possibly apocryphal
I dream of polychrome Jokers ... I am irreparably broken.
first off
I can’t believe I haven’t talked about Balatro yet. I can’t believe I don’t have a better way to describe Balatro than “okay, yes, it’s poker, but it’s FUN poker!”
Nothing earth-shattering here, just wanted to share that I was late to this party, am late to mentioning it, and have 90.5 hours of playtime (and 16/31 achievements) in four-plus weeks. I dream of polychrome Jokers, and when I see something in the real world that looks like a Spectral pack, I do a double-take. I am irreparably broken.
On to the rest of the newsletter, then.
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)
When I started this project, sure, I wanted to see if I could write every day. I wanted to know if it was possible to learn about myself through writing to people from my past and present. But the unpublishable nature of this corpus stood out most: I’m producing, by hand, a notebook full of writing. As someone who completed a digital memoir project based on my published writing, I thought this would be a fascinating companion.
And then the writing workshop part of my brain activated as I wrote a letter this week.
One way to get better at writing, which seems obvious but isn’t always, is to read in the genre you’re writing. I’ve taken workshops in poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, and the first several weeks of those courses always involved reading heavily in our genre and discussing those works in class. Partially this was immersion, and partially I think the instructors wanted us to come to class with writing that resembled, well, Iowa Writers’ Workshop-approved writing. (I did take undergrad Workshop classes at Iowa, but here I’m referring to the possibly apocryphal, and at the very least self-important, fact that the style of “writing workshop” used everywhere today originated there.) Sometimes, in a letter, I mention the project itself, or state that the person I’m writing to won’t see this letter. In this particular letter, I wrote that I wasn’t really sure what a letter was supposed to look like, so it was okay if I started with garbage and wrote my way into something that made sense by the end.
Since then, I’ve wondered if it would be a good idea to read some letters, epistolary works, correspondence, something in some genre to remind myself what a letter “looks like” in order to avoid these meta-commentaries within the letters themselves. It’s not that I haven’t written hundreds of letters in my life, but that writing one every day sometimes means I write a garbage letter.
Of course, whether or not my letter writing is “good” shouldn’t, and doesn’t, matter. But if I start one more letter with something like “Admittedly, I’m not sure what to write, so hopefully I’ll come up with something soon!” I might learn more about writing about writer’s block than anything else in 2025.
wholesome scroll
This year, I raised my reading goal from 25 (which typically covers the 2-3 times a year I read a book a day for a week) to 50 (a more intentional book-a-week pace). I’ve read seven books as of this writing, so here those are, in reading order, along with a brief review:
Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler: I’d wanted to read this memoir for a while (IYKYK). I found it an interesting read overall, but I wish some parts had been tighter or more spelled out for the reader. Like, I think the conceit was “I viscerally hate men,” but only because she kept explicitly reminding us. The thing is, she also described a lot of bad experiences she had with men, which is a valid reason to explore this! But having bad experiences with men doesn’t automatically make me assume that someone hates men, or vice versa. It would have been useful for me if she connected those dots herself rather than presenting them separately and expecting readers to come to her intended conclusion on our own.
Crow Talk by Eileen Garvin: See two weeks ago. :)
The Outrun by Amy Liptrot: See last week. :)
Pageboy by Elliot Page: Totally fine for a celebrity memoir. Overwritten at times, but I understand what he wanted to do and I’m glad he did it.
We Got the Beat by Jenna Miller: One of my pet peeves in all media, really, is when a character is The Best, Most Talented Reporter Ever, and then the camera pans to Word on their laptop screen or the book excerpts an article they wrote, and their writing is not good at all. I am also annoyed when an article that’s meant to be a game recap or a profile isn’t structured like a game recap or a profile. All that said, this was a very cute high school friends-to-enemies-to-lovers story, even if the protagonist’s journalistic writing left something to be desired.
Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction by Gabrielle Moss: Very dense, too short. And yet somehow a satisfying overview of the rise of YA! So still a strong recommend.
Spinning by Tillie Walden: In the author’s note at the end of this graphic memoir, Walden explains that she was more concerned with conveying a feeling than presenting a perfectly accurate, chronological story. I’m me, so did have some timeline questions — unfortunately, I remember when Breaking Dawn came out, and I’m not sure we had quite reached 2008 in the narrative when the characters discussed it — but, boy, I sure felt this book, in spite of my own pedantry.