Factoring in the Joy in Your Writing

Sorry to be cringe, but I do have some thoughts on the matter.

I have a few events in September!

If you’re in Jackson, MS this weekend (9/13), I’ll be at the always delightful Mississippi Book Festival appearing on a fiction panel.

If you’re in Chicago, IL next weekend (9/19), I’ll be joining my friend Jason Diamond in conversation at Volumes Bookstore on behalf of his wonderful debut novel, Kaplan’s Plot, which comes out tomorrow. Congrats, Jason!

If you’re in New Orleans the following weekend (9/27), I’ll be throwing a party in my backyard for Patricia Lockwood on behalf of her brilliant novel, Will There Ever Be Another You, and you can get tickets here.

---

Hi friends.

Still reading, note-taking, daydreaming, trying not to judge myself for not being full thrust in the middle of a project right now. Pri and I were talking about how we had both been non-stop writing books since 2020 (I’ve written four in that time!) and how it’s OK to breathe for a second.

But of course I feel saner when I have something to fixate on. So I chip away at all the ideas of what might come next. Because I’m fully in a transitional moment in my life right now. Like, I weeded all weekend, frantically. Walked the dog a bunch. Went shopping at a Michaels for like an hour, which, pro tip, is literally a giant store of writing prompts. But anyway, that’s where I’m at.

The truth is right now I am writing a lot about aging and some of it feels really challenging which is more than OK, I want to feel challenged, but also I can’t tell if I want to write about it as a memoir or a novel. Like there is challenging and then there is exhausting. Memoir would be an interesting form for what I want to talk about, but am I prepared to embrace that kind of extreme tenderness yet again?