Hi! Greetings from The Inbox Variations - Now on Substack! The Great/So-So Mailchimp Experiment of 2020 has come to an end. I found the platform much too fiddly and overwhelming for my needs and did not like the composing experience or the end result. Given that I had some technical issues with TinyLetter, I don’t want to go back to that, either. So here we are!
Also, I’m absorbing the short-lived Inbox Courage into my general newsletter. As I wrote in Inbox Courage #7:
I've been realizing just how many things I've been doing that siphon off the focus and energy I would rather put into my novels. … With the social media accounts, the newsletters, the Medium posts, and the podcast, sometimes I feel like I'm hiking a trail with a bunch of purses and jackets hanging off my arms and I forget the point of the path.
My mantra for 2021, should I live to see it, is simplify and focus (and also don’t make your RSI worse, Sara!) which means I’m dropping some things and simplifying others so that I can better focus on the whole reason I’m in this thing: to write novels. Though everything still feels quite shaky, not only am I hopeful enough to have a mantra for next year, I’ve also got a calendar refill right here on my desk. And I want next year to be full of writing days.
If you were an Inbox Courage subscriber and do not want to be on this list, smash that unsubscribe button at the end. And for those who’ve been with me since the very first TinyLetter, thank you for hanging in there with me.
On to some recs!
You know when you have a book you are certain you’ll love and you kind of put off reading it until a perfect reading day comes into your life and you can really savor it? For me, that was Nina LaCour’s new novel, Watch Over Me. The perfect reading day came on a recent cold and windy Sunday, so I nestled in with the cat and read this book cover to cover. It’s set on the Mendocino coast—familiar to me from numerous church and personal retreats in years gone by—and Nina captured the mood of it perfectly. Also, her writing is so incredibly precise; not one word out of place. I highly recommend this one.
I’ve been very much enjoying Maintenance Phase, a new podcast from Aubrey Gordon (aka Your Fat Friend) and Michael Hobbes (of You’re Wrong About, for one). The podcast is about “Debunking the junk science behind health fads, wellness scams and nonsensical nutrition advice.” If you’ve ever been drawn to adaptogens, scared of lectins, or otherwise trapped in a diet/wellness culture hellscape, this may be for you.
Last, one way my husband and I have coped with this year has been with a full rewatch of America’s Next Top Model. It’s a comfort watch and a discomfort watch all in one. If you’ve forgotten what we were like as human Americans in the early to mid aughts, you might check it out and be…surprised? Horrified? Entertained? It’s all on Hulu. We’re on Cycle 11, with many more to go.
I hope you’ve got your own comforts to get you through. Tell me about them if you want. I think Substack has some neat features for interacting—feel free to try them out!
Sara is the critically acclaimed author of eight books, most recently Goodbye from Nowhere and Courageous Creativity: Advice and Encouragement for the Creative Life. She’s also the producer and host of the podcast This Creative Life. Find out more sarazarr.com.
Substack is, by far, the easiest and best newsletter host I've used. Right now, I'm split between Convertkit and using Substack for poetry, but, honestly, Substack is just so much easier to use!
Simplify and focus. I may have to co-opt your mantra for the next year. I've spent the last month and a half or so in a novel-writing zen, after spending two years trying to wrangle a (different) novel project. I could live like this in this place. And I really want to put the focus into my writing rather than everything else that distracts me.
Thank you for this post. I'm always happy when I see your name in the inbox :)