I have a love-hate relationship with January. I love the start of a new year, just like I like Mondays and the first day of the month and mornings (not before sunrise, mind you). I hate the way it’s impossible to get warm in SLC, the bleak inversiony skies, and the knowledge that there’s lots more of both of those conditions ahead.
The first couple of weeks of this year were especially hard, the way omicron came and my husband left (back to work in CA, not, like, our marriage) and the burnout was still right where I left it before Christmas, waiting ever so patiently. I’ve tried to keep a one-day-at-a-time mindset and not dwell on anything that isn’t right now.
I’ve been feeling a little better this last week, and was finally motivated to do the reflection and planning that I like to at this time of year. For me that means:
Career Summit
I sit down and make a document of all the partial projects and ideas that are currently alive to me. I try to think about how to prioritize them. There’s only so much strategy one can employ here, because the publishing business and market is an amorphous blob of guesses about the future based on the past, with some bonus pandemic uncertainty thrown in.
In years past, I like to see my agent in person and do part of the career summit together. It’s a great excuse to hang out, anyway, in a tax-deductible environment. That wasn’t in the cards this year, but as he always reminds me, ultimately I need to write the thing I want to write and not waste too much energy trying to guess what the market will do. Any other way might land me stuck writing something my heart isn’t in. Some writers I know can still get stuff done in that situation; it’s not a good one for me.
This coming year, more than ever, I think following my creative energy is going to lead me to some brand new places.
The BS / No BS List
That’s what I’m calling it this year, anyway.
It’s basically a look at how I’ve been spending my limited time and attention. Am I letting time and attention get sucked into BS things that don’t get me closer to what I want and think I’m here for? It happens so easily.
St. Augustine refers to what I’m calling BS as misdirected passion, which sounds pretty high-minded. But as I’ve done my reflection this year, one thing I’ve come around to is that I like being high-minded about writing. When my faith changed so radically a few years ago, I lost a lot of the language of it. With that went the sense of writing as a calling or vocation, my ideas around what I think is worth writing about, the “life of the mind” and the search for the good and the true—all these compasses went out the window for awhile as I reckoned with loss and cynicism and disillusionment.
I missed them, those compasses, and am realizing I can make a choice to bring them back into my writing life which is de facto my spiritual practice. That means eschewing some ideas and pursuits that are totally fine but not what I’m about, as well as some stuff that’s straight up BS.
Specific Plans and Goals
Once I’ve done my big picture idea-dump document, and have oriented my “what am I about as a writer and person?” compass, I make some plans.
This includes figuring out:
how and when I’m going to finish any contracted books (I’ve gone one now that’s behind and giving me headaches!),
what might be close enough to put into proposal or draft shape and send to my agent,
what needs a lot more work and what kind of work,
what sidestreams I have going on (coaching, teaching, non-book writing, podcast) and how to increase/sustain them if I want or end them if need be, and
in normal times, where am I going to travel and what events am I going to do or try to get invited to or pitch! Right now I feel optimistic that 2022 might actually involve some of this. (?)
That’s pretty much it. I don’t spend too much time on all this or make it look real pretty, I just have to wait for the right mindset to descend upon me and then get it all down in some form. I like to email the documents to myself, and then use the gmail snooze feature to return them to my inbox regularly as a reminder of what I’m trying to be about. (And, oh yeah, mixed into all that is figuring out how I’m not going to be broke year after year!)
Book Stuff
More good reviews for A Song Called Home came in over the holidays, but what makes me even happier is that I’m starting to line up some events. There might even be in-person things this year and I will definitely cry if they happen. (I’ll also cry if they don’t, but not the good kind of cry.)
I’ll send out event info in a future newsletter edition dedicated to all things A Song Called Home!
Meanwhile, if you’d like to be sure to get a personalized, signed copy, you can pre-order/order from The King’s English in SLC. In the “order comments,” specify who you’d like it personalized for, or “signature only.” Click the cute little book store to order ⬇️
Alternately, purchase from your store of choice and then use my site’s contact page to request a signed bookplate.
Some Recommendations
Speaking of setting that “why I write” compass, I absolutely loved this piece on the connection between love and attention. My guiding quote for Goodbye from Nowhere was Iris Murdoch’s: “Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.” And more of that quote is in my overall writing manifesto: “Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.” The piece linked here is an excerpt from an upcoming book that I’ll be eager to read.
I didn’t see it because I’ve been lukewarm on McKay’s other movies, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying Andrew DeYoung’s take on Don’t Look Up. (Andrew is my co-host on my podcast series on launching our books, by the way!)
“Debt Demands a Body” by Kristin Collier over on Longreads is both a harrowing personal story and a critique of various systems, and a great read to boot.
If you didn’t catch this interview with/profile of Lois Lowry, here it is. She is wise.
Did you miss out on the subscriber season of This Creative Life, in which I read Courageous Creativity aloud and provided my additional thoughts about the content, specifically framed for adult listeners? You did? Well, dry your eyes, because now you can get that audio. It’s all re-engineered and broken down into separate MP3s for easy navigation. A purchase gets you a free copy of the This Creative Life ebook when it comes out later this year, and helps fund a real audiobook for that one!
Here is your reward for making it to the end of this email—Mavis Staples with Jeff Tweedy singing my favorite song of last decade, for some January comfort.
The album version: