twenty-four: an absolute failure at tonal consistency
Apologies for the gap between the last one and this one. With conditions developing so quickly this fall and winter, it's been hard to know what to say -- or how to say it? One does try to not run absolutely opposite to the general social tone -- like, you try to be considerate in how things are said, regardless of what's happening. This is a newsletter and it generally goes one way, but I think about you guys when I write it, on the other side, in wide-contexted lives, and what constitutes care in communication for you. One also doesn't want to leak the quite reasonable shock and despair. And that's not an easy task right now, with us all spread out across time zones and case counts, literally fragmented worlds, and with end-of-year deadlines looming besides.
tl;dr: GAH, WHAT DO I EVEN SAY.
Well, I decided the newsletter that exists beats the perfect one, because the perfect one isn't happening. So. Here's a newsletter that exists?
one writer, two university classes
This November, I had the great fun of doing back-to-back class visits, one at the University of Western Ontario, one at University of Toronto Mississauga, where Above is on the syllabus for the second-year fantasy literature course. I realized about half an hour after signing off that there's a gorgeous circularity to that: I started writing that novel while taking the same course at the downtown campus, years ago. It's the kind of moment I didn't even think about going in, but which life so rarely throws you -- something that structurally complete.
As always, talking to younger readers is a boost to the soul: there is a joy and curiosity in talking books and craft together that can for some reason sour as writers get older, more involved with publishing, more status-conscious. Younger writers don't seem to measure themselves against you, undermine, try to impress, or look over their shoulders; they're full forward into the love of the game. It feels great to be around, because then I can be full forward into the love of the game too, and we all leave feeling real and good.
Western was in-person -- my first foray into an out-of-town trip since the pandemic started, even if it was just overnight -- and UTM virtual, and man, the advantages of actually being there. Sidebar conversations! Body language! Being able to adjust the tonality of your talk depending on if the nice audience looks a little bored or not! The prof can take you out for celiac-safe tacos after! (Thanks, London, good tacos.)
It was kind of startling and lovely to remember -- right, at every event, there's always one tangible connection. And this time it was a small private, sidebar conversation with a student who was leaving one lifelong creative outlet behind, and wanted to know: how do you know when the next one's the right one? And I could actually say something of measurable value there.
It is such a gift to be handed situations where you can transmute some 20-year-old hard experience into tangible, useful aid and support. Especially after this past year: it's a little window into a world where we don't always have to repeat the same mistakes.
a hat
The starting bell went off on knitting season once the weather turned and, during a spate of cleaning after the Western trip (nothing like a night away from home after almost two solid years to make you realize your clutter level has risen above redline and you just got a little desensitized) I realized I have all this yarn and I haven't been doing anything with it. I bought yarn and -- well, got busy.
So this is a hat. It was knitted to Netflix's The Casketeers and is therefore infused with slightly tongue-in-cheek people doing Maori funeral rituals with great compassion. It is also mulberry silk and alpaca and mega-soft. It has been on one trip outdoors, and my head was the warmer for it.
things read
I have never picked up any E.M. Forster. It's one of the various holes in my education that I just never got around to, and after something mentioned by--Marissa, I think? I went and picked up Howards End. And--oh. I am in love. Forster and how he thinks about people so carefully, how he watches in generous gaze just feels like a homecoming. There is not one chapter where I didn't want to bolt out of the bathtub and read something aloud to whoever's in range. But this is my favourite, this is what stuck most:
tl;dr: GAH, WHAT DO I EVEN SAY.
Well, I decided the newsletter that exists beats the perfect one, because the perfect one isn't happening. So. Here's a newsletter that exists?
one writer, two university classes
This November, I had the great fun of doing back-to-back class visits, one at the University of Western Ontario, one at University of Toronto Mississauga, where Above is on the syllabus for the second-year fantasy literature course. I realized about half an hour after signing off that there's a gorgeous circularity to that: I started writing that novel while taking the same course at the downtown campus, years ago. It's the kind of moment I didn't even think about going in, but which life so rarely throws you -- something that structurally complete.
As always, talking to younger readers is a boost to the soul: there is a joy and curiosity in talking books and craft together that can for some reason sour as writers get older, more involved with publishing, more status-conscious. Younger writers don't seem to measure themselves against you, undermine, try to impress, or look over their shoulders; they're full forward into the love of the game. It feels great to be around, because then I can be full forward into the love of the game too, and we all leave feeling real and good.
Western was in-person -- my first foray into an out-of-town trip since the pandemic started, even if it was just overnight -- and UTM virtual, and man, the advantages of actually being there. Sidebar conversations! Body language! Being able to adjust the tonality of your talk depending on if the nice audience looks a little bored or not! The prof can take you out for celiac-safe tacos after! (Thanks, London, good tacos.)
It was kind of startling and lovely to remember -- right, at every event, there's always one tangible connection. And this time it was a small private, sidebar conversation with a student who was leaving one lifelong creative outlet behind, and wanted to know: how do you know when the next one's the right one? And I could actually say something of measurable value there.
It is such a gift to be handed situations where you can transmute some 20-year-old hard experience into tangible, useful aid and support. Especially after this past year: it's a little window into a world where we don't always have to repeat the same mistakes.
a hat
The starting bell went off on knitting season once the weather turned and, during a spate of cleaning after the Western trip (nothing like a night away from home after almost two solid years to make you realize your clutter level has risen above redline and you just got a little desensitized) I realized I have all this yarn and I haven't been doing anything with it. I bought yarn and -- well, got busy.
So this is a hat. It was knitted to Netflix's The Casketeers and is therefore infused with slightly tongue-in-cheek people doing Maori funeral rituals with great compassion. It is also mulberry silk and alpaca and mega-soft. It has been on one trip outdoors, and my head was the warmer for it.
things read
I have never picked up any E.M. Forster. It's one of the various holes in my education that I just never got around to, and after something mentioned by--Marissa, I think? I went and picked up Howards End. And--oh. I am in love. Forster and how he thinks about people so carefully, how he watches in generous gaze just feels like a homecoming. There is not one chapter where I didn't want to bolt out of the bathtub and read something aloud to whoever's in range. But this is my favourite, this is what stuck most:
Seeing that her aunt did not understand, she added: "You remember 'rent'? It was one of father's words--rent to the ideal, to his own faith in human nature. You remember how he would trust strangers, and if they fooled him he would say, 'It's better to be fooled than to be suspicious' -- that the confidence trick is the work of man, but the want-of-confidence trick is the work of the devil."
I think I felt the whole of my heart click. I am so happy to pay rent to the ideal.
Something I've been thinking about since turning off most social media for good this year: how didacticism is the enemy of progress. (I read a novel years ago where one of the characters would dismissively call people enemies of progress, just as a side note. I am tearing my hair out trying to remember which one, because it made me laugh and laugh. Not remembering where I read it is an enemy of progress.) I appreciated deeply how this is not a didactic book. It just does the thing, and lets everything unfold, and you're able to draw your own conclusions. It trusts you to draw sane and healthy ones.
I was also terribly fond, this month, of Joss Lake's Future Feeling: a very whimsical, very trans, very emotionally grounded sort of playful book. I won't go into it in excruciating detail because it's really better immersed in -- the style of the language is half the fun -- but it's the kind of joyous thing you can create when you've actually thought about, processed, and made peace with some of the pain and struggle and have perspective to stand on now, but the very real shadows give the playfulness the right weight.
It is -- like many of the things I appreciate these days -- kind. Not naive, but -- still kind.
things to read
New poem "Rows of Houses" is live at The Deadlands. It is about haunted houses and owes only its title to excellent songwriter Dan Mangan, although that song is about a Stephen King novel, so this might be a case of full-circle.
A short interview with Richard Butner about his forthcoming The Adventurists also went live in Publishers Weekly this month. It's an incredibly excellent collection -- kind, nuanced, layered yet clear -- and consider this my enthusiastic recommendation. This one's something special, and a great crossover title for people who sit in the liminal spaces between literary and genre work. It lifts both loads like they're nothing.
So this is obviously it for 2021, but there are enough things in the works for early 2022 (a few winter poetry publications, some nonfic, a potentially really good larger project watch this space) that I'll try to be more timely on the whole deal next month.
Please stay safe, be well, and here's hope for a restful new year. And -- signing off.
Something I've been thinking about since turning off most social media for good this year: how didacticism is the enemy of progress. (I read a novel years ago where one of the characters would dismissively call people enemies of progress, just as a side note. I am tearing my hair out trying to remember which one, because it made me laugh and laugh. Not remembering where I read it is an enemy of progress.) I appreciated deeply how this is not a didactic book. It just does the thing, and lets everything unfold, and you're able to draw your own conclusions. It trusts you to draw sane and healthy ones.
I was also terribly fond, this month, of Joss Lake's Future Feeling: a very whimsical, very trans, very emotionally grounded sort of playful book. I won't go into it in excruciating detail because it's really better immersed in -- the style of the language is half the fun -- but it's the kind of joyous thing you can create when you've actually thought about, processed, and made peace with some of the pain and struggle and have perspective to stand on now, but the very real shadows give the playfulness the right weight.
It is -- like many of the things I appreciate these days -- kind. Not naive, but -- still kind.
things to read
New poem "Rows of Houses" is live at The Deadlands. It is about haunted houses and owes only its title to excellent songwriter Dan Mangan, although that song is about a Stephen King novel, so this might be a case of full-circle.
A short interview with Richard Butner about his forthcoming The Adventurists also went live in Publishers Weekly this month. It's an incredibly excellent collection -- kind, nuanced, layered yet clear -- and consider this my enthusiastic recommendation. This one's something special, and a great crossover title for people who sit in the liminal spaces between literary and genre work. It lifts both loads like they're nothing.
"Local Leopards", a piece about self-destructive communal loops, complicity, and leopards eating yes, your face, but in the key of "Tupelo", will appear in the next issue of Qwerty Magazine, the University of New Brunswick's literary journal. I want to start a poetic school that's mostly about sounding like Nick Cave secretly in your head, rambling and fiercely literate and just on the edge of tongues and glorious. This is part of it. Publication date pending. :)
Finally, I did the year-end post, as is the professional obligation (see: tonal consistency, failures at). It's a nice little heap of publications for a hard year. I will be blunt that awards lists and things like that are absolutely not on my priorities right now, hollow laugh here, people are dying (!). Maybe I should see caring about that as my professional obligation too, but I'm just not built like that these days. But if there's anything there you think might serve as aid and comfort, there it be.
Finally, I did the year-end post, as is the professional obligation (see: tonal consistency, failures at). It's a nice little heap of publications for a hard year. I will be blunt that awards lists and things like that are absolutely not on my priorities right now, hollow laugh here, people are dying (!). Maybe I should see caring about that as my professional obligation too, but I'm just not built like that these days. But if there's anything there you think might serve as aid and comfort, there it be.
***
So this is obviously it for 2021, but there are enough things in the works for early 2022 (a few winter poetry publications, some nonfic, a potentially really good larger project watch this space) that I'll try to be more timely on the whole deal next month.
Please stay safe, be well, and here's hope for a restful new year. And -- signing off.
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