Some quick news before we get to the newsletter:
Yesterday, The Boy with a Bird in His Chest was released in paperback. You can buy it from your local independent bookstore, Bookshop or anywhere else books are sold.
Tonight (1/4) is One Page Wednesday at Literary Arts in Portland. Come down and share a page of work with us. Jessica Wadleigh is our featured reader.
There are 2 more events to celebrate the paperback release of The Boy with a Bird in His Chest.
1/10 is a virtual event with Nina LaCour (author of Yerba Buena) and me at Novel Neighbor, 7pm ct. You can register here.
1/15 Vanessa Friedman (editor at Autostraddle) and I will be in conversation at Powell’s Books in downtown Portland. Free, 7pm.
There is still room in both of my online classes starting later this month. Pushing Through: Carrying Your Manuscript Over the Finish Line and When New York’s a Character: On Writing Place and Setting.
Last January I told my therapist that my focus for 2022 was to spend time in the present. With the release of my debut novel, I knew my tendency would be to let big milestones pass me by without acknowledgement. I tend to always look forward to what I could be doing next, never staying too long in a moment, but I knew I only got one debut release, and I wanted to relish it.
I spent this past year remaining in the present for as long as possible. I celebrated every time my little book got a review, landed on a book list, or was nominated for an award. Whenever I received a message from a grateful reader, I paused and soaked up the notion that I’d spent years writing a novel that people now connected to, and some of those people reach out and thank me. I’ve heard from parents who say the novel has helped them understand their own children better (even one grandmother who was able to connect with her trans grandchild after reading it), and even better for me, I’ve heard from many queer and trans readers who tell me the book helped them understand themselves better, helped them feel seen.
All this to say, I’m grateful for the life I’ve created for myself.
I did create this life for myself. I built this life by sitting down and working on a book for years, years where I wrote the book in secret, years of staying in instead of going out with friends, years of quiet, fervent writing. This life exists because I made space for it.
Last night was the paperback launch of The Boy with a Bird in His Chest at Broadway Books in Portland. Stacy Brewster (author of What We Pick Up) and I had a fabulous conversation about queer magic, writing, and Tom Spanbauer (a big inspiration for TBWABIHC). After the event, one of the booksellers asked me if I ever brought my witchcraft into my writing practice. I rattled off my theory that every action is a spell so there’s never anything that isn’t witchcraft, but at the end, I admitted that the biggest spell we cast for our writing is to build space for it.
When I was nineteen, I moved to Portland from Salem, OR. A friend and I found a two bedroom in the inner eastside for $625 a month. I had a massive closet and not a lot of clothes, so I shoved a desk and a computer in there and made myself a writing room. I had dropped out of college and spent most of my time skateboarding and working at a skate shop in the mall. I needed to prove myself that just because I’d decided I wasn’t interested in college, didn’t mean I was going to quit writing. I made a rule that I had to write for an hour a week. I stuck to it most weeks for the year we were in that apartment. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was casting a spell.
Eventually, tired of skating and working at the mall, I enrolled at Portland State University. I moved into a big house with a bunch of friends, the kind of house of Portland yore, where punks lived in every possible space, mattresses in closets and the garage. I think at one point ten people were living with us and our rent was $125 a month. Here, I set up a desk in the corner of my bedroom. The boy who lived next to me complained about the loud clanging of the Smith Corona typewriter at one am but I told him that’s when I wrote so tough luck. Anyways, there were plenty of nights he kept me up playing guitar and drunkenly belting along with Against Me!.
I’ve always had a physical space to write, even if it was a desk shoved into a closet or the corner of my bedroom, somewhere where I only write when I’m seated there. I try to carve out time to write each day. I’m not always successful. There are holidays and book releases and bad days and days when it’s time to rest. This is the spell. Get up every morning and sacrifice time and space to your writing. Treat it as you should, as something sacred. Maybe you can only dedicate fifteen minutes at a time. Maybe your writing space is a specific chair at the dining room table. That’s okay because the point is you’re offering something to your writing. Keep writing. Maybe someday you, too, will end up with a book on shelves that readers connect with and a life centered around telling stories. You can look back with gratitude that you spent so much time writing and revising. You’ll be glad you gave yourself this.
A Spell for Making Space
Walk around your home and hum. Don’t be embarrassed. Hum so loud and deep that you feel the vibrations in your sternum. Notice where you hum with ease. Notice where you naturally hum the loudest. This is where you’re going to write. Drag in a desk off the street. You know, the one you saw on a walk the other day, the one that’s in decent shape in the free pile on the sidewalk. Some people throw out perfectly good things. Set a chair in front of the desk. Wipe the desk down and imagine you are stirring up her energy. This desk’s pronouns are she/her because she is a boat. You’re going to sit at the helm every day and navigate her to new worlds. She is the key to your stories. Put some nice things on the desk that make you happy. A liitle stone maybe. A candle. The ceramic cup your friend made you for Christmas that one year. Put some pens in the cup. Sit down at the desk and announce its purpose, say, “You are my writing desk. When I’m seated here, I’m here to work. A lot of good writing will happen at this desk.” Slap the top, satisfied. Carve out time, maybe only fifteen minutes at first. Writing at this desk is like saying your prayers, so you must say them each day, but don’t beat yourself up when you miss a day. You will miss a day. You will not use this desk for anything but writing. You will not check emails here. You will not pay bills here. You will not do the crossword here. You will only write, and you will do it a little each day.