Hi friends. It’s been a weird week. I broke my ankle (don’t ask) and have been laid up in bed and it’s been storming like crazy in New Orleans, and I have been trapped with the terrible news of the world, when I might ordinarily just get up and walk away from the screen for a while if I needed a break from the turmoil that is America. It’s a good idea to take breaks – we know that, right? A smart person once told me, “You can’t help other people if you’re a hot mess yourself.”
This is what I needed to read this morning. Well, I've probably needed to hear this for far, far longer. But today is the day I can read this and get it. It's picturing that book on a shelf someplace and thinking, That is a work I put out into this world. So that rules out the "How to Escape the Dick Head Douche Bag Boss You Despise". And it also rules out sarcastic reactions to depression. It pushes all of that right out the window and out into the pouring rain and the Sullivan Tire parking lot. Good. Gone. What your words help me uncover is the desire to share the most beautiful, hard fought, rewarding and amazing lesson I've learned. So, today's the day. Eighty thousand words, here I come. Thank you.
I sometimes literally feel like I’m “dying” to tell a story, in that there’s a sort of building ache, achey-ness, discomfort in this very long period of gestation and it’s making me feel like yes, I’ll die if I don’t tell it, but I’m still not quite sure what it is. But I do know that coming back to Queens to take care of my mother and getting her to tell me her very unreliable stories about her past (she is not only basically senile, blending many stories into each other, but also has never been great at memory, often building stories that seem plausible to her out of fragments of memories, then believing them and repeating them). I’m beginning to resign myself to writing a sort of fictional autobiography built on my childhood memories of my own, memories I have of her stories before she forgot them and modified them fifty years later, and my own constructions built from a childlike understanding of things I was too young to actually understand. It’s like I need to tell the story of how I ended up without a story, without a place, without a race, without real memories or family history.
The good thing is that others are finally beginning to write such stories, themselves, and being taken seriously. It’s like I’ve waited all my life to read them. And now I’m still dying to write my own.
The one good thing that came of this pandemic, and the shutdown, and my widowhood, and my solitude and my coming back to take care of my mother is all the reading I’ve been able to do. For years I’ve been craving a long, long residency somewhere, where I could do nothing but read. This has been the closest thing to it, and may I honor the suffering and misfortunes that came along with it by doing something good and beautiful with it.
Jami, you are so wonderful, thank you for all the words you share out into the world. It's raining up here in northern NH, too, when it's not wet-snowing. I was dumb last night and thought, oh, it's going to snow, the bears won't want to be out in that weather, and left the bird feeders out. I woke early in the morning to a thump, thwack, and jingle, and knew that a bear had just made off with my larger feeder AND the Om sign wind chime it hangs from. And it hadn't even started snowing yet, so I couldn't follow their tracks. I'm sadder about the rusty old wind chime, which I've had for my whole adult life. It's probably hanging over their den already, its rows of bells jingling quietly in the storm. I hope your ankle heals swiftly. I really like the foot and ankle exercises on GMB, have used them for post-strain ankle rehab in the past and if I remembered to do them all the time, I might be less likely to strain my ankle again. Happy writing. Thank you for all your inspiration. Take good care.
Great words of advice. You are truly generous. Here are my snips:
It’s a good idea to take breaks (this seems very apropos to extending my writing practice time); Any of us can write whatever we want; What is the story you’re dying to tell? (working on it!); What books have you admired recently? (this is pending finishing my first draft); What new forms have blown your mind? (I’m reading Heels by Summer Brennan; it’s broken like poetry so far. I’m also reading 28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand and I finally have a hint of her form – not sure if I love the form or not, but just feeling it for now); And what about past loves that have stuck with you? (of course, this would be Evergreen); What are your influences? (would it be rude to turn on Belva? And where is Elisabeth Egan?); What are your aspirations? (to have this book finished, polished, and published, and well-received – but, mainly just finished and polished would be asking a lot!); The books of others spread all over my room. I thought about those authors, and their ah-ha moments that led to the creation of these works. (I’ve often thought of the books as teachers, skipping over their origination points – except, though, for a Wrinkle in Time where I read that Madeline L’Engle worked on story ideas like simmering pots on the stove’s back burner – I love that); the best ideas I’ve had have taken me years to put together (that gives me hope); What do you want to be when you grow up? (I want to be a writer that’s open to sharing her work – I’d also like to get words out more quickly and I’m looking forward to the #1000wordsofsummer to work on that effort); What kind of writer do you want to be? And what kind of person do you want to be? What are you putting out there? What do you want to say to the world? What kind of book do you want to see on the shelf with your name on it? This is forever, this book. (I want this book, and me, to be a writer that sees women my age, in all its iterations); picture the person picking it up, and what they’re looking for; What do you want them to know? You can reach out to them now. What do you want to say to them? (I am you.)
Thank you Jami. Hoping you have a quick recovery. <3
I too, recently broke my ankle (8 weeks ago) and recovery has been a long and difficult path. My utmost empathy to you - I know exactly how it feels!
I have often secretly longed for a minor injury that would make me bedridden for several weeks or months. Temporarily relieved of my duties as employee, wife, mother, I would finally be able to CREATE. The gift of time, to be able to make my creative mark on the world!
Alas, when it actually happened, the break seemed to also break my inspiration. Most days, it has been too hard to do anything but survive, heal, and stare dumbly at Netflix. I am no closer to my magnum opus, and I now also have the realisation that time at any cost was maybe not what I most needed, after all.
I’m inspired by your discipline to reach for the notebook first thing, and now that I am well along the path to recovery, I am hopeful that I will be able to do the same.
amazing! and f*ck yeah! and thank you! i don't remember who, but someone whose opinion i trust sent me to your newsletter, and i'm so glad i stuck around. the divine timing and faith of it all is ringing loud and clear.
this hit home. even just the subject line set me down a path, and the rest of the letter helped clear the brush. i've been exploring my own voice and power lately, and keep finding in little (enormous!) ways that when i say what i want to say, what i want to be known, without regard for how it will be received -- when i'm the most honest and true to myself -- is when my words most land, when they resonate and really mean something to someone, which in turn nourishes and reminds me how important it is to tell my own tale and tell it exactly how i want it. that folks are out here looking for the truth, and the only version of that i can give is my own.
peace and blessings to you, many thanks, and wishing you deep breaths and soothing rest.
This is just extraordinary. Thank you. These questions are gems – they're a blueprint for falling in love over and over again with our work. I am printing them out and thinking posting them above my desk as I finish the last third of my book. (A 7+ year project.) Thank you thank you thank you!
Jami you have the knack of always hitting the nail on the head! The questions you pose in this issue are so apt. Thank you. Hope your leg heals fast so that you can get back to wandering the streets and tending your garden!
Thanks once again for sharing your wisdom, Jamie. Relentlessly upsetting news, the rain and thunder rumbling on--I needed to hear this advice to stay focused today. I have characters who need to be heard, and these stories aren't going to tell themselves.
What a beautiful gift this issue of your newsletter is! "What is the story you're dying to tell?" snapped my head back - I'm immersed in this question and my possible answer. Sending you good wishes for a speedy recovery
PS - when I broke my foot, I took it as my body telling me to stop and rest. I’d been pushing myself for years, and then pushing myself without a choice after my partner died, moved four times (with a wagon, no less, on foot, two of the times), and I guess my body was right. I needed that break before moving once more, and getting back to work (two day jobs, still unable to create in my bereavement). I keep thinking that even if any of us don’t personally know someone who died of COVID, just knowing how many people around us have died, and how many have survived into bereavement, necessarily puts us into a state of grief, even if we don’t recognize it. We must all be exhausted and grieving, and I don’t just mean for our “old lives.” I mean for our fellow hundreds of thousands of fellow humans.
I recommend a castor oil pack! It really helped with the pain and swelling on my broken fifth metatarsal (and on a sprained ankle, too, later). Look it up: it’s an Edgar Cayce remedy stolen from the old wives, a nice organic wool felt rag (bought at whole foods or other health food place or on the dreaded amazon) soaked in organic castor oil, wrapped around your ankle (unless it’s already in a cast), covered in plastic to keep it from getting oil all over, then wrapped with a heating pad, for an hour every day. Did wonders for me. An old wives’ tale, for a good reason.
Your quote from a smart person reminds me of another quote from a smart person, RuPaul Charles. He says "If you can't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an Amen?" :) I'm reading "Walk Two Moons" by Sharon Creech and the voice in it is superb. After a particularly tough rejection from an editor, I'm using the weekend to read and write the book I want to see on a shelf, and not be on Twitter. LOL Hope you feel better soon!
Thank you, Jamie. I must have really needed this today. It brought tears to my eyes. I have printed it out and hung it where I can read it again (and again) when I need a reminder to tell the story I'm dying to tell. Again, thanks so much. Wishing you peace and healing.
This is what I needed to read this morning. Well, I've probably needed to hear this for far, far longer. But today is the day I can read this and get it. It's picturing that book on a shelf someplace and thinking, That is a work I put out into this world. So that rules out the "How to Escape the Dick Head Douche Bag Boss You Despise". And it also rules out sarcastic reactions to depression. It pushes all of that right out the window and out into the pouring rain and the Sullivan Tire parking lot. Good. Gone. What your words help me uncover is the desire to share the most beautiful, hard fought, rewarding and amazing lesson I've learned. So, today's the day. Eighty thousand words, here I come. Thank you.
I sometimes literally feel like I’m “dying” to tell a story, in that there’s a sort of building ache, achey-ness, discomfort in this very long period of gestation and it’s making me feel like yes, I’ll die if I don’t tell it, but I’m still not quite sure what it is. But I do know that coming back to Queens to take care of my mother and getting her to tell me her very unreliable stories about her past (she is not only basically senile, blending many stories into each other, but also has never been great at memory, often building stories that seem plausible to her out of fragments of memories, then believing them and repeating them). I’m beginning to resign myself to writing a sort of fictional autobiography built on my childhood memories of my own, memories I have of her stories before she forgot them and modified them fifty years later, and my own constructions built from a childlike understanding of things I was too young to actually understand. It’s like I need to tell the story of how I ended up without a story, without a place, without a race, without real memories or family history.
The good thing is that others are finally beginning to write such stories, themselves, and being taken seriously. It’s like I’ve waited all my life to read them. And now I’m still dying to write my own.
The one good thing that came of this pandemic, and the shutdown, and my widowhood, and my solitude and my coming back to take care of my mother is all the reading I’ve been able to do. For years I’ve been craving a long, long residency somewhere, where I could do nothing but read. This has been the closest thing to it, and may I honor the suffering and misfortunes that came along with it by doing something good and beautiful with it.
Jami, you are so wonderful, thank you for all the words you share out into the world. It's raining up here in northern NH, too, when it's not wet-snowing. I was dumb last night and thought, oh, it's going to snow, the bears won't want to be out in that weather, and left the bird feeders out. I woke early in the morning to a thump, thwack, and jingle, and knew that a bear had just made off with my larger feeder AND the Om sign wind chime it hangs from. And it hadn't even started snowing yet, so I couldn't follow their tracks. I'm sadder about the rusty old wind chime, which I've had for my whole adult life. It's probably hanging over their den already, its rows of bells jingling quietly in the storm. I hope your ankle heals swiftly. I really like the foot and ankle exercises on GMB, have used them for post-strain ankle rehab in the past and if I remembered to do them all the time, I might be less likely to strain my ankle again. Happy writing. Thank you for all your inspiration. Take good care.
Great words of advice. You are truly generous. Here are my snips:
It’s a good idea to take breaks (this seems very apropos to extending my writing practice time); Any of us can write whatever we want; What is the story you’re dying to tell? (working on it!); What books have you admired recently? (this is pending finishing my first draft); What new forms have blown your mind? (I’m reading Heels by Summer Brennan; it’s broken like poetry so far. I’m also reading 28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand and I finally have a hint of her form – not sure if I love the form or not, but just feeling it for now); And what about past loves that have stuck with you? (of course, this would be Evergreen); What are your influences? (would it be rude to turn on Belva? And where is Elisabeth Egan?); What are your aspirations? (to have this book finished, polished, and published, and well-received – but, mainly just finished and polished would be asking a lot!); The books of others spread all over my room. I thought about those authors, and their ah-ha moments that led to the creation of these works. (I’ve often thought of the books as teachers, skipping over their origination points – except, though, for a Wrinkle in Time where I read that Madeline L’Engle worked on story ideas like simmering pots on the stove’s back burner – I love that); the best ideas I’ve had have taken me years to put together (that gives me hope); What do you want to be when you grow up? (I want to be a writer that’s open to sharing her work – I’d also like to get words out more quickly and I’m looking forward to the #1000wordsofsummer to work on that effort); What kind of writer do you want to be? And what kind of person do you want to be? What are you putting out there? What do you want to say to the world? What kind of book do you want to see on the shelf with your name on it? This is forever, this book. (I want this book, and me, to be a writer that sees women my age, in all its iterations); picture the person picking it up, and what they’re looking for; What do you want them to know? You can reach out to them now. What do you want to say to them? (I am you.)
Thank you Jami. Hoping you have a quick recovery. <3
I too, recently broke my ankle (8 weeks ago) and recovery has been a long and difficult path. My utmost empathy to you - I know exactly how it feels!
I have often secretly longed for a minor injury that would make me bedridden for several weeks or months. Temporarily relieved of my duties as employee, wife, mother, I would finally be able to CREATE. The gift of time, to be able to make my creative mark on the world!
Alas, when it actually happened, the break seemed to also break my inspiration. Most days, it has been too hard to do anything but survive, heal, and stare dumbly at Netflix. I am no closer to my magnum opus, and I now also have the realisation that time at any cost was maybe not what I most needed, after all.
I’m inspired by your discipline to reach for the notebook first thing, and now that I am well along the path to recovery, I am hopeful that I will be able to do the same.
amazing! and f*ck yeah! and thank you! i don't remember who, but someone whose opinion i trust sent me to your newsletter, and i'm so glad i stuck around. the divine timing and faith of it all is ringing loud and clear.
this hit home. even just the subject line set me down a path, and the rest of the letter helped clear the brush. i've been exploring my own voice and power lately, and keep finding in little (enormous!) ways that when i say what i want to say, what i want to be known, without regard for how it will be received -- when i'm the most honest and true to myself -- is when my words most land, when they resonate and really mean something to someone, which in turn nourishes and reminds me how important it is to tell my own tale and tell it exactly how i want it. that folks are out here looking for the truth, and the only version of that i can give is my own.
peace and blessings to you, many thanks, and wishing you deep breaths and soothing rest.
This is just extraordinary. Thank you. These questions are gems – they're a blueprint for falling in love over and over again with our work. I am printing them out and thinking posting them above my desk as I finish the last third of my book. (A 7+ year project.) Thank you thank you thank you!
Jami you have the knack of always hitting the nail on the head! The questions you pose in this issue are so apt. Thank you. Hope your leg heals fast so that you can get back to wandering the streets and tending your garden!
Thanks once again for sharing your wisdom, Jamie. Relentlessly upsetting news, the rain and thunder rumbling on--I needed to hear this advice to stay focused today. I have characters who need to be heard, and these stories aren't going to tell themselves.
What a beautiful gift this issue of your newsletter is! "What is the story you're dying to tell?" snapped my head back - I'm immersed in this question and my possible answer. Sending you good wishes for a speedy recovery
PS - when I broke my foot, I took it as my body telling me to stop and rest. I’d been pushing myself for years, and then pushing myself without a choice after my partner died, moved four times (with a wagon, no less, on foot, two of the times), and I guess my body was right. I needed that break before moving once more, and getting back to work (two day jobs, still unable to create in my bereavement). I keep thinking that even if any of us don’t personally know someone who died of COVID, just knowing how many people around us have died, and how many have survived into bereavement, necessarily puts us into a state of grief, even if we don’t recognize it. We must all be exhausted and grieving, and I don’t just mean for our “old lives.” I mean for our fellow hundreds of thousands of fellow humans.
I recommend a castor oil pack! It really helped with the pain and swelling on my broken fifth metatarsal (and on a sprained ankle, too, later). Look it up: it’s an Edgar Cayce remedy stolen from the old wives, a nice organic wool felt rag (bought at whole foods or other health food place or on the dreaded amazon) soaked in organic castor oil, wrapped around your ankle (unless it’s already in a cast), covered in plastic to keep it from getting oil all over, then wrapped with a heating pad, for an hour every day. Did wonders for me. An old wives’ tale, for a good reason.
Jami, thank you for this. Also please please please let us know how we can get you more Advil. Not joking.
Your quote from a smart person reminds me of another quote from a smart person, RuPaul Charles. He says "If you can't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an Amen?" :) I'm reading "Walk Two Moons" by Sharon Creech and the voice in it is superb. After a particularly tough rejection from an editor, I'm using the weekend to read and write the book I want to see on a shelf, and not be on Twitter. LOL Hope you feel better soon!
Thank you, Jamie. I must have really needed this today. It brought tears to my eyes. I have printed it out and hung it where I can read it again (and again) when I need a reminder to tell the story I'm dying to tell. Again, thanks so much. Wishing you peace and healing.