiple angsty social media posts as December, my least favorite month of all, wears on.

Major Announcement!

My novella, Ceremonials, has been accepted for publication by Kernpunkt Press. I'm so happy it hurts. Since the project is tangled up with copyrighted material, it might have a different name when it comes out, but it's the same project. The editor at Kernpunkt has told me she's very enthusiastic about the book, so I have high hopes that we'll work it out.

I found out about this on Friday. As a rule, I'm very, very bad at keeping secrets, but watching promised projects go boom after I made a big deal of them in the past, and particularly the last 18 months of pitching/trying/failing/waiting, has made me better at saying nothing until the news is more secure.

The book is due out in 2020. I have 784 ideas about how to promote it, including an LA bookstore tour, an email blast to everyone I've ever reviewed for, and hooking up with a unique book club to get it in tens of thousands of hands.

Because I can't resist making this news into advice: I started work on this project in 2013. That's six years ago. I finished it in early 2016, a span which includes some long breaks due to mental health; writing time was probably a few months, all told. I spent the following three years researching, querying, and submitting to presses. The project is extremely short to be a standalone book, so that limited the presses I could find who would even be interested, and it meant I could not go through an agent. (I tried one, and his email back indicated he saw the word count and didn't even read the rest of the query, which included info about the significant built-in audience.) Some of the presses who read it said it was beautiful but wrong for them. Others sent me form rejections.

It takes a long time, y'all.

Some of the reason is that my project is weird, short and lyrical, rather than a normal novel or memoir or whatever. But mostly it just takes a long time. My friend Marissa has a beautiful, finished, easily publishable memoir that she's been querying for I don't even remember how long now, two years maybe, and it's stupid and criminal that it took until last month for her to find an agent. It takes a long time. 

I have lesser news about other things, but I'm going to let this post stand alone. Can't wait to know more, and tell you more. I've wanted to hold in my hands a book I wrote since I was in elementary school, and I don't really believe it, but that's going to happen. Next year.

Weekly To-Do, 1/27/19 - 2/2/19

This week hopped and jumped like a Mark Twain frog. I did so much stuff! I got so much good news! I rolled in under the wire on some great opportunities, and I handled a few tasks I've been putting off for a good long while. My February workload looks okay so far, but I might just be looking at physical piles rather than considering the books I've loaded onto my e-reader. Ruh-roh.

Of course, part of February is going to be preparing for AWP in March. Please get in touch if you want to see me there; I'm actually starting to make lists of booths I want to stop by and people I want to meet in person. This sounds hideously self-important and I'm sorry. But it's the truth: if you want to meet up, let me know instead of relying on fortune.

Disclaimer: I'm including selected names of pubs and books because making this list would be ten times harder, and therefore not worth the effort, to anonymize them entirely. Any of the acceptances could fall through at any time. By naming them, I am not badmouthing the publications who rejected or didn't reply. This is data, not trash-talk or promotion.

Writing:
S. Allen review
GAITR review
Davis paired review
The Body Myth review
Blog post

Reading:
Labrador
Revenge of the Translator
The Silk Road
The Body Myth

Pitching/Queries:
Ramadan interview to V1B (accepted)
Ramadan interview to Fanzine (withdrawn)
ASFM to Slate, Nation
Two books to Daily Beast
AGNI (answered)
Two titles to Prairie Schooner (accepted!)

Followups:
WSJ (answered) (!)
Hyperallergic (rejected)
TWRP (answered)
TNR
Graywolf

Correspondence:
Locus business
Barrelhouse business
Sophia & her publicist
Will @DV (enthusiasm!)
Cole @TMR
Chad @BWDR
Michelle D.
Christina
Emma

Other:

Promote Books I Hate
Promote Horse Latitudes piece
Assemble & send newsletter
Promote Thirty-Seven review
Apply to Mineral School (finally)
[secret thing]
Barrelhouse editing & selection
Put together materials for workshop
Interview questions for Ramadan, Baker

Orange and Teal

First, I must note that I'm astounded by the response to my piece about Horse Latitudes books. The traffic has been of a different character than for any other piece of mine, ever. A whole lot of interesting encounters have come out of it, including this delightful blog post by a writer I admire. I don't know what I expected in terms of response, but it wasn't this; I wrote it for my own amusement. (My editor said it was a scoop worthy of a Pulitzer, but that's his sense of humor.) Hello and thank you, anyone who's reading this after finding me through that piece.

If you haven't, please sign up for my newsletter for a chance to win all twelve of the books I read and reviewed in the piece. A runner-up will win one of my literary tote bags. I have a lot of them. It's a problem.

Second, in case the news hasn't crossed your feed yet, I am now the book reviews coeditor at Barrelhouse, along with my long-distance pal Kamil Ahsan. (He's a good dude. Send him all your Kirsten Dunst gifs.) I'm REALLY excited to be doing this job, for undisclosable reasons as well as the obvious ones. And yes, you can pitch me. Please do.

On with the show.

Yesterday I went to see both of my mentors at CSUN. (It was sheer luck that both of them had office hours on Tuesday, so thanks, office hours fairy.) It was an interesting visit, because they gave me differing but caring advice, some of which proved that they really are just two sides of the same mentor-coin.

Chris told me that although it's great that I'm doing so many reviews, and thus helping the literary community so much, I need to figure out a way to get back to my own writing. "The world needs Kat's writing," he said, a little insistently. I hung my head. I do have essays that need extraction from my brain, but when I will have time for them I do not know. That's not a good thing, according to both Chris and me, but I'm in so deep on reviews that I don't know how to fix it.

Kate told me that she's happy for my success, and asked (politely) if I was making any money yet. Not really, I said. She asked if my goal was to land a paid position as a regular reviewer, and I said sort of. I do want that, but only if it will help me publish books, and/or slow down my reading pace. She kind of shrugged, and said well, I hope you can do that, but right now you're kind of an indentured servant. You're doing the grunt work and building up credit you can use to buy your freedom, and a little plot of land of your own. That was helpful of her, and sweet.

I asked both of them for recommendations on a certain kind of dialogue that appears in literary short stories, because I'm speaking about dialogue to a group of women writers in mid-February. (You can come if you want to, as long as you're close to LA and not male-identifying. Email me for details if you'd like them.) Both of them (separately) looked at their bookshelves for a long time and eventually realized aloud that they don't really like dialogue.

This will be funny to people who know them both, because as thinkers, they couldn't be more different. Kate is a structuralist, inspired by the natural world, a Baby Boomer with a fine-tuned ability to walk in and teach for three hours off the cuff. Chris is a poststructuralist, immersed in pop and digital culture, a Gen Xer who examines his pedagogy like narcissists examine their faces. They have both helped me immeasurably, and yesterday isn't the first time I've thought of them as the orange and teal of my writing life.

In other news, the overwhelm I felt recently lasted a while, a week+, but I dug out of it this week and got a bunch of things done. I'm not completely aboveground, but I'm getting there. Lots of good news ahead, lots of good books behind. Nice to have a fresh start in February.

Out in the world:

A review of one of the best books I read last year (out of 150, mind you): Thirty-Seven, by Peter Stenson, at 3:AM.

A short, cynical piece about the PEN shortlists and money in publishing at Book & Film Globe.

Books I Hate with Morris Collins, who wrote one of the Horse Latitudes books. I really enjoyed this interview. He's a smart guy, about writing particularly.

By the way, if you're reading this and you're one of the people who's agreed to a Books I Hate interview, email me, okay? I need to sort out the next few months. I promise I'm not mad.

Weekly To-Do, 1/20/19 - 1/26/19

This week I felt utterly overwhelmed. The amount of work I've taken on is unreasonable, and a few things that are genuinely important have fallen by the wayside (applying for a residency, [secret thing]). I sat down with my book pile, my spreadsheet, and my husband on Saturday to figure out what to do, and although it felt a lot like me rambling and Matt sitting there with a listening-but-feeling-slightly-superfluous look on his face, it helped a bit. I have a short list of what to do next, I eliminated a couple of items from the pile, and I feel okay about February.

Then, later in the day, I secured a gig that is still secret, but is goddamn amazing, and calls for significant additional work and time. It would have been the wrong move not to leap at it, but the bare fact of leaping at it when I'm already overloaded is frankly illogical.

I really had no idea that going freelance and leaning into book criticism would turn out like this, and it's so hard to describe what I mean by "like this." I've had more/faster success (by my own metrics) than I imagined, but the path has been so chaotic that "path" doesn't really apply to the experience. Even Wonderland had a visible, followable trail through the weird woods.

If I consciously thought about what lay ahead, I believed I'd teach workshops once every two months or so, write a book review every now and then, find an agent or a press for one of the two saleable books, and publish hybrid film essays regularly, like every few months. Instead I wrote for horoscope.com, published 10 book reviews in one month, wrote twice for the most prestigious book criticism outlet in Britain, and [secret thing] [it's really weird, something I never even considered I'd do]. I have taught no workshops, gotten no nibbles from agents, and published no hybrid essays, though not for lack of trying. And I somehow made friends with the head of Dzanc, a publicist from the University of Texas, and Neal Pollack.

Does that get across how chaotic and contra expectations it's been? I mean, horoscope.com??

So. I spent a lot of time this week feeling overwhelmed rather than working, but I also had a small medical procedure and some unrelated emotional turmoil. Coping mechanisms (rewatching Rifftrax and playing very stupid phone games) intervened. I did pitch a lot, but I didn't meet reading or writing goals. The above might've been good as a separate blog post, I guess, but only after yesterday's flail session with Matt did I feel coherent about it, so in it goes with the to-do list.

A Surprise in Gray

O, Gentle Reader, hello. I'm feeling a smidge vulnerable right now. There's a stomach bug in my house and I'm helpless against it; when I lose sleep I turn into a slow, uncertain version of myself; I have multiple drafts of blog posts that I can't decide the time is right to write, and the clogginess of them makes me anxious; the remote control in my bedroom has been cosmetically damaged with wintergreen essential oil, which I don't even know what to do about; the pile of books I have to read in January is not getting any smaller, but it's because editors are saying yes to my pitches, so I can't complain.

I cried this week. (I cry about once a year.) I'm having a medical procedure I don't want next week, with anesthesia, and I'm dreading the helpless feeling I'll have afterward. On Tuesday I was able to run longer than ten minutes without wheezing and giving up. I wrote a version of an article I've worked an inordinate number of hours on since early December, and per my editor I have to rewrite it, and although I think he's right, I'm balking, despite the ticking clock, because of despair at having to redo. I am strongly motivated by not having to redo things. Part of why I don't play video games.

SIX things I wrote were published this week. As I said elsewhere, I'm grateful for the riches, but risking overexposure is a problem I never thought I'd have and don't know what to do with.

Also, I feel overwhelmed at the spring books I have yet to place. Lots of cool titles in March and April that I have pitched, had no response, and haven't managed to pitch again. I'll probably end up scrambling to place them less than a month out, which I hate, but that pile of books I have to finish in the next fourteen days...! Pitching takes a short time but lots of energy; reading takes lots of time but little energy (and is much nicer). I'm overly insistent on landing this one book in this one specific place, and it's stupid of me because I could just write it up for a different place and be done, but the editor asked for phone calls, and I've left him two voice mails and he hasn't called me back, and why would you do contact that way? Unless you want freelancers to be mad at you?

At the end of March I go to AWP and then immediately to Iceland, which is very exciting but it keeps getting closer and I have no coherent plan and haven't lost any weight or gotten my chipped tooth fixed, and last AWP it was fine because I had no one to impress and mostly loved ones to meet, but this time the stakes are much higher based on the "let's meet up!" emails and messages I've been exchanging for the past six months, and I don't know what to do, and I dreamed about Iceland last night, and it was scary and clean and efficient and everyone was bundled in attractive cold-weather gear and speaking in lovely textured consonants and I felt very American.

The bugged of stomach is tossing a bit in bed and I should really go ask if he needs anything. The pile of books isn't shortening and I should really go read. January is running out and I should really arrange an interview and rewrite that article and write another review.

DESPITE ALL THIS, I feel happy. It's been raining for four days here, which sounds awful, but it's actually lovely, like a surprise in gray. When you have months on end of stalwart sunshine, not a cloud in sight from one season to another, rain can be a delight. And I'm hugely blessed by all the publication, and a particular pitch-yes I received this week, which hasn't really sunk in yet because it's so meaningful. Can't wait to tell you about it.


Out in the world:

From Noon Until Noon Again

Yesterday I was feeling very blue. It was the kind of blue I knew would pass, but that didn't make me feel less worthless in the moment. This sensation was the result of a variety of things.

I got a handful of rejections all together that were more hurtful than the norm. One was one of those where they don't even send you an email, you just find out when they send the list of winners in the newsletter. I understand that organizations can't be all things to all people, but ugh, what a sucky way to learn that I didn't get picked. I also got two rejections from agents, one of whom I'm pretty sure didn't read my query all the way through based on their reply. My pitches and follow-ups for the past week have mostly not been answered. I didn't get a side job I hoped I'd get. The reading & reviewing - in reality, I've been very productive lately, but it feels like digging at the side of a sand pile. It doesn't look like there's actual progress, or that there ever will be.

Personally: Two friendship-related disappointments hit me in the course of a couple of days. I'm doing a whirlwind east-coast trip this weekend and don't have anything to wear. I signed Matt and myself up for both PreCheck and Global Entry without realizing that we don't need both, and Global Entry is useless for the reason I wanted it, which makes me feel like the management skills on which I pride myself have failed me. The end of the semester is coming and it feels like I fucked up, mostly, instead of helping, at CSUN. I can't manage money at all, not one little bit. Really truly. Can't.

Over the weekend, I went to a few junk shops in Ventura and bought some materials for collaging. I found the most amazing things! Vintage catalogs, magazines, paper doll sets, curious books, even a couple of woodcuts. Back in September, I resolved to make a visual collage at least once every six weeks. I love to collage, even if it's not an art form that I know how to do (like I know how to write). It's a sincere and powerful artistic release for me. But my resolution involved using real materials to collage rather than just catalogs and junk mail, which is how I've been doing it up till now. I expressed it to myself as "put some skin in the game," which means cutting and pasting things that have objective value, materials that once meant something to someone, rather than items that are worthless or easy to reproduce.

I was thinking about Anne Carson's book Nox, which includes collages of family photographs and letters, materials that surely were precious but that she cut up and pasted over and re-made as materials for her art. I couldn't decide if it was...wasteful? a loss? something she'd regret?, but I also found it daring. As I looked at more collage artists' work, I began to wonder if collaging was worthwhile at all unless you collaged something of value. Maybe it depends on what you're trying to do as a collagist.

In any event, I felt sure that I wasn't going to do satisfying work as a collagist, whether I want to make work that others see or not, unless I used materials that intrigued me instead of trash. So I bought some in Ventura over the weekend.

Problem was, when I got home and spread all the materials on the floor to show Matt, they were all so interesting that I was overwhelmed. I didn't know where to start. What if I fucked up, and wasted the materials that I'd spent money on? What if I was wrong about the book I wanted to chop up and use as background? What if I had to throw out real photos from the 1960s? It upset me, because my creativity wanted to be brave, but my heart did not.

All of this was swirling around in me yesterday, Monday. Why couldn't I do anything right? Why was everything so wrong? All my best plans led to flinching and fucking up at the last minute, or to gatekeepers reminding me that, nope, my work isn't that interesting.

At therapy, the plot thickened, in a way that I really can't talk about here.

--

This morning, I woke up and felt better, mostly because, as I said at the top of this post, my blues were a passing thing. Why-am-I-so-worthless is a refrain that comes and goes in me all the time, but only occasionally can I not just wave it away like a mosquito. Most of the stuff above, this morning's light reminded me, is either not important or it's fixable. The rejections are what they are; being a writer is learning to see rejection as neutral instead of negative. Sometimes they hurt and it takes time to get over them. That's okay, too.

Then, today, a couple of downright exciting acceptances came through, some of them from places I'd despaired over re: their lack of response just 24 hours earlier. (Also some rejections, which felt neutral instead of painful.) My Asim review got some good feedback and mentions. I heard from a friend I've missed for a week or two.

Most importantly, I went for a walk. I wanted to think about the review I need to write before I go to bed tonight, and what I was going to say in it, but instead I found this song banging along with the rhythm of my steps. For some reason, it reminded me of the picture I liked most out of the material I bought in Ventura. I imagined the song title typed in Courier below the picture, all caps, with a period.

The two hands laced together and I had it: a series of collages about songs that get stuck in my head. That was what I needed: a theme! I needed something to collage around. And now I have it.

I'm not saying that all you need to feel better is for things to start going your way. That'd be too easy, and also wrong. It's fortunate that I got a handful of good news on a day when I needed it, but that's just business, just freelancing. What made me feel solidly better was figuring out a direction for my collages. Doing that made me feel like my future as a creative person was not hopeless, which was a much bigger, more amorphous, more deadly feeling than a bunch of disappointing "no"s.

And that figuring-out was just a matter of waiting until my brain made a connection between one thing and another. Not panicking when the answer didn't come right away. Not forcing myself to sit down with scissors and glue. Having patience with the trawler teeth of my mind, feeling sure that they'd dig up answers for me. And...yep, they did.

Sit through your blues and see what's on the other side. You are not worthless. Be patient and true. I'm telling you, but I'm also telling myself.

Out in the world:

This piece about Mystery Science Theater 3000's reboot. I could have written a piece twice this length. I have so much to say about the show. But for now I said this. Got both fantastic, sparkly private feedback and bad public feedback about it.

I interviewed Daisy Johnson, who was nominated for the Booker Prize this year. She was separated from me by a wall of publicists, in terms of our contact with each other, but through it, she seemed lovely. Her book, Everything Under, was surprising. For those who are curious about how I got to interview a Booker Prize nominee: the Rumpus asked me to. I have no helpful secrets for how to make something like that happen.

I reviewed Jabari Asim's terrific book We Can't Breathe for Brevity. I really, really recommend this book. It's short, it's beautifully written, and it's a supremely helpful primer for entrenched racial problems in America.

I reviewed a book I really did not like for the Arts Fuse. The author's international reputation tends to indicate I am wrong about it, but I challenge you to read the book and then get back to me about how. I even have a copy, if you want it.

Pleiades published a three-minute review I wrote of Maya Sonenberg's chapbook for PANK. I wrote another one for another PANK chapbook that's forthcoming.

Never Yell Help Unless You Really Need Help

The past handful of days has been kind of bonkers and I am not handling it well. I'm behind on almost everything: reviews, interviews, reading, pitching, volunteering, editing, applications, my personal life. The only thing I'm up-to-date on is publicity via social media. Which probably isn't a good thing.

Here is the news:

• sinkhole, in their generosity, has put me on their masthead as contributing books editor. I wrote a special bio just for them.
  
• I found out that my name and review are quoted in the paperback for Red Clocks.
  
• My piece on Medium has racked up 20,000 views.
  
• I wrote an op-ed of sorts about the Stephen Elliott situation, and it got me a flurry of messages and shares and conversation. This is the first time I've been in the vanguard of thinkpieces about a cultural issue instead of tagging along behind.
  
• My friend Ryan mentioned me in his podcast, the Coolness Chronicles.
  
• A close family member has been impacted by Hurricane Michael and I am worried. 

Here is the further explication of that news:

My Week in Backstory

Hi, here's a post that's backstory on the things that went live this week. It's helping me procrastinate on two essays I'm scared to write. Yay! 

Queen Mob's Teahouse published an essay I assembled from the work of five different writers: me, Lucas Mann, David Shields, David Foster Wallace, and Kate Durbin. This piece started out as a book review of Mann's book, Captive Audience, a memoir on reality TV, but I got really, really carried away. I took angry notes in the margins of his book and when I started typing quotes from him into the Word doc I had set up for the review, I couldn't stop. Somewhere in there I realized I needed help if I was going to critique the book as thoroughly as I wanted to. So it became a collage. Shields, from whose 1996 book I took some of my material, also blurbed Mann's book positively. 

Although the book did make me angry, it also baffled me - so far was it from the values I live within that I sometimes had to stop and squint to make sense of what Mann had written. If he was putting on a more-filtered-than-usual writer's persona for the book, rather than telling the unvarnished truth, the whole thing would make more sense - but it didn't read that way to me. It read as honest, if bizarre. 

I don't feel perfectly good about taking aim at a fellow writer this way, but the book felt that irresponsible to me, was that infuriating. I still don't understand how an examined, educated life can reasonably include reality TV, which exploits and exposes and never enlightens, and I don't understand how Mann can reasonably write what strives to be a memoir of an examined life and not acknowledge the other side of what he's endorsing. 

Also this week, the Rumpus published an interview I conducted with Elissa Washuta in which I talked about some things I rarely talk about - why I never cry, for example - and some things I talk about constantly - women's glossies, for example. I emailed Washuta initially because I've been wanting to have a conversation with her since I read My Body Is a Book of Rules, which I didn't fully understand but which I knew was important. She mentioned on Twitter some months ago that she was looking for promotion for Starvation Mode when it came out in paperback. 

When I reached out to her, I had no idea where I was going to send the resulting interview. Once we were both working on the interview, I pitched a few places (pies in the sky, mostly), but they either ignored me or turned me down. Time grew short, so I reached out to the Rumpus, with whom I have kind of a flexible, friendly relationship. I didn't know that Elissa had previously been on staff at the Rumpus, so I wasn't exactly reaching new audiences with her words by placing it there, which makes me feel bad, that I couldn't put it someplace that would help her more (and stupid for not researching this). I cherish the Rumpus and what it does, of course - I owe a great deal of my current reputation and workload to what it and its editors have given me, and the chances they've taken on me, and I will never stop pointing that out - but it would have brought me (and Elissa too, I think) a new line on the CV to appear in BOMB instead. 

Anyway. All possible credit to Elissa and Monet P. Thomas, the new Rumpus interviews editor, for helping this interview to be something special. Which I think it is. 

Also also this week, Submittable put one of my reviews in its newsletter. I had no idea this would happen until I opened the newsletter, and I was shocked to find my own words there. 

I read this newsletter closely every week, and it gives me all kinds of great leads and information, so I am honored and very pleased. Here's the review they're referring to, of Night Moves, by Jessica Hopper. I loved the book, even if it put the song of the same name into my head intermittently for months. University of Texas Press is doing remarkable work, very little like the average scholarship-oriented university press, and I recommend keeping an eye on them as you would a regular indie press. 

In other news - and I'm kind of burying the lede, if you live in LA - I'm reading this Saturday at the Poetic Research Bureau, a terrific little place in Chinatown, with two artists who are much fancier than I am. Here's the Facebook event if you want to RSVP. I am genuinely thrilled and I hope to see you there. I'll bring chapbooks. I owe this good fortune to Kate Durbin and to this t-shirt made of V.C. Andrews book covers. No foolin'. 

A Complete Statement on My Middling Success

In the past month I've heard more often than usual that it's hard for friends to keep up with the number of links to my work I'm posting. In reply I have tried to say, yes, me too. Even though that's true, I realize it sounds kind of bad, because I'm the one posting the links, so obviously I can keep up with them.

But I use a spreadsheet. Seriously. It has five categorized tabs and dozens of rows and without it, I would miss all my deadlines, lose all my pitch ideas, and go insane. I updated it this morning. I have filed twelve (12) pieces that haven't been published yet, most of which I expect out in the next month. At least that many again have been assigned to me.

This is not me bragging, I swear. I've been wanting to write this post for a while, and I feel like I've been writing breadcrumbs of it in many recent posts. What I want to say is that being prolific has been primarily a job (and not a very hard one at that), rather than a cotton-candy dream come true, and I don't expect you, friends and readers, to give a damn about every last thing I'm publishing. But I want to say it at length.

Unscheduled Leaps

I drafted this post in October of 2017. I was too much of a fraidy-cat to post it then, but as I continue to mull and feel things about leaving my job at the end of March (when will I stop feeling things about it? nngh), it begins to seem like posting this is important. So I edited it a little and here it is.

--

There's a lot to tell you about the last three months of non-blogging. A lot of things I did and saw that I want to record and analyze. I read Our Mutual Friend and it put me off reading for about a month; I wrote the beginning of a very hard thing, and keep finding more of it squirting out around my edges; I had some experiences with ...mmmteachingkindof and I really really loved them. I went to Santa Fe and regained my center, the feeling of what makes me me.

But here's the main thing: I'm proverbially riding off into the sunset from my job.

Git along, li'l rexy

Sort of. I'm not leaving my job entirely, and I'm not withdrawing from it soon. I'm planning on working for the law firm I work for essentially forever, or for as long as they'll have me, but I'm cutting about 3/4 of my hours gradually over the next four months. [This turned out not to be feasible, in a way that's still disappointing. That job is gone for good.]

I don't have other plans for money right now. I don't have another job, and I don't have other opportunities on the table - aside from those I've applied for, which has little to do with getting them. But I'm sinking, losing ground creatively and just-general-life-ly, and it's because I spend 7:00 am to 8:00 am every morning driving all of 15 miles to get to work, and then I spend most of my afternoon hours sprawled on my couch or in front of my computer decompressing from the experience of work. I may be a hopeless wimp in terms of how most people do modern American life, but that's irrelevant; what's relevant is this way isn't working for me.

It wasn't any fun to realize I needed to do this, and it took me a year between realization and action. A YEAR. I don't know what would've happened if I'd leapt earlier, but I didn't, I'm leaping now, and here's what happens next.

• I'm teaching a sentence workshop on November 11 for San Fernando Valley-area writers. 
• I'm running a monthly writing group that's growing in interesting ways. 
• I'm volunteering at CSUN, working with students on the literary magazine. 
• I'm in the early stages of partnering with [redacted]. 
• I'm applying for proofreading and copy editing jobs, even weird ones. 
• I'm long-distance-volunteering at [redacted] to mentor young writers. 
• I'm querying agents with my writing craft book and my urban fantasy book. 
• I'm querying small presses with the other two manuscripts: the secret project and an essay collection. 
• I'm making zines of my littler work. 

[I can't believe it, but almost none of this worked out. 

• The sentence workshop was terrif and I want to do another one, but I still suck at promotions & marketing and can't afford to pay anyone to do it for me. If I'm going to teach workshops, something has to happen to draw strangers into them rather than just friends: a book, a partnership, a marketing campaign, something. I don't know how to make this happen other than what I'm already doing. 
• The monthly writing group has dissolved because it was an astounding amount of emotional effort and people kept blowing it off. When I stopped sending emails about the group early this spring, no one spoke up to say they missed it. 
• Volunteering worked out great in terms of enjoying myself, but did not net the main effect I was doing it for. 
• Partnering broke even, but that's about it. 
• I'm not applying for those jobs anymore - no time, with my writing schedule. 
• The mentoring thing totally blew up for reasons not of my making. 
• Still querying but nothing has happened. 
• Making the one zine was a good idea but has netted almost nothing practical (interest from a publisher, etc). I'm trying to decide whether I should attempt something bigger for my next one, still handmade but with a press instead of a printer, but it's too overwhelming to think about with all else going on.] 

All of this is stuff I can do. I know I am weak at marketing myself, but I'm strong at distributing my energy to a variety of points. Like a seed strewer instead of a seed planter. I'm also strong at my passion, so I'm leaning into volunteering for what I enjoy, instead of waiting and hoping for something paid + passionate to cross my path. Yeah, I hope the volunteering will lead to a job somehow, but the volunteering is adding to my life in itself.

I have other ideas. And I have essays and books to write. And I have piles and piles of other people's books to read. It's all too much to do while holding down a decent job, so the job had to go [this was the main truth I avoided facing for too long, and now that I have, it's so much better] ...or at least to morph. I was scared to ask, but I did, and it turned out okay. 

So here I go. Leaping. 

High hopes for a soft landing

If you want to help, subscribe to my newsletter, tell someone else about my blog or my newsletter, or share links to my work. You can also spread the word about me locally, if you live in LA. If you want to partner with me to teach workshops in your area, I might be down for that.

If you don't want to help, cool. Not everyone has to love me. 

Pictured: me when excited to see someone

(Truth is, the gifs I got when I searched "cat leaping" and "dog leaping"
were so amazing I couldn't stick with just one.) 

In My Wildest Dreams

Over the weekend, my goal was to write three book reviews. I'm staring down a May 20 deadline for four separate reviews, one of which I've already filed, plus two soft deadlines for today (Monday). I really hate working close to deadline; I know it motivates some people, but it just makes me crazy, and I produce poor work. I wanted to get more than half of the five remaining reviews out of the way this weekend, rather than sweating next week. And I did: I wrote three reviews, meeting the soft deadlines and a second May 20 deadline, and I finished reading the third May 20 book. Which leaves me with six days to review that book and read and review the last one. Doable.

I was feeling good about blamming through these responsibilities--even though filing one review got me an assignment for another one, on a fairly short timeline--and I went into the living room to re-sort the book piles everywhere. There's a pile for no-deadline books, a pile for read-but-not-reviewed books, a pile for reviewed-and-waiting-for-edits books, and a few small piles of send-to-friends books. I neatened these, and an epiphany hit me like a train.

That first paragraph? With the six deadlines and the process of meeting them? That's my life now. It's what I do every day: read, review, pitch, write. I have a spreadsheet with all the ARCs I've requested, received, or been assigned, with slots for whether I've read it, pitched it, etc. When I file the review, I gray out the title, and when the review gets published, I delete the row and enter the book on the next sheet, where I have slots for social media promotion and informing the publisher and etc. This is how I stay sane, this spreadsheet, its tidiness keeping me from terror.

self-portrait with two left hands

The epiphany: this is the life I dreamed of when I was a little girl. Other kids dreamed of being astronauts or ballerinas, but I wanted to be a librarian. I wanted to be around books all day long, every day, forever. As an adult, I learned, to my enormous disappointment, that being a librarian is less about books than it is about customer service (thank you, Withdrawn). I decided to be a writer instead, making my life about books I create instead of books created by others.

At the moment, most of what I write about is books. When I look around my apartment, all I see is books. Yeah, it stresses me out and makes me sad that so many of them are going unread while I read assigned books I'm less excited about, but still: being surrounded by books, and thinking about books all day long, was my fantasy life as a child, and now it is my actual life.

(This life has come about through a series of unlikely and wholly unplanned events. I feel the need to point out and emphasize this, because more and more people are talking to me about my publications IRL and I'm flattered and pleased, but I don't know what to say to them. I feel like a hapless cheater: it just...happened.)

The point is, I haven't really looked around at my book-stuffed life with WhatDoesThisMean-O-Vision until yesterday. And I feel grateful, positively awash in gratitude. Yet I also feel overwhelmed. I don't want to stop writing about books, but I do want to slow down. A little insistent voice is telling me that this pace isn't sustainable. And of course I'm getting paid for less than half of what I'm writing. It's a better average than before, but I'd like to convert the work I'm doing with books into work that will pay well, and that will lead somewhere.

Because over the weekend, I got news that a meaningful boost I hoped I'd get as a reviewer is not coming to me. That boost had a trajectory that made sense, that looked like a natural next step. But no. At least for the next year, that boost isn't mine. So I'm floundering a little bit on my trajectory, unsure whether I'm actually sitting in a catapult or just a swingset, swooping back and forth in the same non-progressive arcs over the sand.

more positive self-portrait, except for the cat, because I'm allergic
(books and cats always seem to go together in culture, but I REMAIN ALLERGIC)

Out in the world:

I wrote about the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama for the Big Smoke. I wrote this, revised it a few times, and then held on to it, trying to sort out whether it wouldn't be better if I shut up and let non-white voices say everything possible about this museum. I also didn't really want to call out my family; there's complexity there. I talked it over with a few friends and my editor, and ultimately it went forward, and I've gotten some compliments on it (from white people, admittedly). No one has showed up at my literal or digital door to punch me and call me a racist, so I guess that means it wasn't a terrible move to publish it.

I reviewed a pile of interesting books recently.

• So Lucky, Nicola Griffith, for The Arts Fuse. I've never read a book this streamlined, this angry--a book that feels like a pistol shot between the eyes, no more, no less. Nevertheless, it's not white-heat writing; it's multilayered and meticulous. Get into it. Particularly if you have chronic illness, or have a loved one with same. 
• Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse, and Deer Woman, an anthology, for ANMLY. I loved both of these books, but I particularly loved Trail of Lightning. It was so well-assembled, so full of heart and wit, and I fell stupidly in love with the main character. She reminded me of my own Berra Thorntree, so much so that I queried Roanhorse's agent. Didn't even get a request for a partial. Oh, well. 
• Belly Up, Rita Bullwinkel, for LARB. I greatly admired this book but didn't like it. (You might; I suspect it's going to be acclaimed elsewhere.) I will watch this writer with eagerness and interest, in the hope that I can write her an unalloyed positive review someday. 
• Stormwarning, Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir, for the Women's Review of Books. This is actually a profile more than a review, and I am owed approximately half of the credit for the final product. My editor was amazing. The book is amazing, too (say it with me: feminist Icelandic poetry); buy it here. Alas, this profile only appears in the magazine, but you can buy a PDF of the magazine at this link. 

Scenes from My New Life

Reading and writing all day long, from 5 in the morning until 9 at night, with breaks for napping, eating, solitaire.

Aching to tell everyone in the world about a thing happening this Thursday (I think), but trying not to, in case it falls through. Telling probably too many people anyway. Hurry up, Thursday.

Severely alienating an editor by accident, but feeling bad only interpersonally (not professionally), because doubtful that I'll write anything that fits this market again. Joking with another editor about Buddy Christ in discussing a serious, snoot-de-la-toot review.

Looking at the month as an empty vessel which I must fill with dollars exchanged for hours of my time.

Terror. Bliss. Both straight to the vein.

Meeting one deadline after another for the end of February. Shooting out the ducks in the range, bang, bang, bang, until there is just one left. A little one, themed issue, February 28 deadline, not that important but kind of interesting. February 27: sitting in the CSUN class I'm assisting on a day when I don't really need to be there, paying no attention, writing, dashing off, a tiny short piece on the themed issue. Not even sleeping on it, just sending it in. Bang.

Feeling such relief I thought I'd flatten, like a balloon with all the air gone. I did it. I met all the deadlines. I have lost track of how many there were that I met. (Tried to research it for this post and could not even tell if it was less or greater than ten.) Drop the little interesting deadline entirely out of my thoughts, because I don't expect to hear about it for months and I dashed that thing off in like an hour and there's no money so who cares. The point is I threw my hat in the ring. February 28: receive email saying the dashed-off piece is going to be published and will I please sign this contract? Crack up so loudly and longly that my co-worker asks and I tell her the whole story.

Excitement crackling across the line when my friend tells me about her thesis and how the storm of it gathers inside her. I feel bad charging her but I am freelance now and my time is worth money. Must be worth money.

Scrolling through sent emails with no memory of all these pitches. Once, eight in a day.

Getting solicited to do an interview and write a few reviews. Realizing getting solicited to write could happen again. Feeling impostor syndrome for the first time in many years, then reminding myself that my website doesn't lie, I did write all those things. It's real.

Stefan Bucher. From here.

Piling all the galleys up and then re-sorting them, realizing okay, it's not so bad, I can do this. Holes in the calendar for June and July. Hmm.

Fixing things in my house. Mounting a shelf I've had in pieces since October. Hanging three-dimensional art with massive, rejected hooks (long story). Finally sorting out my closet (dresses on one side, cardigans on the other). Staring at my work shoes. Pitching two places with an essay about my work shoes. Changing the goddamn sheets. Six loads of laundry in four days. Box up the too-small pants. Break down the Leaning Tower of Amazon Boxes and put them in the recycling. Water the succulents. Clear the desk, throw away months-old mail, rip the perfumed pages out of old Vanity Fair issues I never wanted and recycle the rest. Out it all goes, everything I didn't need but had allowed to accumulate. Why did I let it go so far? How did I slip away, so distant from balance? Who has lived in me for the last six months? Is this her success, her backstroke toward freedom, or is it mine?

Feeling ready. My eyes different in the mirror. I am prepared to fail. Terror, bliss. Here I go.

Year of the Journeyman

On December 15 I posted this picture on Facebook, with the caption "Thank you, Kristi, for making me popular."

Two friends (# s 10 and 11) were also on the list, which is nice.

Circulation-wise, Entropy is not the New Yorker, but honestly I'd prefer to be popular at Entropy.

I noted in the comments of this Facebook post that the ninth Books I Hate interview, with duncan b. barlow, was coming soon. When I counted back to realize that yes, it was the ninth, that I had coaxed nine published writers to talk to me about books they disliked, and then had published the results on a site that has well over 10,000 followers on Twitter - when I thought about how close this interview series came to never happening at all - when I realized that I'd made this idea up out of nothing and it'd become something real, something with nine notches on it and many more to come - and then when I thought about all the other belts I'd added notches to over the course of 2017 - I got overwhelmed and I had to stop thinking about it until I had more room.

Here's the room. The empty blog post window, right here.

There's this concept in publishing I didn't understand for a long time: the "emerging writer". I thought at first that this simply meant any writer, any writer at all, who was not famous, or making money with her writing, but who was trying sincerely to get published at any level. Obviously, this definition covers a lot of ground. Later I learned that "emerging" means a specific category of unfamous writers: those who are starting to get publication in larger magazines, who are starting to get attention for their writing from strangers, who have maybe gotten an MFA or a book contract or a few contest prizes, but who are not "established" writers, or people whose authority as writers is worth attention.

I am bothered that there's no category prior to "emerging" for people who have written some stuff but haven't heard "yes" enough times to fully emerge. I've spent ten years writing, but 2017 is the year I am sliding into the "emerging" category. Who was I before that? Was I still cocooned? That seems unfair; I worked hard to be a writer all that time, but "emerging" was decided by someone else (really a whole lot of someone elses), not me.

Skilled trades have different categories for "apprentice" and "journeyman", and that seems way better than the categories of "--" and "emerging". Less insulting, less vague, no aroma of futility or tautology.

Here are some aspects of my experience as a journeyman in 2017:

• I wrote an email to an established editor asking for advice. 
• I felt sure that my interview series was a good idea even though people told me it wasn't. 
• I asked for galleys of forthcoming books. 
• I applied for half a dozen full-time editorial jobs and half a dozen more unpaid jobs as columnist, editor, reviewer. I applied for half a dozen fellowships. 
• I treated pitching and reviewing like a job. 
• I learned to pitch anyway, even if I didn't think I had time or if I felt scared to. To treat editors like human beings instead of scary, naysaying gods. 
• I stopped thinking it was me when they said no. 
• I hustled like hell during the last few months of the year. I researched markets like crazy and pitched endlessly. 
• I thought big: David Shields as subject, the Sun as market. 

As a result:

• I got it. 
• It was. 
• Because of previous reviews I wrote, I got them. 
• I didn't get any of them, not one. 
• I got paid for some of my reviews. 
• I landed a lot of those pitches. 
• I considered it a combination of me and not-me when they said yes. 
• The more I hustled, the better I did. The more I thought toward audience for nonfiction, the better I did. 
• Most of the biggest stuff didn't come to fruition, but some of the second biggest stuff did. 
• And, symbolically, I had too many publications in a single week to reasonably share them all on Facebook. 

I leaned on my contacts without shame. I never would've reviewed The Book of Joan, a review that on its own opened many doors for me, if a friend hadn't asked me to. About two weeks ago I recorded an insanely long interview with a writer known by many in avant-garde circles, and I have hopes of placing the result somewhere good on the strength of his name, not mine. I emailed my conceptual novel to a friend with a much more expansive knowledge of small presses than I have, and he mentioned a press I never would've known about that looks just right. I'm planning to ask a friend about manuscript review at a press that doesn't accept unsolicited submissions, but where he knows people. [redacted because the first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club], which got me most of the galleys and therefore most of the reviews I've had published. Reviews didn't come directly out of that, though - it was my pitches, endless endless pitches.

In considering my success in 2017, though, I keep coming back to the interviews. I'd had the idea for Books I Hate since late 2016, when my friend Chris asked me if I wanted to do an interview series for Entropy. I told him I didn't know anything about interviewing people and I wasn't sure I should. He coaxed me into agreeing to the series, but when I told him my idea for the theme, he seemed dubious. He was worried the interviews would be too negative. (Many of the writers I've approached turned me down because of this same anxiety.) I believed that I could figure out a way for writers to talk about books that got on their nerves that would reveal something important about the writers' personalities, and even perhaps the kind of writer they were, without just slagging on books that they thought sucked. Part of the theory of art I've been developing for half a decade now is that art we don't like influences us as much or more as art we do like, and here was my chance to show it. 

Now, nine interviews later, I still agree with myself. And even though Chris brought the ability to implement the series, the place for publication, to me, I thought up the idea and approached the authors and wrote and polished the interviews. I did that. I made that. From nothing. It emerged from me. 

Maybe that's what "emerging" means. That the work is starting to come out of its cocoon. That I feel confident enough, now, that something useful will happen when I sit down to the notebook. 

I've shared with friends that I feel uncomfortable with everything good that's happened to me in 2017 simply because it's happened in 2017. For many, this has been an abysmal year, with curtailment of rights, serious ideological schisms, little progress on infrastructure, and unjust death after unjust death from guns and drugs and fires and bombs. But I can't ignore all the good things. At least half of the total publications I list on my website happened in 2017, most of them in the latter part of the year. I got a nibble from an agent for the KUFC novel and positive feedback on my book proposal. I completed an unexpected novel, half a dozen in-depth essays and stories, and more reviews than I can even count right now. I made a writing newsletter, because I had enough news to warrant a letter for the first time. All that stuff in bullet points above, and all the stuff on my website.

It keeps accelerating. There will be workshops and publications in 2018. I hope, I wish, I grit my teeth and pray there will be a book contract (I'm circulating four manuscripts and hope to finish one, perhaps two others). There will be more teaching, and maybe there'll be teaching for money, if I'm lucky. I am uncomfortable with this kind of success, because of the year and because I am inordinately afraid of things tumbling down (what if it's been Lady Fortune instead of me being any good? what if I'm not emerging, but still just --? what if I'm getting cocky and all this is stupid small potatoes and I sound like a total idiot? what if I can't pay my student loans? what if I never get a fellowship?). But I shall stride onward, not letting up, not looking back, a journeyman on the road to Oz.