Maya Rushing Walker's Blog
January 10, 2022
Meg Chapter 1
Arabic was incredibly easy to learn, at least at first. At least for Meg.
Ana means I. So if Meg wanted to introduce herself, all she had to say was, “Ana Meg,” or, “I'm Meg.” It's an equational sentence, her Arabic tutor back at school had told her. Ana=I.
When she first got to Egypt, she said a lot of “Ana Meg.” And then as soon as a dozen words were out of her mouth, she would be accosted with a torrent of questions: why was her name Meg? What kind of name was that? Because she was Egyptian, wasn't she? Who was the Egyptian, mama or baba? Both? Where were they? Were they in Egypt, or in the States?
“No, no. No, I'm not Egyptian,” Meg would laugh.
The more genteel among them might give each other sideways smiles and cease the questioning, but very often, her interlocutors were persistent.
“But your Arabic is very good.”
La, la, ana mish Masriyya. No, no, I'm not Egyptian.
“You don't sound American. Maybe you're Lebanese.”
And it would start again.
No, no, I'm not Lebanese, she protested with a patient smile.
Eventually the questioning would stop, but that didn't mean that her questioners were satisfied. Rather, they would conclude that the dark-haired, tan American with the spot-on Egyptian accent had some mysterious backstory that would eventually be revealed. That was rubbish, of course. Meg didn't have any particular backstory, except that she loved being in the dirt, in the desert, and being anonymous.
Well, all right. There was that minor detail of being part-something. Part white and part “something.” She didn’t fit into the picture of what everyone thought an American woman should look like. She wasn’t blonde. She wasn’t blue-eyed. She wasn’t peaches-and-cream fair, and she never got sunburns. There was something faintly non-Western about her eyes and her cheekbones. Her nose wasn’t big enough or pointy enough to be European. The overly friendly shopkeepers decided among themselves that she must be Turkish. But no matter how assiduously they quizzed her, she just smiled and bantered with skill. Eventually she would stumble and say something totally wrong and weird, and everyone would laugh and realize that she wasn’t one of them after all. She’d gotten through years of dodging the ethnicity question and had never had to reveal the fact that her father had married an Amerasian orphan during his research work in Southeast Asia, and that her confusing looks were simply the result of a corrupt American presence in Asia. She preferred not to get into that. And what did it matter anyway.
Meg had no connection to Egypt at all, and certainly no connection to the Arabic language. She'd merely talked her way into a job on a dig in Luxor, despite the fact that she was only a mostly under- and sometimes flat-out unemployed twenty-something year-old from New York, and didn't have the “permissions” that the Egyptians required in order to formally work on excavations. She'd been on other volunteer digs, places like Romania (Roman settlements, unfortunately no vampires), Peru (skeletons! lots of skeletons!), and Jordan (second century Nabataeans!). She knew her way about an excavation, could talk intelligently about bioarchaeology and paleoethnobotany. She wasn’t choosy; Bronze Age digs were fascinating, Roman ruins were good, and she was hoping to get to Mongolia eventually where there was a Neolithic project she had read about.
Anything, anything at all. So long as she didn't have to go home.
Home was New Jersey, a dark, cool garden apartment in a far suburb of New York City. Clean, with floors newly retiled with fake linoleum. Real linoleum, her mother said, wasn't a thing anymore. That went out in the seventies, after disco and before Dancing Queen. Everything is press-on tiles now, she was informed. Made in China and in every color of the rainbow.Good stuff.
But she hadn't been home for more than a few days at a time in years, and as the end of each gig approached, she was seized with anxiety as she contemplated the murmured conversations that would occur between her sister and her mother: whose turn was it to put up Meg, and for how long?
Her sister had a new baby, a slick and dislikable husband, and loved nothing more than to offer to set Meg up with interviews in the city for financial jobs she didn't want so that he could claim to have “rescued” her.
She was so tired of being the younger sister with big, failed dreams. But she couldn't bring herself to take those administrative assistant jobs, even if her brother-in-law said they were a stepping stone to something “more interesting.”
“They'll probably ask you about all those digs,” he'd said, trying to sound as if he weren't judging her, which he most certainly was. “But maybe they won't hold them against you.”
“Archaeologists have to be organized,” her sister had added brightly.
Meg was not organized, had never been organized, and her sister knew it.
“And sometimes they need someone who can speak a foreign language. What did you study in college again?”
Meg had studied anthropology, but she doubted that Robert even knew what that was. He was a financial wheeler-dealer who was rude to his staff and pandered to his boss. He made a lot of money and made sure Meg's parents knew it. Hosting him at their table was excruciating, with her father absently smiling at his football references.
Meg's father never watched football.
“Foreign cultures,” Meg replied automatically. It was a lie that she reserved for people she truly detested.
“Well. Not something I’d want to get into. Too dangerous. Look at what happens in Europe all the time now. Crazy terrorists driving through crowds. And that’s in Europe.” The gaping silence following the word “Europe” was large enough to include all of the Middle East and Africa, and anywhere else that terrorists might be lurking about.
New Jersey is full of terrorists, Meg thought with contempt. On the Garden State Parkway. On the New Jersey Turnpike. At the Whole Foods. At little Robert Junior’s Montessori daycare.
She turned over in her cot, trying to think her way past the rejection she’d just gotten from yet another dig. They wanted a graduate student, they said, some who was “more qualified.”
“Hey. You’re not asleep?”
Her roommate, an older British woman, a retired professor from Gloucester, turned over in her cot.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t worry. I wasn’t asleep. Too much celebrating at dinner. My stomach’s upset.” Helen pushed herself up on her elbows and reached out to check the time on her phone. “It’s two o’clock. What time is your flight tomorrow?”
“Early. Yours?”
“Also early. What’s keeping you up? Indigestion?”
Meg shook her head. She held up her phone. “I just got rejected from an excavation I really wanted to do. Jordan.”
“You’ve been to Jordan before, right?” Helen switched on the lamp between their cots. “Let me have a look.”
Meg passed the phone over to her.
“Meg, I’ve told you this before, but you’re going to have to join the twenty-first century,” Helen complained. “Which of these keys do I press? I haven’t touched a flip phone in years.”
“Sorry. It’s the bottom key.”
Helen pressed the key repeatedly, squinting at the tiny screen. “My eyes are too old for this. Looks like they almost hired you. This is a responsible position, not for an amateur—”
“—but I’m not credentialed,” Meg finished. “I don’t have a graduate degree. At this point no one wants me as an underling, and no one wants to give me a title.”
“Have you plans to go back to school?” Helen returned the phone. “You would be a great catch for almost any program in the U.K. I could help you there. But there’s no money in it, I’m afraid. What funding we’ve got, we have to give to U.K. nationals.”
“I know.”
“So what then? Home?”
Meg shuddered. “God, no.”
“New York, is it?”
“Kind of. New Jersey. But I can’t go home. Maybe I’ll find a job as a nanny or something. Live in Manhattan.”
“Now, Meg.” Helen reached for her glasses, swung her legs over the side of the cot. She leaned forward to rest her hand on Meg’s arm. “Why aren’t you applying to U.S. programs? You know the leads on this project would write you a splendid reference. Why aren’t you doing what you need to do in order to get those better jobs?”
Meg shrugged. How to explain? How to explain that master’s programs cost money, that archaeology didn’t pay, that she couldn’t possibly live at home while she went to school, and that even being in the same state as her sister and her awful husband was toxic?
Plus the fact that it wasn’t archaeology that kept her bouncing from dig to dig; it wasn’t the old bones and the neat grids on the diagrams. It wasn’t the mummies and the occasional discovery of a bracelet or earring. It wasn’t the delight of seeing her name in a footnote in a major academic journal.
It was the way that being away from the States made her feel alive. It was the last call to prayer of the mosque; the open friendliness of the little old ladies who sold bread on the corner near the ironing man’s stall, and the cackle of the man in the gold souk who thought he was being clever by putting his thumb on the scale when he weighed the cheap earrings she bought her sister.
She laughed and argued and fought, and it didn’t matter if she was in Jordan, Peru, or Transylvania. She’d ridden in donkey carts to get to excavation sites, and she’d driven pickup trucks, even though she’d never gotten her driver’s license back in the States, as she’d had no use for one. She’d even been propositioned by a fat man with a mustache and a Mercedes. That was in Mexico, way back in the beginning, when she was very young and kind of stupid. Never accept an offer of a ride without a companion, she’d discovered, almost too late. It was a long walk back to the hostel that night.
Life overseas was lived in vivid color, not at all like life at home, which seemed to be a mere pale copy of the rest of the world. And where was home, anyway? She’d done her best to never be around for more than a month in between gigs, and she usually couch-surfed at friends’ apartments in New York rather than spend more time than she could stand with her family. She loved Manhattan, but it was expensive, and the best jobs were in industries like banking. She’d been a clerk at the Metropolitan Museum gift shop, and she supposed she could get that old job back. But it wouldn’t pay for an apartment in the city.
She had to admit it; she didn’t actually want to be an archaeologist. She just wanted her childhood back, those golden years when her father had been researching his book and they had lived with the semi-nomadic desert tribes in Pakistan. Her mother hated it. Her sister hated it. Her father had hoped that they could pick up some useful information for his book from the women, but her mother had remained stubbornly unhelpful. Meg, on the other hand, had hit the ground running. She was in and out of the women’s activities, constantly questioning, picking up Urdu at lightning speed, and eventually set to minding the younger children and looking after the animals. She had her own three camels to take care of, as well as some sheep. At age seven, she felt trusted and capable. She felt closer to these welcoming desert people than she did to her sister and mother, who spent the year trying to pretend that they weren't really in a dusty, hot village of low cinder block buildings, far away from supermarkets and the multiplex.
When they finally returned to the States after two years, she felt adrift. She was confused by the preoccupation with school and grades and sports. Her sister, Sarah, relieved to re-enter the familiar world of the American suburb, had the opposite reaction. She hurled herself into “normal” with gusto, taking school prizes left and right, sampling lacrosse and soccer, and running for student body vice president. She had a boyfriend, went to the prom, and got her driver's license.
Meg hung back, uncertain. Her friends were the loners, the immigrant kids, the unpopular kids. They didn't think she was weird. But she wasn't happy, even with all that life had to offer a kid in the late twentieth century. She kept dreaming of the desert, of the jasmine that bloomed at night, of the little kids who looked up to her and didn't think her halting Urdu was hard to understand.
It was never about archaeology, Meg knew. And if she started to apply to American archaeology programs, her life would start to unravel. She'd get caught as the fraud that she was, and she didn't have any other alternatives.
Well. Actually, she really didn't have any alternatives. At all.
She shut the phone with a snap.
“You know what you would be good at,” Helen was saying as she looked for her shoes and pulled on her jacket. She was headed for the toilet and there were biting flies outside.
“You would be great in MI6.”
Meg started to laugh. “What, a spy? Like, James Bond?”
“Sorry, I misspoke. The CIA. Have you thought of that?”
“No!” Meg was still laughing. “Why do you say that?”
“You're brilliant at foreign languages. You make friends easily. You're smart, the smartest one here, I'd say. Except for myself.” Helen was tying her shoes. “You're careful, you don't speak before you think. And you're meticulous.”
“No one has ever called me meticulous before,” Meg said, still laughing. “I'm a mess, actually. But Dr. Howard scares the shit out of me, so I try not to screw up. I don't move things around, I don't pull things out of the dirt until I've got a picture. I call someone when I find something. I'm careful that way. Only because I'm actually a mess, really and truly.”
“See? You even know your own faults! That's pretty rare.” Helen was making her way over to the door. She turned. “You should think about it. You could spend most of your time overseas, never go back to the States hardly at all. You could ask for hardship assignments. Get a steady paycheck. Learn more languages. Branch out, go to some other parts of the world. It would be cool. How do you even do that in the States? Is there a test?”
“I have no fucking clue.” Meg flopped backwards into her cot again. She reached out to switch off the lamp, but then thought better of it, as Helen wouldn't be able to see her way back into the hut.
The CIA? Could she do that?
She shuddered. No. No, what if they sentenced her to a desk job somewhere deep in the bowels of the government? She would die.Not to mention, wasn’t the CIA responsible for the mess that was Southeast Asia in the 1970s, when her mother was born and then disposed of like a used tissue? Somehow it felt like betrayal. She couldn’t work for the organization that had created so much tragedy.
Still.
She could ask around. It was a sight better than trying to inveigle an invitation to stay with her parents or offering to nanny for Sarah in exchange for her guest bedroom. “I'll have to ask Robert,” she could imagine her sister saying, and she grimaced in disgust.
If only her dad had managed to publish that book, she thought. Things might be so different. He might not be teaching history to uninterested twenty year-olds at a junior college, if only he could have gotten that book out. He might not have lost his courage and his enthusiasm for pursuing work he loved. Sarah might not have followed their mother's instructions to be a conventional success and focus on money and prestige at all cost. Maybe Sarah wouldn't be so annoying. Maybe she wouldn't have married Robert.
So many possibilities, all of them lost.
It was time to change course, Meg knew. She had to try something different.
January 9, 2022
Hello 2022!
Do you have regular seasonal moods? I normally have a bout of the January blues, so I’m going easy on myself this year. I’m counting down the days, because I’m usually in the clear once January ends, although with the weirdness of the past couple of years I’ve been hit with a couple of brief oddball down days at random times. I’ve found that daily meditation and exercise helps me to recognize it when it arrives, and making sure that I’m kind to myself for the few days that I’m feeling low helps to chase it away.
That being said, I’m excited to talk about something I’m doing this year that is new! First of all, I’m posting a serial here of an old “drawer novel” that I wrote years ago and never published. I’ve had it evaluated by a few agents and a developmental editor, and it never did make it in the traditionally published world. Because it’s old, I don’t think I would indie publish it today unless I revised it, and I’m too busy with other projects to do the revisions…at least right now.
So I’m putting it out in its antique glory for you to enjoy! I hope to post chapters regularly since it’s already written, but I may be doing small edits as I go along, so there may be occasional delays. I want this to be as easy an experience as possible, both for myself and for you, so sign up for the blog if you want to get these chapters in your email inbox, but if you’re not keen on more inbox clutter, don’t worry about it and come visit when you have a moment of down time.
(I know there are some of you who are sensitive to swearing or cursing in your reading, so please be warned that there is indeed some salty language in this one! Not my usual thing, but it takes place in the world of diplomatic intrigue, and it would frankly be a little weird if some of these people didn’t use some “language” from time to time.)
If you are reading this on my website, the signup for the blog is not on my website. It’s on https://world.hey.com/hellofrommaya. That is my personal blog site, connected to my email provider and mostly only publicized to my newsletter readers. I do copy-paste onto my author website blog but I don’t have any kind of blog signup on my author website, so to sign up you’ll have to go to my personal blog site.
I’m working on another project that I will announce here on the blog…after I announce it to my newsletter friends, who always get the news first! Hint: it doesn’t involve reading or writing!
December 4, 2021
Too. Many. Words.
Last summer I stopped reading. I’m a novelist, so I consider reading to be part of my work. And for the longest time, I had three books going at once. I had an ebook on my phone/ebook device, a print book from the bookstore, and an audiobook. No matter what I was doing, I was plugged into a book.
So it was weird, bordering on an emergency, when I found myself unable to read. I chose a YA novel, Flash Fire, hoping that it would be easy to binge. It was a sequel, and I had loved the first book, The Extraordinaries. It’s written from the point of view of a teenager with ADHD, so there’s a cheerful, cluttered randomness to the story, as well as a plot featuring superheroes and fan fiction. What’s not to love?
In addition, I’ve noticed that a lot of books suffer from under-editing. This isn’t an indie or self-published thing. I’ve read a number of books published by big NYC houses where I wondered where the editor was. I’m not just talking about typos. I’m talking about a tightly structured story, where it just WORKS. The author of The Extraordinaries, TJ Klune, not only wrapped up all the loose ends and tied them with a bow. He then proceeded to blast through some of the fundamental underpinnings in the book, paving the way for a great sequel. In other words, you end The Extraordinaries thinking you know what’s going on, and then in a few pages at the end you’re told that everything you thought was going on, really isn’t. That there are some deeper layers that run counter to all the logical solutions you thought you understood. Isn’t that just a great way to make you anticipate the next book?
I had an exhausting summer—I’m sure the whole world did—and I needed to start reading again because it’s the work that I do. I read and I write. So I chose Flash Fire and got ready to binge. Only then I didn’t.
I write a weekly newsletter (you can sign up here and get a free novella!), and every week I told my newsletter friends that I was still working on Flash Fire, that I was enjoying it, that I wasn’t done yet. This went on for awhile. I was having trouble getting through it, however. I would read a few pages at a time and wonder why it felt so exhausting. I switched over to a non-fiction book and read them alongside each other, thinking I just needed to jumpstart my brain. That didn’t work. Then I added an audiobook, and that didn’t work, either. Normally it really helps to jump around and refresh myself in a different medium, but I felt universally exhausted by the act of absorbing all these words.
In October, I went to my local indie bookstore with my daughter and bought a stack of hardcover books (ouch). I was feeling sad and stressed because I wasn’t reading, so I recklessly thought I would throw some money at the problem. I bought a book with a pretty cover by a first-time novelist, a book by a novelist whose Hulu series I’d liked, a book by an author I’d always meant to read but hadn’t, a book by someone who’d just been nominated for a National Book Award. Those are the ones I remember, but I bought even more than that. I don’t recommend doing what I did, it was expensive, and those are bad criteria if you’re trying to make sure you don’t waste your money. I don’t normally buy books by people II’ve never read before. I get them from the library or I borrow from friends, or I download an excerpt somewhere.
So I opened up the book with the pretty cover. Talk about random! You’d think I would know better than to judge a book by its cover, haha.
But this was the book that I binged.
Why? Well, it’s complicated. First of all, it didn’t start off well. The writing was kind of “literary” and at first it annoyed me. I like clean prose, and the writing in this book threatened to head in the direction of navel-gazing, which I ardently dislike. But after some pages, it felt better. I don’t know if I just got used to it or if the author overworked her first chapters because those are the ones that critique groups and agents fuss over. But it got better. However, the second thing that happened was the author brought up various stereotypes about Japan that I also really dislike. The book is set in Japan and the author seems to be Japanese or part Japanese, which is great, but she occasionally makes references to Japanese tropes that I find much too general (I’ll write a separate blog post about the book next, it’s Emily Itami’s Fault Lines). My mother is from Japan, so I’ll admit to a bit of over-sensitivity in this area. But again, after some introductory “weird Japan” examples, it got better. And then third, this type of story is really REALLY not my jam. It’s about a married woman with young children who embarks on an affair. I have trouble with this plot line because I kind of just don’t get it.
However, once again, it got better as it went on. And when I started reflecting on why I could binge-read something that has all these drawbacks, compared to a sequel to a book and author I really enjoyed, in a genre that is frankly easier to digest, I realized something.
It had everything to do with TOO. MANY. WORDS. Why? Because sometimes YA novels are just that “talky.”
There are two kinds of genre, story genre and marketing genre. Story genres are about scratching the reader’s itch. In a mystery novel, you want to solve the mystery. In a romance, you (usually) want a happily-ever-after. You get to live vicariously through the events in the story, and you’re satisfied when things are tied up neatly. Marketing genres are about displaying the book on the right bookstore shelf, or putting the right Amazon label on it. The story genre for Flash Fire is probably similar to that of a Marvel movie—adventure or maybe even thriller (since there’s an evil villain to defeat). But the marketing genre is YA, so you would make sure to put the book in a place where your teen readers would find it.
I realized that Flash Fire isn’t YA in the same way that say, Hunger Games, is YA. Hunger Games has a marketing genre that appeals to a broad audience. Flash Fire does not. It’s truly a novel for teens, and as such, there is a ton of “explaining” and “talking” going on. There are admonitions about safe sex and a long and largely irrelevant plot thread about going to prom. These are fun for the teen reader, but they don’t advance the plot at all. They don’t even add to characterization. They’re just there for the teen reader to enjoy. It’s like TJ Klune is actually talking to his audience through his narrator.
Guess what. I’m not his audience. And all that talking! It was too much. Just exhausting.
Hunger Games doesn’t talk nearly as much as Flash Fire because it’s all about the doing. And that’s why it can appeal to grownups. Grownups don’t really want to read about getting ready for prom or about safe sex for gay teens. They want to resolve the plot. That’s why Hunger Games and Twilight work for older readers. These are thrillers with teen protagonists, not YA novels. However, you can still find these books shelved in the YA section of the store, because the protagonists are young. Marketing genre versus story genre—they aren’t the same thing.
I figured this out because the novel I finally binged in November was absolutely a grown-up novel. I think the marketing genre might be something like “upmarket fiction” or even “literary fiction,” and a book like that isn’t going to over-explain itself. I had to read between the lines a lot to understand what the author was showing me, and it was a satisfying journey in someone else’s head precisely because she wasn’t trying to tell me everything.
Do I still love TJ Klune? You bet. But after the summer we all had, I really couldn’t take more talking. I’d even stopped listening to podcasts because there was too much information in them. I needed some mental space, and as it turned out, a book for kids wasn’t the right thing for me.
I’ll write up something about Emily Itami’s Fault Lines soon.
November 12, 2021
What’s your chronotype? otherwise known as earlybirds v. night owls
I was writing a newsletter about how jangled I feel after the time change this week, when I realized that half the battle for me is that I chose this week to “flip” my daily schedule. Just like me to forget all about the time change and make another big change at a time when I'm going to feel dazed and jet-lagged.
So I went down a bit of a rabbit hole, researching this idea that there are people who work best in the morning and people who work best in the evening. Our corporate 9-5 is more or less kinder to the morning people, I believe, although I think there must be a lot of early birds out there who absolutely loathe having to get any work done after lunch. I'm a writer, so I get to set my hours…kind of. I do have to live in the world, and it runs on 9-5 much of the time.
Here's a great article from The New York Times about the different chronotypes. I tried to make the link shareable, since I do have a paid subscription with the Times and am able to share ten articles per month. (At some point the link does expire, though.) It's focused on how people in the same workspace can get along better with others who have different chronotypes. I found the article useful because my husband is definitely a morning person, and he can barely keep his eyes open after 9:30 at night, when I'm feeling gregarious!
One thing that I found helpful is this questionnaire. I filled it out and was fascinated by the reply, which stated that my “natural” bedtime is probably 12:45 am. Fascinating! This is earlier than I would have thought, but then I have to admit that when I wait until I am sleepy, I often don't get enough sleep, because I consistently wake up at the same time the next day no matter what time I get to bed.
Here's my report:
That little detail at the bottom about light therapy and Seasonal Affective Disorder was fascinating, too! I have always suspected that I suffer from SAD. I was born and raised in Honolulu, so it makes sense, right? But I really only have about one serious bout of the blues per year. It's usually some time in January and lasts only for a few days. It's never been enough for me to seek counseling or treatment, and I have some sunlamps that I try to turn on during the winter to try to ward off that one episode (not sure if it works–maybe I would have more episodes otherwise?).
If you are one of those people who suffers from SAD in the darker months of the year, you might try this questionnaire out to see if the feedback is useful for you. And even if not–no matter which chronotype you are, you probably know people who are your opposite. It helps to know that we're just born this way and that we can all make some simple adjustments so that we can live and work together better.
November 5, 2021
Mood Management Mode
I was thinking about productivity today, or rather–LACK of productivity. The thought floated into my head because I noticed–randomly–that my husband tends to say things like, “I procrastinated on doing X.” It's like he quickly defaults to self-blame without even considering WHY he held off on doing some task or other.
Writers have a special relationship to “procrastination.” If we're not sitting at the computer, tapping furiously at the keyboard–we're “procrastinating.”
But writing requires so much more than just typing. Sometimes you need the back of a napkin and a pen, sometimes you need an amble through the woods, sometimes you need an episode of Ted Lasso. Our brains are always working. That's what they do, they think. And the stuff that we need for our books happens even while we are away from our desks, even while we are working on the other things in life that need to get done.
When I foresee a crazy week ahead of me, I immediately go into “mood management” mode, which for me involves the following:
BE HONEST. What's inescapable? What am I stuck doing whether I like it or not, where no one can help me because I have to do it myself? If you can ask for help or pass the buck, do it to try to create space in your life right now. For example, I asked someone to pick up some groceries for me. But otherwise, face the music. You can't pass the buck on everything, so just look honestly at the things that you, yourself, need to do. Hiding isn't going to help you to plan.Acknowledge that this will be a week filled with “good enough” writing. You might write fewer words, you might write crap, you might be late on your deadline. This is actually good practice, because this situation will happen again, and you still need to write–be okay with the amount and quality of your work.Live in the moment. If you have a meditation practice, if you are an athlete or performer, if you like playing with small children–this will be familiar to you. Bring your mind back as often as you can to what you are doing right now. You really can't predict the next moment of your life, never mind tomorrow or next week. Just do your best with the thing right in front of you and move forward that way. You are going to get through this week and you will get things done.Remember that your actions are evidence of who you are. The things you do are the things that matter to you. If you're a writer, you need to write. If you're a parent, you should parent. If you're a corporate soldier, you have things to do and people to please. Whatever you decide to do is the thing that you care about. If you have to drop or ignore something, just realize that you are making a choice, and the choice should reflect your principles. I will drop writing before I drop parenting. Most people will drop writing before they abandon earning a living. It's all good. Hold your head up high and live with your choices.Mood management. It's a lot easier to get through the things you have to do when you are feeling good. What gets your mood up? Exercise? Chocolate? Music? Make it happen. In my case, I'm going to play a lot of music that I love, watch some shows while I'm on the elliptical, and read some fiction.The single most helpful thing on this entire list (for me) is MOOD MANAGEMENT. Stay happy at all costs. Avoid toxic people (as best as you can). Focus on who you are, not the results. As one of my favorite meditation gurus likes to say, the only thing you can control is your attitude. I'm going to hang onto those words this week.
October 31, 2021
hey! this is a blog! what’s the difference between the blog and the newsletter?
I've been writing a newsletter to my readers since around January 2018. That's coming up on four years. I can't believe I've kept going for so long.
In the early months it was super erratic. I think I sent a newsletter out every month until around April, and then nothing until the following fall. By winter 2018 I had published my first novel, The Portrait, and then it was off to the races. I've been pretty consistent ever since. I started out writing newsletters every other week, and then at some point it became every week.
My blogging record is much spottier. There have been times where I've micro-blogged every day, and times where I've been silent for months (years?). I've questioned the relevancy of a blog. I mean, I don't LOOK for blogs to read, do you? (Maybe you do?) I often check in with my young adult children to see what their generation is up to, and they definitely do NOT read blogs.
So what the heck am I doing here?
Here are a bunch of reasons for me to start blogging again.
My newsletter is for my newsletter peeps. So I don't publish those. I get personal, I share pics of my kids and my travels, and it's a lot more intimate than my Instagram feed for sure. Also, it's my way of talking to people whose names and faces I can get to know. people write back to me and I write back to them and then we're friends. But sometimes there's stuff in my newsletters (like music recommendations or a book release date) that ought to be shared a bit more widely.My website used to host my blog, and then I took the blog away because…I was just sick of logging into my website in order to write. Basically, I need to be in a certain creative headspace in order to write, and it just didn't match the headspace I needed to be in so update plugins and do general housekeeping in my website. But then I switched email providers away from Gmail (which kept hiding email from me) and over to Hey.com, which has a blog space built into my email address. I'm already writing things in the Hey.com space, since that's where I write email. It was just a short hop over to the realization that I wouldn't need to do a mental switch when writing blog posts.And last, I've experienced a fundamental change in the way I perceive myself. I've always said I was a writer. And then after I started publishing my fiction, I got brave enough to call myself a novelist. But I was musing over the current phrase, “content creator,” recently. I never liked that label. It sounds clinical, don't you think? I definitely don't want to call myself a content creator. However, it kind of IS what I do. Whenever I write an email, a newsletter, a novel, or a blog post, I'm putting my ideas out there into the world. Let me put it differently. Have you ever considered how long the credits are at the end of movies? That's because you need a ton of different specialized skills in order to produce a movie. I wouldn't be qualified to do most of those jobs. Stylists, electricians, animators…I can't do any of those. I could possibly borderline manage to work on the business side of things since I used to be a banker, but I wouldn't enjoy it. The only part of the process that I know I could 100% nail would be writing. So…I need to keep writing and putting stuff out there. It's what I do. And since the newsletter is kind of private, I decided that I needed to blog. Otherwise the world only hears from me when I produce a book, and many people won't get around to buying or borrowing it. A blog, though, is shareable and public.I just thought of this fourth point! I have to admit that I'm not feeling really good about social media right now. What about you? I don't like being on a platform that steals your attention and makes money off it. With a blog, you can read or not read, up to you. You'll get exactly what you're looking for and no more or less.Until I get a rhythm going, this is going to be erratic. I'll probably start by combing through my newsletters for bits of stuff that is suitable for public consumption. I'll put it out here, on my personal Hey.com blog, and copy-paste it over to my author website at https://mayarushingwalker.net. If you're signed up to this blog, you'll get the post the minute I hit “send.” It's separate from the newsletter, more like a form of social media. You can totally comment on these posts, and I'll get your comment in my email inbox. Sweet, right? Since that's where I would be to answer newsletter email, too. It keeps me in the right headspace to write and talk to people.
So! I'm welcoming myself back. LOL! I'll try to keep the posting to no more than once a day, even if I have a really great bunch of ideas. Ha ha!
October 21, 2021
It’s Tuesday…
…and I'm listening to this as I finally get back to my email after working like crazy on a take-home exam for my religion class:
If you haven't heard from me, I'm on it!
Happy end-of-July vibes!
I know I shouldn’t do this BUT…
I'm not sure why I had the sudden urge, but here it is! It's a letter from Roman Dryden to Lydia Barrow. If you've read The Portrait, then you know who Lydia is. If not, well, it's okay. All you need to know is that this is a Regency period historical novel. Here goes.
I'm imagining Roman as a rugged-looking rough-hewn type. Not a well-dressed Regency buck by any means! He's a farmer from somewhere up north. I don't dare tell you any more for fear of spoiling the story!
Letter from Roman Dryden
c/o Mrs. Dwight, Fenchurch Street, London
To Miss Leslie Lydia Barrow, Claverton House, Grosvenor Square, London
My dear Miss Barrow,
Please do not apologize. I understand that you may have had a change of heart—or indeed, perhaps you were not as decided on the matter as I had been, and if so, I understand.
I am, however, surprised that you are in London? I am in between joy and disappointment, not knowing in which direction my heart should settle, as I would have been so very happy to see you. Alas, I suppose that is not to be? Or—would you be agreeable to meeting with me? I promise I will not say anything to make you uncomfortable, or to press my suit. The truth is that I wish to make a clean breast of some matters which I fear you may have misunderstood. It is selfish of me to wish that we part on honest terms, but there it is. If it is anything I dislike, it is when no one tries to undo a misunderstanding, for the pain that follows may torment one for years. Do not ask me how I know this.
So as much as I know that what I ask is selfish, I would like to have an honest conversation with you, so that we may each go our own separate way without a painful memory of what passed between us.
I will be at this address, if you would be so good as to write to me here. I have been afflicted with a chest ailment—mild, I assure you—and have not been able to make my arrangements to return to my properties in the north. As such I fear I will be here into the new year and perhaps some weeks beyond. I am grateful to you for your letter, and beg you grant me the indulgence of one last meeting.
About the ring, which you very kindly offered to return. I hope you will wear it in good health and consider it a token of affection and respect from one who admires you greatly.
Your most ob’t,
ROMAN DRYDEN
What I’ve been learning from Netflix lately
It is amazing to feel like I’m connected to a viewing audience in a country that is half a world away in terms of geography but worlds away in terms of culture and language.
I also found myself binge-watching Call My Agent, a series out of France. Hysterically funny and with cameos from famous French film actors, it chronicles the office and personal lives of a group of high-powered celebrity agents.
What I particularly love about these types of shows is that they aren’t aimed at me at all. They weren’t created for the American viewing public; they were created for their own home audiences. As such, I get to see what they assume about the tastes of people who live far away from me and live lives that presumably aren’t like mine.
At some level, though, people are people, right? We all have families, hobbies, work…and we all try to live life as fully as we can.
My family stole a scene out of one of the most famous and beloved recent Korean dramas, Crash Landing on You, about a Korean fashion conglomerate CEO who accidentally paraglides into North Korea and is rescued by a troupe of adorably happy-go-lucky North Korean soldiers. They try to get her safely back to South Korea but run into corruption and danger at every turn. While she is there, the CEO learns something about the simple, old-fashioned lives her parents ad grandparents probably experienced before the Korean War rent the peninsula in two back in the 1950s.
The North Korean soldiers show her how to enjoy freshly dug clams…by dousing them with oil (some people say it was gasoline, I would hate to think so, but it’s possible!) and setting them alight. They then drink soju (a powerful Korean alcohol) in the clam shells.
We couldn’t resist trying it—and yes, it’s an EXCELLENT way to enjoy some fresh clams!
Sneak peek! Draft chapter of EVER YOUR AFFECTIONATE
I'm hard at work on my next book, a Regency era historical novella. It's called Ever Your Affectionate, and is written entirely as a first-person journal. I started writing this book this spring when vaccinations became plentiful and there was a sense of optimism in the air. I'll get right back to Twelfth Night, which is a beast of a book, right after I get through this one, which is much shorter!
Just wanted to post an excerpt! Enjoy!
April 1765
My name is Lydia.
My name is Lydia.
My name is
My name is
My name is
(illegible blob)
This pen writes very ill indeed.
Or perhaps it is I who writes very ill indeed.
Ha.
(more blobs)
Must. Keep. Trying.
I've mended the pen. Again. It is a bit better now.
It was my birthday and my father gave me this pocket book. I had no pen, but Marianne gave me one. Louisa did not like it that he gave me a gift, as she would rather pretend me away. She tried to say something rude, but Marianne hushed her.
I am eighteen years old today.
I have never had a book like this. It is a pocket book, many thin pages in a leather cover. I was ever so pleased. Marianne has many, and when she saw how delighted I was, she whispered that she would give me some of her unused pocket books. She did not know that I would like writing in them, as I was always an indifferent student. Louisa, of course, had to overrule Marianne, and say that she would give me her unused books as well, since she is older and about to have her Season.
I don't care who gives me books.
I am over the moon.
I heard Lady Durand talking to Louisa because Louisa was cross about the book. She told her that I was to be sent away, because it was awkward to have me around during Louisa's coming-out year. I don't know why it should be awkward. I am not pretty (although neither is Louisa). No one will notice me. But I must go where I am told. Lady Durand is not mean to me but she does not like me. Who can blame her, since I am not her daughter. She is obsessed with preparing for Louisa's first Season, I expect she would just like me to disappear so that I don't raise questions or cause shame and explanations.
Marianne is nicer to me than Louisa is. But she is younger. Perhaps she will become mean when she is older. Louisa was once kind, but she has not been nice to me ever since young Master Howard said–
Blast! I must go now. I hear someone calling for me. If anyone were to find this book…well, I think Howard would laugh at me. He might read it out loud to mock me. I would die. But this is where I will record the thoughts that I keep in my heart. You, dear Booke, will always be my friend. And I will always be ever yours most affectionate, Lydia
