might be more of a poem
But it’s something!
first off
me, five newsletters ago: “So this time around [in this incarnation of the newsletter], I think I’m just going to chill out.”
me now: oh god oh god oh god I am out of ideas everything is falling apart my mental health is so BAD what if I just wrote about how BAD everything is
I’ve been submitting to lit mags lately. According to a spreadsheet I’ve kept since 2016, I’m almost at 300 total submissions in a little under nine years. This is nothing compared to many people I know. In fact, the lit mag I do socials for follows someone who is trying to get 100 rejections in 2025. My “low” total (298 as of this writing) is due to my tendency to submit my work in batches. I’ll submit to 25 publications in one day, then nowhere for months. I submitted to exactly one mag in 2023 (but it turned out to be an acceptance, so). But now that I’ve added “submit to a lit mag” to my habit tracker, I can get POINTS to defeat THE BOSS for each submission.
What am I submitting these days? Everything, really. Not much in the way of new work, but still, a little of everything. I uncovered two-and-a-half Februarys’ worth of poem-a-days, and some of them are salvageable, so I cleaned up five of those and bam, poem packet. (Fun fact: The first several publications of my writing “career” were poems! I consider myself more of a flash fiction writer now, but I was so influenced by the breadth of poetry I read in high school and undergrad that I really leaned into the idea that poetry could be anything.) I wrote a new flash fiction piece last month, and I’m submitting that along with a flash I wrote years ago that I think has potential if it gets in front of the right editors. I also scrawled some flash nonfiction the other day, which is a new area for me (in the literary sense, at least — I’ve written longer personal essays, of course). And look, part of me thinks this one might be more of a poem, but that’s part of the fun of writing and revising. One of my favorite pieces started as a poem and I ended up submitting it as flash fiction (though, sure, it could be a prose poem — it was lineated before, is the point).
As I also mentioned in my first newsletter, I recently signed a contract for a story of mine that previously appeared in Issue #9 of SIAMB! to be republished in an editors’ choice issue that will exclusively be sold at a zine festival in Paris. So that’s fun. And the only concrete publishing news in my life these days. But it’s something!
to the letter
(this is the recurring section of this newsletter where I talk about what I’ve learned from my project where I’m writing a letter to a different person every day)
(Okay, actually what’s happening is that I’m taking a break from this section. Reflecting on this topic weekly is not sustainable, and on some level it betrays the premise of the project, which is to do a bunch of writing I don’t publish online. TTYL!)
wholesome scroll
Fifteen (?!) years ago, I wrote a list of 100 things that make me happy. Here are the first 25 with some commentary. If I can’t think of anything to put in this section in future weeks, then hell, you’ll get more:
My handwriting (sometimes)
LIGHTS MB
A message board I was on during this time. I don’t know if they’re subscribed to this, but I had a good chat with a LIGHTS MB’er the other day! Online friendships are real!Major league baseball
My musical aptitude
Handel’s Messiah
I had performed this for the first time, uh, the previous month?Keeping in touch with good friends
Patrick Watson’s voice
Absolutely would’ve been this recording of “To Build a Home.”Being passionate about something
Tim Lincecum
Always.YouTube
Self-serve frozen yogurt
Singing in French
Old Mary-Kate & Ashley movies
Gonzaga basketball
Peanut butter M&Ms
Owning Lord of the Rings trivia
“Owning” as it was used in 2010, i.e. “beating everyone at.”David Archuleta singing in Spanish
I think it would’ve been this version of “Contigo En La Distancia.”“Comme D’Habitude”
Being in a vocal ensemble
Adam Lambert
An incredibly effective way to learn someone was homophobic in the late 2000s: ask them what they think of Adam Lambert. It was never clearer for me than hearing a relative’s gruff “I just don’t like him” with no further explanation.Parallel parking PERFECTLY (on the first try!)
Which is so funny because I did not know how to parallel park when I wrote this. It was not on the California drive test, so I didn’t learn anything beyond “if I keep at it for 15 minutes, the car will fit or someone will leave” until a few years ago.PowerPoints printed as worksheets
Gay rights!
lolol 90% sure I wasn’t out as anything yet!Apples to Apples
Psychology
I technically have a psychology degree, and it sure is a piece of paper in my life.