aspirational pants and other humiliations

+ what to do in the face of rejection? bake a cake!

Dear Ones,

Welcome new subscribers📕💙🥳! Every week you can expect to hear about a book or three, get some writing prompts + news, and a recipe I’m loving. I’m delighted you found me!

I finally got rid of my aspirational pants! You know the ones you dream will one day be comfortable? Every time I pulled mine from the dusty catacombs of my dresser drawer and shimmied into them, I’d think, so what if they straight-jacket my hips? One day, I will rock these pants!

Am I giving up? I prefer to think of it as practicing self-love.

And about my recurring sty… my eye doctor gently let me know that, well, I’m old! I have crone eyes! (Why is it that C words which refer to women are so offensive?) So yes, crone eyes. Dry, dry, sorry-ass crone eyes. To make matters worse, when people stare at screens for long periods, (anyone you know?), they blink less. Weird. So, now I must ingest massive amounts of Omega3s, drink Big Dumb Cups of water, and apparently my real tears aren’t sufficient. I must replenish with fake tears, which aren’t the same as crocodile tears, but shouldn’t that be a brand?

My hair is thin, my core is weak, but look what I challenged myself to do! I won’t go down gently! (Perhaps file this under, don’t try at home!)

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read:

Why do I keep reading Sally Rooney? It’s as if I have a low grade fever, not sick enough to stay in bed, not well enough to go outdoors. BEAUTIFUL WORLD, WHERE ARE YOU, has a parade of mildly degrading sex scenes 👎 and a bonanza of incredibly satisfying, intimate, and long emails between friends 👍. Rooney also describes mundane things, like doing dishes, in granular detail. Which shouldn’t captivate me, somehow they do. Some reasons I like her:

• Excellent dialogue

• Glittering truths abound, about modern life, about women in the world

• Characters I am really happy to not be!

• Breathtaking descriptions of landscape that usually fall at the end of the chapters with the effect of opening into the world. Please consider this:

The sea to the west, a length of dark cloth. And to the east, up through the gate, the old rectory, blue as milk. Inside, four bodies sleeping, waking, sleeping again. On their sides or lying on their backs with the quilts kicked down. Through dreams they passed in silence. And already now, behind the house, the sun was rising. On the back walls of the house, and through the branches of the trees, through the colored leaves of the trees, and through the damp green grasses, the light of dawn was sifting. Summer morning. Cold clear water, cupped in the palm of a hand.

I also read her novel, CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS, which had similar characteristics—interesting people I am happy not to be! Great dialogue. Wonderful settings, and the strange complications of love and discovery.

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The writer Ellen Gilchrist has died. She was a favorite of my youth and a major influence. I recently revisited her story collection, VICTORY OVER JAPAN, and discussed it over at the FEMME ON: Literature for Life podcast. Gilchrist received acclaim as a writer in her mid forties, which she says, was just about right.

To tell the truth I was 40 years old before I had enough experience of life to be a writer. I barely knew what I thought, much less what anything meant.

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In case you wondered, the first conversation in the HOWARDS END book group was terrific! We spoke about the women, the relationships and social fabric, suffrage, the encroachment of suburbs and industrialization upon the natural world, pragmatism and primordial slime! If that sounds like your jam, let me know! We’re discussing the second half of the novel on 25 February at 9:30a PST. Leave a comment if you’d like to be added to the list.

The book group is a perk of being a paid subscriber to my newsletter. For March, we’ll read Zadie Smith’s, ON BEAUTY, which is a loose riff on HOWARDS END.

Come on in! The water is fine!

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Check my read.write.eat. Bookshop Store, where you will find many of the books I've recommended in the newsletter. Buying books from my shop is a way you can be a friend to the newsletter. 

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write:

We walk through the world—(insert harsh scratch sound of a needle being yanked off a record)… ahem, I walk through the world taking things too personally, allowing people (parent, partner, children, agents, editors, friends, baristas, strangers) to wound me! Of course it’s inevitable. Sometimes I do the wounding. We all screw up. Say the wrong things. Try to get what we want in unsavory ways. Lob the passive aggressive quip.

The question is, how long must we carry the wound? I ask this because I’m still nursing a years old rejection that cut me to the quick. I’d invested so much in the dream of my work being chosen. But alas, it was a left-swipe, a NO. And I’ve carted that wound around for a long time. It’s like hugging garbage. Here’s one thing, of many, the rejector said, “Yours is the rare book I’ve read all the way through and then come to a NO. Usually I realize sooner.”

Thank you? Of course I’m pleased the person read the manuscript all the way through. But, come on!

We spend so much time putting ourselves back together. How do we keep going? We must choose where to put our attention. I recall the sting of NO, and I must choose to focus on the work. And so must you! We should be very careful about who we let wound us. Curate a list of those you trust. Those who will be honest and have your best interests at heart. Yes, take risks, share your work, but have a deep bench of people who believe in you. It’s those people, they’re the ones you write for. The ones who say, this is great, this part needs more, this part fails.

Austin Kleon

(who has a terrific substack) offers this advice in his book, KEEP GOING:

Who are you trying to impress? If you get lucky one day and a big audience shows up for what you do, chances are there will be only a handful of people whose opinion means anything to you, so you might as well identify those people now, make gifts for them, and keep making gifts for them…

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a prompt:

We all get rejections. What are you willing to carry when a NO lands in your inbox? What are you going to set down? Here are some questions you should ask yourself before you make major changes to your work:

• Does the rejector offer a detailed note? If so, it is definitely worth taking a close look. Editors and agents are inundated with submissions, if someone offers specificity in their criticism, pause and consider.

• Can you use the rejection to make a small change, to look at your work from a fresh angle?

• Be diligent about who you choose… whether you are seeking an agent, an editor, a magazine to publish your work, please do the work to make sure the publication or person is a good fit for your work.

• Honor what your gut tells you about your own work. Do you feel at ease, do you feel the work is right? Stick by that. Don’t write by committee.

• On the flip side, honor what your gut tells you about your own work. Is there some niggling thing, some discomfort, a wrong note that you recognize? Address it!

• Realize that each tweak, each rearrangement of words, actions, chronology, POV, brings the work closer to your voice.

Finally, remember that paying attention equals love. By continuing to look and tend and mend your work, you are showing love. In that vein, I invite you to listen to two podcasts. Mike Birbiglia has a terrific pod called, WORKING IT OUT, in which he invites fellow comics to work out bits. It’s a fascinating listen. Revision IRL! I encourage you to listen to episode 1 and episode 25. Both of which feature Ira Glass and Mike working out a segment of his OLD MAN AND THE POOL special. I learned so much about revision.

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eat:

I realize I’ve been a little cake-centric lately. But it’s winter! It’s dark! We need joy, right? I have made this cake three times! You should make it at least once.

Brown Butter Buckwheat Cake w/Berries and Cream

• 1c (2 sticks) salted butter

• 4 large eggs, room temp

• ½c buckwheat flour

• 1c whole wheat pastry flour

• ½t baking powder

• 3/4c sugar

• ½t salt

• 2t vanilla, divided

• 1c heavy cream

• 2T honey

• berries, to top

1. Heat the butter in a sauce pan over medium/high heat until it begins to melt and foam and sputter. Turn heat down and cook for another few minutes, until it turns amber brown and releases a nutty scent. Pay close attention, it can burn if you look away.

2. Transfer to a bowl and cool in the fridge until solid. Once solid, remove from fridge and bring back to room temperature.

3. Preheat oven to 350°. Butter a 9" springform pan, line the sides w/parchment paper and butter that as well.

4. Beat browned butter in a stand mixer until it becomes creamy, add the sugar and one teaspoon of the vanilla. Beat for 2-3 minutes, until well creamed and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next.

5. In another bowl, combine the flours, salt and baking powder. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and mix just until combined.

6. Spoon batter into the prepared pan and bake on the center rack for 35-40 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

7. Let cake cool completely, then remove from pan.

8. Place whipping cream, honey, and 1 teaspoon vanilla in a mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form. Dollop cream over the top of the cooled cake. Serve with berries! ❤️

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Stanley has moves and an inner tiger!

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xN