how does it feel like
at the end of the day
"I’d cook him a meal while he sat at the table, my back turned as I rinsed and chopped and boiled and stirred. When I wasn’t making eye contact, he’d grow bold with his confessions. He would tell me every dirty thought and evil deed he’d ever committed."
- something I wrote this week, using a revision practice based on rewriting a fragment until it surprises you.1
how does it feel like at the end of the day is the radio show I really wanted to make, when I made the unhinged JOY mix to submit to NTS. “Glorious” by the Breeders is the song that sounds like how my life feels, and how I want it to feel. I mean isn’t that joy, when your life feels how you want it to feel?
So give it a listen. Let me know how much you luuuuv it.
How Much Is Enough?
My feeble complaint from late fall through winter was the common refrain, “I don’t feel like I’m doing enough [writing work].”
I had a classic ton o’ bricks realization a couple weeks ago: How can I know if I’m doing enough if I don’t have a measurement of how much enough is?
But I knew immediately, without hesitation what enough writing work for me would be! Two hours in the morning, and two hours in the afternoon. With breaks!
I had to fully accept that I don’t want to work at the desk spaces I’ve set up, particularly in the morning/early afternoon. I do my morning pages at my desk, but when I get into my work, I want to be working in the sunny bedroom, in the cheap low folding pseudo-papasan chair, with my perpetually freezing feet propped on the warm baseboard heater. I like to work at the “big computer” (my sister’s old desktop we use to watch movies) at night.
Once those two things came together, I was able to do enough, to feel I had done enough. One day, when I was pushing on a project and Kaden was at his office waaaay later than usual, I even put in a solid eight hours. That was cool.
Do I do four hours of work every day of the week? No! But I do it enough days to stop saying, “I don’t feel like I’m doing enough.”
Did You Give Up Punk for Lent?
I saw a post joking, I’m going to pick up a vice for Lent2. I thought to myself – and said to Kaden – what if I smoked weed every day for 40 days? I mean, how perfect, Lent ends on 4/20!! But I immediately remembered I had JUST FIGURED OUT how to do enough and I did not want to undermine myself. (Full disclosure, I do get stoned 1-3x per week, but I don’t smoke anymore). I’m not a Christian lol, (Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine style3), but I like the idea of a 40 day practice and I never remember to do them on an astrological basis (Venus retrograde I think is when it is usually recommended? **edit to add: holy shit Venus retrograde is actually overlapping with Lent rn**). I was like, what can I do, what can I do? I have plans for a “90 Day Novel” project, but I’m not ready to start yet. So I figured out the most sensible, easiest 40 day practice: submit a short story to a lit mag every day.
And it’s been an awesome project so far, reacquainting myself with the short stories I haven’t played with for a while, while I prepare to put my short story collection together FOR REAL. Right now I’m in a frustrating no-man’s land where I’m vacillating between all these stories are perfect! and all these stories blow! But that’s the writing life, and I’m here for it!
Recently, my friend Hannah gave some good advice in a group chat about going all in. I am NOT a person who goes all in! It has never even crossed my mind. I leave my heart in various northwest cities! I keep an emotional toehold in all kinds of places that are not my current situation! I drag my feet everywhere I go, everything I do!4 The only thing I’ve ever put my whole self into is my relationship with Kaden. But, in a cool coincidence, my writing practice is conspiring to make me go all in.
Stuck on a writing project? My MFA friend KP wrote this freaking awesome post about using a writing menu to finish a novel. I had not even heard of this concept of a writing menu before and I am loving it! I was inspired by one of these suggestions to make the how does it feel like at the end of the day radio show. It’s not necessarily a playlist for my short story collection, in that there is almost nothing the characters listen to or reference (no Melvins, no Sonics, no Shangri-Las, no Sonic Youth), but it sounds the way I want my collection to feel.
from “More than Vibes: On Mood and Muchness,” a workshop with Emily Stoddard for the Black Lawrence Press community. This was a free online workshop I took in November 2023 and it is such a good practice for finding openings in your work. But watch out you might have to rewrite the whole damn thing once you’re surprised by its heart.
The title of this subheading is from “Noel Jonah and Me” off the Spinanes album Manos.
Patti Smith.
I feel like that’s one of the reasons “Glorious” sounds like my life.
this was so fun to read! You pack so much energy and example into your reflections. And I am def going to try the write-til-you're-surprised this week <3