1. Reading (MG): I just finished Joanne Rossmassler Fritz’s novel in verse, Everywhere Blue, about a musical girl looking for answers to her older brother’s disappearance. It was a gripping story of love, climate change, and family bonds. Fritz is also the author of Ruptured, which just released last month. I have not yet read it but am eagerly looking forward to it.
2. Reading (YA): “No wonder early man going back and back looked at that power and force and said, that shit better be squashed, or we won’t be in charge. We better get on top of that power, and fast. We better use all we got, physical strength and control and shame, because man oh man, she is lighting and thunder, the bearer of all things, right there. She’s massive, so we better make her feel small ASAP.” Plan A, by Deb Caletti was just what I’ve come to expect from Deb Caletti novels: profound, courageous, illuminating. I’m a super fan of Deb’s, and I can’t recommend this book enough. (Other favorites of hers: A Heart in a Body in the World; Honey, Baby, Sweetheart; and Girl, Unframed.)
3. Watching: My husband and I just started watching Schmigadoon on Apple TV—and my gosh is it fun! It’s a series that’s a musical, and so cleverly written we find ourselves, after every episode, feeling impressed by the music, the caliber of the performers, and the plot itself. There are currently two seasons, and both follow couple Melissa and Josh as they get trapped in a musical world with a mission to complete. The first season shows us Schmigadoon, and the second season (my favorite so far) takes place in Schmicago. It’s riotous fun.
4. Reading (adult): On a recent early-morning run, I finished Mother-Daughter Murder Night, by Nina Simon, a story about three generations of women who come together to solve a murder in their town. If you like mysteries mixed with family dramas, this will be a good one to pick up. It’s not my favorite thing to read (honestly), but this one kept my attention, and the characters were compelling enough to feel invested in them.
5. Reading (MG): “All of life is a mystery, in a way. And that makes every single one of us a detective.” What a sweet, tender-hearted story—The Lost Library, by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Maass is the kind of book that you’ll speed through and wish would never really end. It’s the story of a little free library, a cat who guards it, and a boy who discovers it and seeks to uncover its mysteries, starting with the books in it. It’s clever, striking, and inspiring.
6. Watching: The Netflix docuseries The Most Hated Man on the Internet, about Hunter Moore and his revenge web site Is Anyone Up? will make you cringe, shout, and wonder what on earth is wrong with people. Is Anyone Up was a pornographic site that used stolen and hacked photos of men and women, posted by exes or people who wanted revenge on them. It ruined many people’s lives before the IRS got involved. Ugh. I hate that things like this exist, but it was a worthwhile series to watch. Information is better than ignorance.
I write all kinds of books, but my favorites include books for children and teens. I spend the bulk of my time writing those. And some people like to know why.
There are several reasons. But one of the biggest is to “lift as I climb,” as poet Angela Davis says. (The actual quote is, “We must learn to lift as we climb.”)
I put a lot of myself into my books for children and teens. I try to bravely (and sometimes not-so-bravely) explore childhood experiences and traumas, which, in my eyes, has a dual purpose: It helps the child in me process through them and it also, I hope, lifts other children out of the dark places I’ve been. Helps them feel less alone. Shows them a way out. Reminds them that what’s going on in their lives is not their fault.
I hope they realize all of those things sooner than I did.
Although I believe therapy is beneficial to everyone, if only to give us a sense of being deeply listened to—which can’t be underestimated—I often tell people if I can save children and teens from the years of intense therapy I’ve had to undergo to (sometimes) believe I’m magnificent, I’ll pour all my secrets out.
Well, I’m not sure about all my secrets—but at least the ones I’m moved to share because of the lives and wellbeing of my readers.
I always like to think of this as a kind of generosity. One of my family’s values is to be generous—with our time, with our resources (whenever possible), with ourselves, with our hearts, with words, with kindness, with love. My husband and I have tried to teach our sons that.
Generosity is good for others, of course, but it’s also good for us. Studies show it reduces stress and boosts our physical health. It fosters joy and helps us hold tight to our sense of purpose. It combats depression. And guess what else? It increases our lifespan. Generous people live longer.
Studies also show it deepens our social connection and improves our relationships. And it makes us feel better about ourselves. When someone benefits from our generosity, it’s practically impossible to see ourselves as worthless.
When I think about generosity, I naturally think about money. But that’s not the only way to be generous and give to others. Generosity can also look like inviting the couple down the road to a dinner at our house, because they don’t seem to have much family around and this time of year is hard when we don’t have family around. It can look like spending a few extra minutes mowing the neighbor’s yard because they’re getting older and don’t have much time and energy to do it. It can look like spending a few extra minutes chatting with a parent in the pickup line and getting beyond the surface-level conversation, down to something deeper and more meaningful.
Talk to the homeless on the streets of your city. Bake some holiday treats to share. Donate things you don’t need anymore. Be generous in your attitudes and assumptions about others.
You can be as creative with your generosity as you want to be.
And here’s the thing, too: We should accept the generosity of others. This is often hard for us (or at least for me). But if we don’t accept another’s generosity or we say, “You don’t have to do that” or we minimize it, we rob them of the joy of giving. Accepting someone’s generosity can be a form of generosity, too.
Every year, starting the Friday after Thanksgiving, my family reads together A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens—one of the best books about the power of generosity, as Scrooge moves from miserly to generous. We uphold this tradition, because I want my sons to know what it means to be generous. I want to build in them, in me, in all of us, a practice of generosity—not so it’s a one-time, once-a-year thing but so we do it all the time. I want my sons to understand that “generous” is a way of being and existing in the world.
And I hope I lead them by example. I hope we all do.
May you have a beautiful month of choosing generosity.
What are some ways you can be generous in your daily life?
Here are some of my favorite generous practices (that don’t require money—or much, anyway):
1. Be there for someone.
My sons get chatty every so often, usually in the car. My brain is such that I often have a million things going on at once—to-do lists scrolling like a Star Wars intro, worries humming along in the background, stories begging for attention. My sons don’t always talk about important things—at least, not important things to me.
But offering them undivided attention is generous. Offering anyone our undivided attention in a world that tries to steal our attention everywhere, at every turn, is generous. During gatherings with friends and family, put phones away and focus on the conversation. Everyone feels loved when they’re listened to, and all it takes is a little time.
Related to that, be generous with your words. Compliment, encourage, leave positive reviews, be kind online. Talking to people without judging is generous. Showing them mercy and forgiveness and love is generous. We could use a lot more of that in our world.
2. Volunteer your time or expertise.
Choose an organization you care about and donate your time to them. Offer your services for free. Give something away. Teach a valuable skill to someone, or give away some of your knowledge. Spend time with people in need.
When I go downtown in my city, I try to engage with at least one homeless person. They don’t get many people who look them in the eyes, you know? I want them to know they still have dignity and worth. I want them to know they’re still worth being loved and listened to. And their stories are heartbreaking and illuminating.
Listening and empathizing feels generous to me.
3. “Random” (but intentional) acts of kindness.
Deliver cookies to a neighbor. Write a letter to a grandparent. Cook a meal for someone. Offer to babysit for a couple with young children. Let someone merge, send a care package, pick up trash in your neighborhood during your walk.
And be generous with your attitude, extending thank yous and appreciation for people. Send someone a text to let them know how much you’re grateful for their presence in your life.
There are lots of ways to be generous. We’re all in this together, and we all deserve the best in life. Let’s remember that we all belong to each other, and generosity will come easy for us.
Most writers are naturally curious people. We ask a lot of questions about the world. We wonder and challenge and try to make sense of the senseless.
And we love to know how other writers do things—how they write a book, how they manage their time, how they market themselves, how they live, how they breathe.
When I was first starting out as a writer, I was vulnerable to the temptation to do something—everything, maybe—the way someone else did it. I had to write for five hours a day, spend 20 percent of my time marketing, use this story structure, start my stories with a logline before I ever wrote a word, explore these concepts, never start with a theme, blah blah blah blah blah.
I tried. I really did. And I found myself getting burned out, frustrated, and completely overwhelmed.
There are lots of voices out there saying, This is the way to do it, and it’s the only way to do it if you want to be successful. I wasn’t experienced enough to see this for what it was: one person’s advice.
I disagree vehemently with the kind of advice that says, This is the only way to do it. Part of it is my contradictory nature; I don’t like someone telling me I have to do things this one way and that’s the only way, don’t even try to do something different. The other part is something it took me a while to realize: We are all different. We all work differently. We live differently and breathe differently and manage our time differently.
We also write differently.
I’m all for researching the different time management, writing, revision, marketing methods people use. And I’m happy to share my own.
But because every writer is different, we have our own way in which we work best. And we have to find our way.
My way into a story or a piece of writing includes spending a few weeks getting to know my characters or thinking about what I want to say before I even begin on the piece. I research and brainstorm for a few weeks. Then I write a first draft from start to finish, without editing or revision. My revising takes the longest and requires anything from three to eight or so more drafts, give or take a few depending on the story.
That process won’t work for everyone. Because there’s more than one way to write.
Some like the white noise of coffeeshops, some prefer listening to music, some can’t write unless there’s absolute silence. And guess what? For me it’s different for every story. So there’s that variable, too: Stories require different methods sometimes.
We all want some easy formula, some definitive way to write a story (or do things or live life). And those of us who have done it before are seen as experts. Because we’ve done it. But all we can really offer are suggestions.
We all have to find our own way. What works best for us, not everyone else.
Here’s how:
1. Be open to experimentation.
Take a scientific approach. Design your experiments intentionally to draw out a variety of writing methods. Go ahead and collect other people’s suggestions. Gather as much information as you can.
And then design some experiments to intentionally try out a variety of writing methods. And pivot continuously. Every experiment (failed or otherwise) gets you closer to your process and your way.
2. Take notes on what works and what doesn’t.
Every successful experiment requires notes. Ask yourself, What do I like about this way? What do I hate about it? What slows me down? What feels natural to my writing process?
Self-awareness and critical thinking are important factors in improvement—for writing, but also for anything in our lives.
Make a list. Start a spreadsheet. Identify what’s necessary and what’s not. I’ve learned over the years that I don’t need to fill out a long, complex character sheet on my characters, because I get to know them during my lengthy brainstorms. There may be additional things you need, and that’s okay. We all write differently. (Have I said it enough?)
3. Be patient with yourself.
It’s not unusual for me to read or hear about another author’s writing process and think, I really need to try that. Still! After writing more than 50 books!
We’ll fall under the spell of “Here’s how to do it.” But also keep in mind that we never stop growing and evolving and adjusting. Even when you think you have a process in place, you may discover a new method that really works. Stay open to that, too.
It’s all a grand experiment. Keep experimenting.
Take as long as you want and need to find your own process. And repeat to yourself: There is no right or wrong way to write.
1. Reading (MG): “How it’s not my brain being messed up, but more my heart being hurt, and how sometimes we think we’re okay, we think we’ve moved on, but then our hearts crack open months or even years later and it’s important to stop, be kind to ourselves, and ask for help— ask for love.” Iveliz Explains it All by Andrea Beatriz Arango is a lovely novel in verse about a girl who’s having trouble with her anger. And with school. And with her mom. It’s a book about mental health and speaking up and leaning on the kind of love that sticks by you no matter what. Beatriz Arango earned a Newbery Honor award for the book, and it’s easy to see why. Highly recommended.
2. Reading (YA): “You don’t try to be anyone else and that is a very hard thing in this world. It may seem unimportant right now when fitting in would be so much easier. But later you’ll see. Being who you are is everything.” Fat Angie, by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo was a delight to read. Angie’s distinct voice, her way of seeing the world, the friendship and rivalries—all of it made for a spectacular read. Charlton-Trujillo won a Stonewall Book Award for this one, and Angie has more books—Fat Angie: Rebel Girl Revolution and Fat Angie: Homecoming. See if you don’t love Angie, too.
3. Watching: “The only way to free yourself and break out is to tell the truth.”—Prince Harry. Oh my goodness. I made the mistake of watching Apple TV’s The Me You Can’t See while huffing and puffing on the elliptical machine on Sunday mornings. It’san emotional docuseries (hence, the mistake—have you ever seen someone crying while on an elliptical?) that shares stories of mental illness and mental health issues from around the world—and what leaders are doing about it. The series was produced by Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry. It was amazing. The episodes follow people who struggle with mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and OCD and includes stories of trauma and healing from around the world. The last episode is a look at what mental health experts see as a way forward into healing for all those struggling.
4. Reading (poetry): Trickster time arrived/while I slept./It takes some getting used to.” I’ve long been a fan of Sandra Cisneros, since I read her book The House on Mango Street in high school. She just released a book of poetry, Woman Without Shame—her first in 28 years! It is signature Sandra Cisneros—bluntly honest, humorous, and profound. Don’t miss it if you love poetry. Or if you just love to read anything and everything.
5. Reading (MG): “We are here to help you carry the sky when you have to, and we are here to help you put it down when you need to. Why else would anyone ever become a teacher?” OH! My heart! If you haven’t yet read Gary D. Schmidt’s The Labors of Hercules Beal, you must pick it up. Full of mythology, emotion, and sweet friendship, it is tender and witty and heart-warming. Schmidt is probably best known for his books The Wednesday Wars, which won a Newbery Honor, and Okay for Now, which was a National Book Award finalist. I have, sadly, not read either of those, but they are both on my list now!
6. Watching: I just finished the Netflix series Never Have I Ever, a comedy about an Indian-American teen who’s trying to find her way through high school. I loved this series. It felt more authentic to a teen’s life than many of the teen dramas and comedies out there. It was created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, and it stars Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Poorna Jagannathan, and Niecy Nash. One of my favorite quotes from the series came from Devi’s mom (Devi’s the main character): “You’re never too much, and you’re always enough.” I wrote it in my quote journal and labeled it “From Devi Vishwakumar’s mom.). I highly recommend working your way through the four seasons of it. If you’re scared off by the narration in the first couple of episodes (I was, and then I gave it another chance), keep going. You’ll fall in love with it.
Nearly every weekday morning, I log onto zoom, where I meet with a group of authors to first write and then discuss our writing time or whatever’s going on in our lives.
Recently, we’ve begun adding a time of naming our gratitude, before diving into talks about the writing we did in that 1.5-hour slot.
My sons and I call the little “I’m-gratefuls” thankfuls. Every Thanksgiving season, when they were younger, we’d search the wilderness behind our house for the perfect discarded branch, which we’d place in a terra cotta pot and surround with marbles to hold it in place. We’d pin our own paper leaves onto it—each leaf scrawled with one of our thankfuls. We’d bring a dying branch back to life and fill it with color, gratitude, and hope.
Gratitude can turn whole gloomy days around. It can change our attitude. It can help us see more clearly.
Sōkō Morinaga, a Japanese Buddhist spiritual teacher, says, “If you all just let the scales drop from your eyes, you realize that everything everywhere is filled with truth…everything everywhere is to be appreciated.”
Sometimes we have scales covering our eyes. We’ve been through a hard time, we’ve seen some disappointments. Our vision gets a little clouded when all we seem to experience is frustration, sadness, fear, anger, trial and tribulation. The dark gets darker, and the light gets dimmer.
And add to that mental illnesses like Major Depressive Disorder and anxiety disorders and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the host of others that can make light so very hard to see.
I’m not one to say that gratitude solves everything. If you’ve been around me long enough, you’ve probably picked up on how much I believe in therapy, how much I want to see everyone, no matter their economic situation, have access to proper mental health care. When I’m in the midst of my depression, gratitude becomes rote. Something I do. Maybe it makes the dark days a little less dark, but it certainly doesn’t take them away.
It is a tool we can use, though.
Lately I’ve found myself using gratitude on my children more and more—like I used to do when they were little.
Three of the six are teenagers. Life is tough for teenagers. Puberty, school demands, trying to figure out who they are and what they can contribute to the world. It’s a lot to balance emotionally. A couple of my sons focus more on what’s fair (and especially what’s not) than what’s good.
I know what it’s like to focus on what’s not fair. I get caught there occasionally in my life, still. If only I hadn’t experienced this trauma as a 12-year-old. If only I’d grown up with a family that had money. If only I’d gotten these educational opportunities…
The list can go on and on and on if I let it.
Gratitude helps peel from our eyes the scales that sink into place when we’re too caught up in the if-onlys.
I know as well as anyone how difficult it is to see past the scales. This time of year is especially hard for me. I’m making pies and treats for my family, but my relationship with food has always been shaky—really, it’s a relationship with my body.
If only I hadn’t grown up with a person in my life who criticized the way I looked…
(It’s much more complicated than that, of course.)
Times like these I fall into self-deprecation. I don’t like my body. I wish I could be different. I wish I didn’t get so overwhelmed all the time. I wish I could be a better mother. I wish…
But if everything everywhere is to be appreciated and everything everywhere is filled with truth, what does that mean? I got out for a run—the air, the trees, time is filled with truth. I sit down to dinner with my family—the room is filled with truth. I meditate in my room while my husband noodles on the piano downstairs—the entire house, music, love is filled with truth.
The solar eclipse is filled with truth…my kids’ shoes all over the floor—filled with truth…the music of our lives, filled with truth.
Here’s the truth I glean from my life when I see with the right kind of eyes:
1. I am loved. 2. I am magnificent just the way I am. 3. Everyone has bad days or needs some extra help sometimes—I’m not alone.
Everything everywhere is to be appreciated—the good days and the bad days. The dark and the light. The disappointing and the victorious.
Every time one of my sons celebrates a birthday we end the day gathered around our table (and a homemade cake), telling the birthday boy why we’re grateful for him. And he has to list however many thankfuls correspond to his age—so it gets more and more challenging as the years march on.
But I hope, by doing this simple ritual, they’re learning to see the good everywhere. I hope they’re learning to focus on what they have instead of what they don’t have. I hope they’re learning to peel the scales from their eyes and see the world clearly.
There are days I definitely don’t feel like being grateful. It wasn’t a productive writing day, a project is giving me trouble, I’m just down in the dumps, no explanation necessary. Gratitude helps turn my attitude around. It reminds me that this is a blip, nothing lasts forever, and sometimes that can be a good thing. Maybe it sounds Pollyanna-ish, finding the silver lining in all the bad. But if it makes us happier? If it helps us recognize the good in our lives? If it changes the way we see? Why not try?
It won’t solve everything, but practicing gratitude will remind you what you have: People who love you; a mind and body that work wonders for you, no matter what it looks like; a future filled with hope and magnificence.
I hope you have a marvelous month of appreciation.
Here are some of my favorite ways to incorporate gratitude in life:
1. Meditate on gratitude.
I know I’ve mentioned it before, but Apple Fitness+ has some fantastic gratitude meditations, from five minutes to 20. I highly recommend practicing them.
When we focus our minds on gratitude and clear away other distractions for even five minutes, we flex the muscle of gratitude. We stretch it longer and make it stronger. And the more we do that, the better at it we get.
2. Keep a gratitude journal.
At the end of every day I record in my schedule three things I’m grateful for. They can be as small as finding a pen that still had ink in it when I got an idea I didn’t want to lose to as big as “I had a great conversation with the 14-year-old about friendship and love.”
This is yet another way of building the muscle of gratitude. Oftentimes we’re so busy in the midst of a day that we don’t even think about these things we’re grateful for; it’s only in looking back that we clearly see how much we have.
3. Share your appreciation with others in your life.
Write notes of appreciation or send a text or call to tell someone in your life how much you value and appreciate them. Gratitude can be shared…in fact, sometimes sharing it has a multiplication effect. Think how you feel when someone shares their appreciation for you. You want to pass that feeling along. Imagine if we all did that, spread rings of positivity into the world. It would be a world of light. And that would be a beautiful thing.
It’s not unusual in my house to hear someone slam through the front door, along with the words, “I’m not playing with them anymore.”
This could be for any number of reasons—someone’s cheating (according to the one upset), someone made them mad, or, the most frequent offense, someone doesn’t like losing. (That would typically be the one who walked his declaration inside.)
My sons love playing street hockey in our cul-de-sac. At least until they lose.
I can’t really blame them. Everybody wants to win. Who likes losing?
This gets the best of me sometimes. Right around this time of year, actually. There are awards lists. And best-of lists. And lists to predict the awards and best-of lists. Not making it on one of these lists is kind of a confidence- and soul-crushing thing. For me.
Writers are sensitive people, you know.
I usually have to take a social media break because of the lists. Winning and losing has always mattered to me. Being the best—that especially mattered.
When I ran track, competitions came standard—and how you performed was important. There were clear winners and losers, and I wanted to be a winner. The same was true when I played the clarinet and auditioned for the all-state band. I made second-chair state my junior year of high school, and that felt like a win. But when I made second-chair state my senior year, it felt like a loss, because I wanted to be first chair.
Your goals change the higher you rise.
It’s long been a dream of mine to win a major award for one of the books I write. That feels like winning to me—winning an award and achieving a dream at the same time. But is it losing if I never win a major award? Sometimes it feels like it.
It can be really tempting to feel competitive with other writers, especially when award season comes around. Especially when we think about winning and losing this way.
Carlos Gershenson, a computer scientist and researcher, says, “Winning or losing doesn’t matter so much as what you learn from it.” I like that. It reminds me that we get to make our own definition of winning and losing.
We learn from winning, and we also learn from losing. Actually, we might learn more from losing. Losing—facing disappointments and setbacks—often makes us want to work harder toward our goals. That’s an important part of the journey, too.
What if, instead of focusing on the black-and-white reality of winning and losing, we lean more toward the gray: what we learn? From the journey. From the training. From the day in, day out act of writing. Being. Becoming ourselves.
And maybe we win, in the process—because the measure changes. Winning is learning something. Losing is learning nothing.
Here are some things we can learn from the journey:
1. We are stronger than we know.
Sometimes the disappointment of what we consider losing can completely overwhelm us. Maybe we’re knocked out of the game for a while. That’s okay. Somewhere along the way we’ll pick ourselves back up and start the work again—stronger and fiercer and steadier than before. We learn we’re made of stronger stuff than the flimsy paper that disintegrates in the rain. We learn that no one has control over whether or not we write every day except ourselves. And we learn that falls only hurt for so long before all the bruises go away.
2. We will persist.
We face a lot of rejection and disappointment in the writing industry. But that’s not losing, it’s winning—we’re putting ourselves out there, inviting people into our stories. It’s a vulnerable place to be.
The stories and poems and novels I’ve written have been rejected many times in the years I’ve been submitting them. Rejection always hurts. It never gets easier (at least not for me). But I’ve learned, in the years spent navigating this rejection, that it’s only the end of my writing career if I let it be. Sure, it stings, and sure, it can feel like a kind of death, but rejection doesn’t matter nearly as much as persistence. In the writing world, those who persist in spite of seemingly endless setbacks and disappointments ultimately win.
3. “Losing” is not the end of the world—or the end of us.
We know, intuitively, that “this” (whatever “this” is) is not the end of the world. It can certainly feel like it in the beginning, when the pain of “losing” is fresh. Our hope flatlines sometimes—for a while, maybe. But “losing” is only a hurdle, an opportunity to strengthen our resolve, our skills, and our belief in ourselves. How badly do we want our goals? We can’t let any rejection or disappointment or “losing” get in the way of them.
Here are 5 (or 6) things worth sharing this month:
1. Reading: I recently finished the lovely middle grade novel, Ruby Lost and Found, by Christina Li. It’s about a girl who’s been sentenced by her parents to spend the summer with her grandmother, visiting a local senior center and interacting with her grandmother’s friends. After learning that a beloved bakery in the neighborhood is in trouble, she tries to brainstorm ways to save it. It was such a sweet story of family connection, coming of age, and learning to fight for a community. Highly recommended! Li is also the author of Clues to the Universe, which I have not yet read but, of course, plan to!
2. Reading: Another fantastic middle grade read this month was Gillian McDunn’s When Sea Becomes Sky. It was another summer story (I guess I’m only just getting around to reading them all) about a girl who learns her special place with her brother is going to be destroyed by development—and she tries to save it. Which makes it seem similar to Ruby Lost and Found, but it’s totally different. McDunn is probably best-known for her books Caterpillar Summer (which I also recommend reading) and Honestly Elliott, which I haven’t yet read.
3. Reading: “Mom likes to call them my ‘angels,’ but I worry that takes away their humanity and their nonreligious capacity for love and compassion they showed a stranger.” Javier Zamora’s memoir, Solito, is a sometimes disturbing portrait of his migration from El Salvador to the United States when he was 9. It was a riveting tale of survival and perseverance, made even more emotionally gripping because it was real. I highly recommend it.
4. Reading: I finished another fantastic middle grade this month—Jenn Reese’s A Game of Fox & Squirrels. It’s a magical realism book that confronts abuse in a very unique way. I found it captivating, touching, and…well, magical. I have not read any of Reese’s other books, which include Every Bird a Prince and Puzzleheart (which releases May 14, 2024), but one is currently in my holds stack at the library, and the other will be as soon as it’s released.
5. Watching: If you’re looking for a good drama (if your heart can handle anything other than comedy—and it’s a close call for me), look no farther than Apple TV’s The Morning Show. This show is a very candid look at what a modern early morning TV show workplace looks like. They take on modern-day issues—racial equity, political thought, and (whether you’re ready for it or not) life after Covid (Season 2 gets an up-close look at Covid). The show is currently in Season 3, and it’s been renewed for at least one more season. It’s well worth the watch!
6. Reading: “You fight and you fall and you get up and fight some more. But there will always come a day when you cannot fight another minute more.” Oh, what a disturbing—and yet somehow inspiring—book. Kate Moore’s The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women tells the true story of the hundreds of young women who worked in radium-dial factories and lived with the horrendous consequences—and what they did to battle for workers’ rights. It was fascinating, disturbing, and utterly riveting. A few months ago I shared another of Moore’s nonfiction books, The Woman They Could Not Silence. Do yourself a favor, and pick them both up. You’ll be captivated.
“Do you think it’s becoming a problem again?” he said.
No. But yes. Maybe. Probably. No.
Thus began my husband’s gentle reminder not to fall into my self-destructive patterns.
We celebrate twenty years of marriage this month. He’s known me more than half my life. There’s not much I can hide from him. It’s like having eyeballs on the inside, sorting through all your secrets.
He recognizes the signs when I start slipping back into disordered eating and getting tripped up by body dysmorphia.
My depression of late has felt a little…wild. Seasons come and seasons go, some longer than others. Some have deeper waters than others. Some spiral out of control.
When things are out of control, I spiral (just like the depression). When I spiral I grasp for control of anything and everything. Most things can’t be controlled, so they slide right through my hands.
Not everything slides, though. What I always convince myself I can control is diet and exercise. I’ll fast for longer, I tell myself. It’s a healthy form of eating, a buzz word in today’s culture (conveniently). I’ll exercise more. I’m doing something good for myself. I’m not doing anything wrong.
My eyes and heart and mind sweep right over the problem, pretending it doesn’t exist. And therein lies the problem.
I know where things can go from here. I’ve lived that story.
So maybe I acknowledge the problem and maybe I don’t, but the reality is, it’s always there, staring me right in the face. Reminding me that this is yet another personal failure.
What a dirty phrase: personal failure.
The people closest to me know I’m hard on myself. My self-talk isn’t always productive. I’m a hopeful person who avoids hoping for the good things I want and desire—because it’s easier and better for my heart not to be disappointed when those things don’t happen. I don’t always practice mercy on myself when I make a mistake.
Maybe this is why I’ve always loved the journals of Sylvia Plath. She was hard on herself, too. And her self-talk was unproductive a lot of the time. And she hoped only tentatively. Mercy was a foreign concept when applied to herself.
I’ve revisited these journals multiple times over the years, ever since my mom gifted me with them for Christmas when I was in high school. And in the last two years I’ve been revisiting them because I’ve been writing a biography in verse about her last years in high school and her years at Smith College in Massachusetts.
We’re so similar I almost feel like I’m writing about my own years of young adulthood. Up down up down moods, one moment feeling like I’m good at what I do, the next feeling like I’m quite possibly the worst writer who ever lived.
And then there are the mistakes.
I’ve made a lot of them in my life. I’ve tried to forget them as well as I can (but you never really do, do you?), because for a long time, it felt like my mistakes said something about me. They were personal failures. Evidence that I was broken. Incapable. Wrong.
Sometimes they still feel like that.
Viewing mistakes like this kept me—sometimes still keeps me—from examining my weaknesses. It keeps me ignoring my problems. Pretending they don’t exist but are simply things I can’t fix.
That doesn’t solve anything, though. As Margaret Haffernan, an entrepreneur in the UK, says, “You cannot fix a problem you refuse to acknowledge.”
We can’t fix problems we sweep under the bed, hide to our best ability, ignore like if we ignore them long enough they’ll go away. Problems are sticky. They hang around. And they don’t shrink, they grow when they don’t get the attention they think they deserve.
After my husband asked me that gentle, pointed question; after I saw that I was, indeed, headed toward that dangerous road again; after I metaphorically collapsed around another personal failure, another mistake, a voice came from somewhere down deep. Mistakes aren’t who you are, it said. The voice sounded just like me.
That’s because I’m constantly telling my kids this. Mistakes are just mistakes, I tell them. Opportunities to grow. They can be fixed. They aren’t who we are.
I hadn’t been listening to what I knew.
How can we fix something we refuse to see or acknowledge? We can’t. That goes for mistakes, and problems.
I’m still a work in progress. I’m still learning not to expect perfection in myself. Some days are better than others.
Problems aren’t fixed once and for all. Like anything else, they require a journey. Some problems may take our whole lifetimes to solve. We may slip and slide backward and forward along the path of recovery and healing.
But here’s what we can know, too: We’re stronger than we know. We are capable of great things. We can face any riptide that comes.
And maybe that’s the part that matters most.
Have a glorious month of seeing with wide-open eyes and realizing your inner strength.
Here are some suggestions for rooting out problems from their hiding places:
1. Identify.
Finding problem areas we’ve ignored or hidden or shoved under our bed can seem like a monumental task. But it’s the first step in the process of fixing those problems. So we need to pull everything out, dust off the boxes, shake out the rugs, and brave the spiders that may have nested while we were so busy trying to ignore them.
I might have taken that metaphor too far. Forgive me.
If you need a place to start, try your frequent frustrations. Our frustrations can tell us a lot about our problem areas. One of mine (simpler than the one mentioned above)? Clothes left on the floor! This is both my children’s problem and mine. They should pick up their clothes, I should stop pining after a perfectly tidy house and remember that living with people means accommodating their personalities and tendencies (while still communicating my own needs for a mostly-tidy house). Compromise is the language of roommates—and families.
2. Acknowledge.
I’ve found in my life that some of the most powerful words we can say are, “I acknowledge this is a problem.” It brings with it a great relief—sometimes to the person pointing out one of our problem areas, sometimes just to ourselves when we’ve ignored a problem for so long it also, ironically, seems to be the only thing we think about in the backs of our minds. (Who knows how that’s possible, but it is.)
3. Make a plan.
This is probably my favorite part of the process. I don’t necessarily relish identifying or acknowledging problem areas, but I am all about the plan. I will plan in minute detail. Meal plans that will make sure I’m eating. Fitness plans that will protect me from taking my workouts to an extreme. Therapy plans that get me the psychological care I need.
Make a plan to address and fix your problem(s), one step at a time. And remember it won’t be solved all at once. You’re a work in progress. We all are. So let’s be gentle on ourselves and practice a little mercy.
Some creative people think that creativity only happens when the “muse” strikes.
That always sounded strange to me. Who was the muse? Am I not my own muse? In charge of my own creativity? If I had to depend on some nameless, invisible muse, who may or may not show up when I had some extra time to write, how would I ever get anything done?
It all sounded very unpredictable. And I don’t like unpredictable (in case you haven’t already figured that out).
So I probably don’t even need to tell you that I don’t subscribe to this belief.
What I do, instead, is train like a writing athlete.
I can hear the groans already. Training? Athlete? We became writers so we didn’t have to expend that much energy.
While it is some work to train like a writing athlete, I promise it’s not as much physical as it is mental.
And if you’re the kind of creative person who prefers waiting for inspiration to strike, then the following tips can help lay out the red carpet for the muse.
1. Be consistent.
I know it’s not always easy being consistent. I have six kids. This summer was a flurry of pediatrician well checks and eye doctor appointments and dentist appointments—and that’s just the scheduled extras. There are so many variables with six kids. Someone forgot to tell me about drama practice, someone missed the morning bus, someone got sick, someone decided he didn’t like carrots anymore.
But still, if all else fails, I try to squeeze in at least fifteen minutes to half an hour of writing time every day. I’d prefer more, sure, but the consistency is what’s important.
Consistency leads to necessary gains. Just like my consistent training makes me a better, stronger runner, so consistent training (or practice) makes us better, stronger writers.
Build your process. Experiment with what works for you. We’re all different. Don’t worry about how fast or slow you write. Focus on the best training schedule for you.
2. Don’t be afraid to add variety.
When we’re not training in our one specific fitness area (such as running), we think it hinders progress. I believed this for a long time—until I injured myself and had to take some time off, which is actually what hindered my progress. I spent that time off strength training, adding pilates and yoga to my regular workout rotation, and rowing. I came back a much stronger runner than I was before.
Writing, too, needs variety. Writing different forms in different genres, for different age groups—even if it’s just for fun and never goes beyond a very short story on our hard drive—challenges and stretches us as writers. Adding variety into our regular writing routine can strengthen our main discipline. If we write novels and change it up by writing short stories, we’ll likely write better novels. If we write essays and change it up to write some poetry, we’ll come back to the discipline we love much stronger.
In the same way, adding a variety of creative disciplines into our regular routine can make us better at our main creative discipline. Do other creative things that don’t seem to have anything to do with writing. Compose some songs, draw some pictures, pick up an instrument, dance like no one’s watching. Creativity enhances creativity.
3. Rest and recovery are just as important as the discipline of work.
You know where fitness gains really happen? In the rest after putting in the work. Muscles repair themselves and get stronger. Lungs expand and improve their capacity.
I like to think the same is true in writing. The brain keeps working even when we take time off. The subconscious mind works while we’re unaware of it.
So take a day or two or a whole week off. Spend the time doing other creative things or nothing at all. Let your brain rest. It will likely keep working for you—but will appreciate the rest all the same.
I hope you have a joyous month of consistency, variety, and rest.
1. Reading: “I think standing up for yourself always makes a difference.” I just finished reading Ali Standish’s latest middle grade book, The Mending Summer. It was lovely and hard and sweet and infused with magic and love. It’s about a girl dealing with alcohol addiction in her family, and I found it an authentic picture of what it’s like living with addiction under your roof. Standish is the author of multiple books; two of my other favorites include The Ethan I Was Before and August Isle. I highly recommend them all!
2. Reading: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” You Could Make This Place Beautiful, by poet Maggie Smith, is a memoir of divorce. And oh my goodness is it beautiful. I didn’t expect to love this as much as I did, since I’ve never been through a divorce. But as a child of divorce, I felt like it was something my mom could have written. It was just…lovely. You must do yourself a favor and read it. Smith is the author of numerous poetry books, including Goldenrod and Good Bones, which are both on my reading list now.
3. Watching: If you have not yet seen the Barbie movie, you must! My husband and I saw it in the theater together, and then we took our three older boys to a second showing. I loved it even more the second time, and my sons loved it, too. When we walked out of the theater that day, a young girl was crying and told her mother, “I loved that movie so much!” It was such a sweet moment, and my 14-year-old couldn’t stop talking about how much it meant for that girl and so many others. Anyway. End of gushing. Just go see it. (You can also watch my YouTube review of it—but beware, it has slight spoilers!)
4. Reading: One of my favorite summer middle grade reads was Lasagna Means I Love You, by Kate O’Shaughnessy. It’s about Mo, who’s just lost her grandmother and who is now in the foster system. Mo writes to her grandmother in letter format…and it will not take you long at all to absolutely love this girl, who is desperately longing for a family to call her own. O’Shaughnessy is also the author of The Lonely Heart of Maybelle Lane, which I have not yet read but will soon!
5. Reading: I just subscribed to Ms. Magazine. I’m not sure why I never thought to subscribe before! The magazine is celebrating 50 years, and it’s a treasure trove of statistics on equality/inequality, political needs, and women’s issues. I look forward to seeing it in my mailbox every quarter! The Ms. web site is also a wealth of information…I’ve found myself getting caught in black holes of research there!
6. Reading: “Here’s a theory: Maybe I had not really been broken this whole time. Maybe I had been a human—flawed and still growing but full of light nonetheless.” Another phenomenal memoir I read this month is Stephanie Foo’s What My Bones Know. It’s a memoir of trauma. It was eye opening and challenging and ultimately hopeful. I read the audiobook, but I had to get the hard copy so I could read it again and make notes and study it, because it’s full of helpful research. I felt such a connection to this memoir, because for the first time it put words to some of the trauma I’ve experienced in my life—and the long, difficult road to healing.
