Jeffrey Ricker's Blog, page 20

Wednesday links—wait, it’s Wednesday already?

Ever have one of those weeks where the time goes by and you have no idea what you did with it? That’s been my week. I’ve been thinking about the projects on my plate and my varying levels of “yeahness” about them. (Are you familiar with the concept of yeahness? That feeling when the prospect of working on something makes you go, “Yeah, can’t wait!”? No? Just me?)

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been reading when I’ve not been thinking about everything I need to get done:

The secret to work/life balance? There isn’t one. Also, isn’t it peculiar how this question so often gets asked of women, but much less so of men.

An excerpt from Edmund White’s new novel, Our Young Man. 

“It’s much easier to view everything in black and white, to ignore nuance and write people off as “wrong” rather than engage them in a critical debate.” How literary idols get burned on Twitter.

I guess I’ve also been thinking a lot about Prince, for obvious reasons:

“I’m sure I would have found the permission to be who I was without him, eventually, but I don’t know if it would have been as quick or as fun. “ Alexander Chee on hearing Prince for the first time. 

“Are you really not going to touch Prince when you have a chance?”

When the Sensual World met Paisley Park.

Lastly, Starfish and Coffee.

Rules of the road(runner), or Ghost (world) rules

I think the first time I heard the term “ghost rules” was when my friend Rebecca used it in a writing for children class in grad school. At the time, I was working on a middle-grade science fiction book (which I need to finish one of these days, but I’ve already got enough on the to-do list without adding that; eventually, though), and I was winging it. I won’t go into too many details, but it involves a used bookstore, a map, a hyperspace gateway to another world, and a missing scientist.

It’s really hard to write the first draft of something while you’re also workshopping it a piece at a time. I don’t recommend it, to be honest. Too many inputs from too many people can fuck something up when you don’t even know what it is yourself. The best advice anyone can give you is “just finish the damn thing.” But anyway.

One of the best things Rebecca asked me about when giving feedback on one of those early sections was what my story’s ghost rules are. What exactly are ghost rules, you ask? They’re the rules that are rules but aren’t necessarily written in the rules. If you’re working on a piece of fiction that falls outside the realm of the strictly realistic, they’re the laws that govern how the fantastical elements of your world operate.

Take Star Trek, for example. In this fictional universe set centuries in the future, starships can travel faster than the speed of light but cannot travel infinitely fast; rather, they are limited by Warp 10, the speed limit of the galaxy, which, if reached, would mean a ship occupies every single point in the universe simultaneously. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, vampires follow most of the conventions of the supernatural creatures of the night, with the added twist that when a vampire is created, the soul of the body’s former occupant is replaced by a demon, so it’s sort of a case of spiritual vacancy/demon squatting. In certain cases, a body’s former soul inhabitant can be returned to it, which is how you get characters like Angel.

Oh, spoiler alert on that last sentence, but hey, the show came and went over a decade ago, so you can’t expect all spoilers to remain unspoiled. (Also, Rosebud is a sled. And Han shot first. ANYWAY.)

When you’re writing fantasy or science fiction, you need to have a clear vision of the laws (natural, supernatural, or otherwise) that govern the world you’re creating. Whether that’s the nature of the spells in Harry Potter or the fact that the planet Bajor has a 25-hour day and Federation starships have inertial dampeners to keep everyone inside from splatting into bulkheads at warp speed, your readers will expect the world you create to make some kind of sense. You’re world building, in other words.

This is why I’m glad to have friends like Rebecca who are smarter than me.

Check out Chuck Jones’s Road Runner rules  (tip of the hat to Jason Zook for introducing me to these) for a really clear example of this, and if you watched these shows when you were a kid, think back about how consistently they were applied in every cartoon. It’s really pretty amazing.

Naturally, this got me thinking: Do I have a set of ghost rules for my own writing career? Are there certain things that characterize my work and my writing? What about topics that I wouldn’t ever tackle in fiction? What about subjects that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole in this newsletter? Jason has a set of questions here that might be helpful to you if you’re building a content-based business, especially one that’s knowledge-based. For a fiction writer, though, I think I need something a little bit between Chuck’s and Jason’s rules.

I don’t have the answer to that yet, but I’m working on it. Meanwhile, what are your road runner rules? Hit reply and share them with me.

(And can you believe I got through an entire post where I mention the Road Runner and don’t write “meep meep“? Oh, wait.)

Wednesday Links, the bathrooms and gay diners edition

I’ve been thinking a lot about North Carolina and the HB 2 law that passed there recently. The owner of Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café asks in The New York Times why her store in North Carolina should be boycotted. It’s hard, especially when good, well-meaning people like her and her business are stuck in the middle, as it were. But the target of the boycott is not her or her store, but rather the entire state. And a boycott only works if it’s as complete as possible.

Likewise, if Missouri lawmakers are stupid enough to pass SJR 39 (and let’s not be mistaken, most of them are), I’d fully support a boycott of the entire state. That means don’t come visit me (not that many do—ahem), don’t patronize businesses based here, and don’t bring your concert or your book tour here. That’s what a boycott is. And it needs to stand until the reason for the boycott is rescinded.

Following up on that was this opinion piece at Fortune (oh, the irony) by an author who’s going ahead with her plans to bring her book tour to the state. People can have legitimate discussions and come to different conclusions about what’s the best way to support the trans citizens who are the targets of this law. Even better would be to listen to the very people who are directly affected, and take a cue from them and support them in the ways they want to be supported. I also really, really wish Mrs. Kline had taken a moment in her commentary to acknowledge her own massive privilege, as a cis, het, white, married, Ivy-league-educated woman who, as far as I can tell, has no skin in the game except a book to promote. At the same time, I’m also cognizant of my own massive privilege as a white guy (apart from that whole being super gay thing) and think, really, the people who should have the most say on how they would like allies to proceed are the people impacted the most by this repugnant law.

And that’s all I have to say about that, in lieu of boosting other people’s signal on the topic.

“You would go there because there was no other place you could hold hands and be gay without any threat.” This article by Mike Albo on gay restaurants made me think about all the ones I’ve been to, admittedly a short list. Here in St. Louis there was Oh My Darlin’s, which was attached to a bar called Clementine’s, both of which have since closed. I ate there exactly once and had to order my salad without the chicken, and there was nothing else on the menu I could eat, except (I think) fries. The cook was named Bubbles and I think she was known for her fried chicken, but I could be mistaken. There was also the Niner Diner, which was next door to a bar called Magnolia’s (or as my acquaintance John called it, two floors of ugly). This was open back when smoking was allowed and I can’t remember a single thing from their menu. We also had a Hamburger Mary’s (closed) and a restaurant called JaBoni’s opened by the owners of the lesbian bar Attitudes. The bar is open, the restaurant is now a bank branch. A bar called the Bad Dog Saloon had a restaurant whose chef was a drag queen and known—again, I think I’m remembering this right—fried chicken. The bar changed hands and is now a lesbian bar, the restaurant closed, and the kitchen still serves food. I remember having an ahi tuna sandwich that wasn’t half bad. I don’t remember anyplace I went in Vancouver that was strictly a gay restaurant. There was a Hamburger Mary’s in the gayborhood, but I could always be found across the street at La Belle Patate eating poutine or down the street at Fritz eating, what else, poutine. And I think just about every place I ate in Provincetown was a gay restaurant—how could it not be?

Here in St. Louis, like in New York, gentrification has had a lot to do with killing off these places. In some cases, gross mismanagement and, I think in one instance, embezzling did the trick. The building where the Niner and Magnolia’s were (and the Eagle) is being rehabbed. St. Louis is also a small city, and the center of gravity for gay hangouts shifted several years ago to the Grove neighborhood, not far from our house, as it happens. Mike Albo’s right, though; it was never about the food at these places. It was always about being someplace where you felt safe and you could hold someone’s hand. You could just be yourself.

I love that Judy Blume has added bookseller to her CV.

Navigating the real estate market in Vancouver is a nightmare, even moreso if you’re living aboard a boat, as this article by my friend Laura Trethewey illustrates.

A gorgeous poem, “Heirloom,” by Sandy Marchetti.

Four questions for Marcia Clark.

When should you give a shit?

(Sorry, this is kind of a long one. If you want to skip the intro, click here. Also, my sailor mouth comes to the fore a bit in this one. If you don’t like the four-letter word that rhymes with spit, you may want to skip it entirely—but I think you’ll be missing out, if I do say so.)

In the days before smartphones and tablets, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth—wait, hang on, not that far back.

When I was a lowly undergrad, I took a class in basic reporting that required working on the daily newspaper put out by the journalism school. Our teachers were the editors for the newspaper and they would review our articles before they got passed along to the copy desk. Particularly memorable to me was one of the editors named Yves (not my editor; my editor was a guy named Mark, who called Yves “Why-vez”). Yves was known for reviewing student articles and saying, in his very proper accent, “What is this shit?”

I was glad not to be his charge, but I wasn’t glad to be taking that reporting class. It was here that I discovered a) grad students who had authority over undergrads were almost universally assholes (especially you, Sarah), and b) I really, really did not want to be a reporter.

This was a frightening discovery, since I’d worked hard to get into one of the most competitive journalism schools in the country. I loved to write, and I loved doing research; what I hated was writing articles that I had absolutely no interest in writing, and the constant rejection that comes with calling one person after another trying to get them to speak on the record. This was also when I discovered just how much of an introvert I am. The relation between the two things is obvious.

Anyway, at that point, I felt adrift. I had no idea what I was going to do. I always thought I’d be a writer and reporter; now what?

I considered changing my major to English. One of my friends did exactly that, and it seemed like the closest fit for me, too. Later that semester, I discovered the joys of editing and graphic design, switched my emphasis from reporting to magazine editing and design, and breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, seeing the strange, sometimes rudderless course my career took after that, I probably could have spent more time thinking about that decision, but it was twenty-five years ago, and there was no knowing how the career landscape would change.

All I knew was that I didn’t like reporting and I didn’t have time for that shit. If Yves had asked me “What is the shit?” my answer would have been, “It’s not my shit, Yves, that’s for sure.”

I think that’s an important realization to have, as a writer and as a person working their way through the world in general. Figuring out what to give a shit about is not always clear-cut, but you have limited time in any given day and in this life, so it’s essential to choose the shit that counts.

In that regard, I’ve learned to ask myself some important questions:

Do I give a shit right now?

Maybe this shit is important, but not at the moment. Can you put it off? Will it become important later? Is this shit a limited-time opportunity you can’t pass up?

There’s a middle-grade science fiction novel I started in grad school that has been languishing since then. I love it, but I also have a sequel to my YA fantasy novel in process, a raft of short stories that need revision, and then there’s the novel I want to work on next. Now, if I hear about a contest or an agent who’s seeking that kind of shit, I might change my priorities. Barring a catastrophic failure of all my backups, though, that middle-grade book isn’t going to disappear tomorrow. I will get to that shit later.

Do I still give a shit?

Your priorities can change over time. What was important last month or last year may not be as relevant to your goals now. That old shit may have just been a necessary step in the process toward getting to the shit that matters. Don’t rehash the same shit just because you can. And don’t stick with something just because it was important to you last year or five years or 10 years ago. I’ve always wanted to be a writer; does that mean the time won’t come when I want something more than I want to keep being a writer? I don’t know. I doubt it, but it could happen.

Is this good shit?

This is subjective, of course. (But then, isn’t all of this?) But don’t devote your time to just any old shit. Choose the shit that matters and will make a difference. In the past, I’ve written stories that I enjoyed writing and that were, I think, good exposure for me, but I probably would write them completely differently now, because hopefully I’ve improved as a writer in the past 10 years or so. Some of them, it turned out, didn’t lead to the genres I was really interested in. (I wrote a bit of erotica at the outset, but haven’t really done that in a few years. I’m not opposed to it, but I’m much more captivated by things that are weird or “what-if?”-ish these days.)

So it’s not just a question of whether the shit is good. Is it good for you?

How badly do I want this shit?

Some shit’s worth striving for. Most things that are important involve some element of struggle, where maybe we’re still learning or we don’t exactly know the right answer (if there is one). Don’t be afraid of the hard work, but try to be sure that the hard work is worth it. I worked hard to get into journalism school and discovered I didn’t want to be a reporter. Was it worth it? I learned a lot about editing and good writing in the process, so yes. But at the time, I was beyond worried.

Do I need this shit?

Some things may not thrill you, but they may be a necessary step toward reaching the goals you’ve set for yourself in the future. Put up with the shit if you think it’ll work for you in the long run, but don’t be afraid to walk away from that shit if necessary.

Does this shit stink?

I never had to take cod liver oil as a kid, but I have it on good authority that the shit stinks, and doesn’t taste all that hot either. I did have to take a statistics class in college, and the only thing that made that tolerable was the fact that Yash, my T.A., was fine. (See also “hot shit.”*) The class itself was torture, and even though I did well in it, I would have gladly dropped it. But…

Do I need this shit enough to tolerate that smell?

…sometimes you’ve got to deal with shit in order to get closer to the shit you’re really interested in. If I wanted to take any of the upper-level courses in my field, I had to get through statistics. (See the previous question, “Do I need this shit?”) And to be honest, I still use some of the things I learned in stats class.

Have I had enough of this shit already?

There’s a lot of different shit out there. Focusing on some of it can help you develop a specific expertise, but there’s also something to be said for having familiarity with a variety of shit.

Do I need help with this shit?

Writers are often regarded as these solitary people toiling away in isolation, heads bent over their keyboards. Sometimes that’s true, but it’s equally true that I have a circle of friends who are also writers with whom I can share my work and ask for advice, and vice versa. (Thanks in particular to Ruth, ’Nathan, and David in that regard.) Don’t be afraid to ask for help when shit gets too much.

How much of this shit can I take?

You can’t say yes to everything.

Learning which shit to keep and which shit to let go of is an imprecise science, but you get better at it the longer you do it. Trying to do all the shit is just going to  leave you overextended and not able to do any of the shit particularly well.

And! If you want more shit like this, check out Paul Jarvis’s article “Stop doing shit you don’t like.” Sound advice, if you ask me.

Psst. If you like this, you might like my (usually) weekly completely unannoying newsletter. What’s coming next week? One way to find out: Click here to get started.

Wednesday Links, the Mad as Hell edition

So, I’ve been pretty peeved lately whenever I read the news.

I’d like to say it would be better if I just didn’t read the news, but it does no good to stick one’s head in the ground, does it? And the people spreading hate and intolerance would just keep on churning the sausage grinder, anyway.

(Oh dear. Let’s see how many metaphors I can cram into one paragraph, shall we?)

What I love to hear is people calling those in opposition to things like the intolerant, hateful legislation passed in North Carolina and Mississippi intolerant themselves. It doesn’t work that way.

You’re not being intolerant when you’re complaining about the boot standing on your own (or someone else’s) neck. Saying otherwise makes you misguided at best and more likely a goddamn liar.

What does this have to do with writing, you ask? I’m glad you asked! “What literature teaches us is empathy. It reminds us to reach out a hand to our neighbors—even if they look different from us, love different from us—and say, ‘Why, I recognize you; you’re a human, just like me, sprung from the same messy place, bound on the same hard road.'”

That’s what.

There are so many wonderful threads in this article: a fantastic bookseller, a Southern author returning to his home to fight the good fight, and a state lobotomized by redistricting and now run by “D+ mediocrities.” I lived in North Carolina for a time, but was too young to grasp anything about it except that I had no friends and this was the state where we lived when we adopted, first Major, our strange and beautiful German Shepherd, and later Rocky, our almost supernaturally long-lived Boxer. They’re both long gone, and so, it seems, is North Carolina’s sanity.

OK, enough about current events. Talking about them makes me either want to eat all the tortilla chips in the house or go on a baking tear. Which brings us to this point: Writers need an escape hatch. We all probably do, in fact.

And related to that, Chuck Wendig’s prescription for burnout: WWYL.

“Your kitchen. Your tacos. Your magic.” Reine Keis Bayoc at SweetArt really is an artist, just like her painter husband Cbabi is. Be sure to check out the rest of her recipes and, if you are in or near St. Louis, run, don’t walk, to her place. And call me because she’s just down the street and I’ll meet you there. Don’t even think about not saving room for one of her cupcakes, either.

Let’s shift gears again: Starships? No, starchips. Sometimes thinking bigger requires thinking smaller.

Go read this: “Normally, you would never choose to go on land. To leave yourself exposed to hungry birds. To be battered by waves and wind. To lose your form. You would never choose this, except for right now.” Observational Bias by Ashely Adams.

Also read a lovely poem by Kayla Czaga at Plenitude: “Naanwich Was the Last Thing”

“No One Stays Good in This World.” And I don’t think that should be the case. And I’m getting a little uneasy about the upcoming Wonder Woman movie, but I remain hopeful.

Lastly, the Lambda Literary Foundation is seeking support for their Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. I was one of those voices back in 2014, and it was a fantastic, supportive experience. I feel like I will always be an emerging voice in a way, but this experience helped me understand that I do have a voice.

Crises of confidence, or “who do you think you are?”

Photo by Patrick Tomasso, unsplash.com

Sometimes I have crises of confidence.

I know, right? “What a shock,” you say. Even though online we present our best possible faces to the world, always doing interesting things or going to exciting places or shooting photos from just this right angle because that makes my nose look less crooked and the funny wrinkles around my mouth that no amount of moisturizer will seem to—uh, never mind. Although that’s probably a topic that I could write about at length, too.

My crises of confidence extend to pretty much every aspect of my life. If you meet me at any point, chances are I’m fretting about something. It may not show (it probably does—it totally shows, doesn’t it?), but like those wrinkles at the edge of my mouth (and the corners of my eyes, and the little frown divots in my forehead—ugh, ANYWAY), the fret is always there. And of course, the funny thing is that most of the things I worry about? I can’t do a damn thing about them. (Kind of like those wrinkles.)

You would think that after writing a book, and then writing another one, it’d get easier, right? That I’d be more confident in my abilities, that I’m capable of not just writing a book, but finishing it and seeing it published?

Au contraire, though. Even though I’ve finished the first draft of my next novel (number three, if you’re keeping track at home), I have a lot of revisions to do on it—and that’s before I even consider showing it to anyone. Every time I open the file, I think to myself, Am I wasting my time on this? What if no one wants to read it? What if no one buys it? What if the readers who liked the first book think this one’s total crap and don’t want to read another thing I write ever again?

It even extends to this blog: Does anyone really need one more person spouting off advice on writing? Stephen King said all writing advice is bullshit, so is this just a case of “less calories, same taste”? What if I just skip it this week? Will anyone notice?

I guess I’ve tied myself in knots often enough, and for long enough, to recognize this spiral when it starts. It’s a narrow place to get yourself caught in, this passage where you set up all these expectations for what you’re writing before you’ve even finished it… sometimes before you’ve even started.

It’s hard to make peace with the fact that, as a writer, so much of publishing is out of your hands, whether you’re traditionally published or going it solo. You (or they—you know, the all-knowing, all-seeing, ambiguous “they”) can do everything right and get everything as polished as possible, and your book can still sink into the bottomless well of Amazon’s algorithms, never to be heard from or read again.

So why do you do it in the first place? That’s what I always have to remind myself about, and what I always have to come back to. What does that look like, exactly? Well, for me it’s remembering that when I was eight years old, I started writing Battlestar Galactica fan fiction. This was in 1979, so it wasn’t even the good Battlestar Galactica. (Eventually, when I was maybe twelve or thirteen, I graduated to a thinly veiled Doctor Who retread.) Or remembering when I was maybe nine or so, and dragging an old manual typewriter out of the shed in our backyard. Why it was in there I don’t know. The memory cheats, of course, so maybe these things didn’t even happen as I remember them, but I remember that it was just plain fun to do.

“Your writing is your art,” someone told Jason Zook (he’s an entrepreneur and I’m probably the least likely person to be following him, as I’m not an entrepreneur, but he’s funny and he’s got a really cute dog, so there you go). Succeeding at your art doesn’t mean tons of sales—that does mean something, but it’s more like succeeding at sales, regardless of artistic merit. That doesn’t mean sales are bad [insert subliminal “buy my book” message here], but that’s so far out of your hands that it’s insanity to peg it as your goal.

You’re never guaranteed an audience. It’s not like you inherently deserve one. (And when I say “you,” of course, I actually mean “I.”) What can you do that’s totally in your control in order to measure your art as a success? In my case, it’s each successive draft I finish, or each new story that I write. And it’s definitely dragging myself out of the spiral of self-doubt and getting back to work on the reason I do this in the first place: because regardless of how many people read them, I love telling stories.

 

Psst. If you like this, you might like my (usually) weekly completely unannoying newsletter. What’s coming next week? One way to find out: Click here to get started.

Wednesday Links, and an epiphany

I’m still catching up and catching my breath after the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans. I’m always re-energized and inspired by this conference, by meeting with new (or new to me) writers, catching up with old friends, and talking about all things bookish. (And eating way too much Cajun food.) My to-read list has expanded, including Carol Rosenfeld’s novel The One That Got Away, and Fiona Riley’s debut, Miss Match.

And as I’d hoped, I came away with an idea for a story of my own, about a tree and an astronaut, which I’m looking forward to writing as soon as I finish a few other things. I also had an epiphany about the YA novel, Prophecy Boy. I’ve been writing it from Jamie’s point of view almost by default, and I started getting a nagging idea that maybe this isn’t his story anymore; at least, not exclusively. It’s Sarah’s, too. And that’s going to require a lot of rewriting and a lot of new material in the second draft, but that seems to have been the case with all of my previous novels, so no big surprise there. It also means that tentative title, Prophecy Boy, will have to change.

Anyway, I’d tell you more, but…

Right! On with what I’m reading this week:

There are two new stories up at Little Fiction:  “Chimera” by Mallory Tater and “Sneaker Waves” by Kelsey Robbins Lauder. Go check ‘em out!

Congratulations to fellow MFA grad Adrick Brock for making the CBC Short Story Prize longlist!

Edmund White has a new novel out, Our Young Man, reviewed by Dan Lopez at Lambda Literary. I can’t wait to read it.

A new story at The Citron Review

There’s a story of mine, “You Ride the Bus,” up and live now at The Citron Review for their spring issue, which features queer-themed writing:

After a while you start to take note of the drivers you encounter. There’s the one who drives very carefully when the bus is packed, and the one who drives like he’s Sandra Bullock in Speed. One always looks tired; another always looks in the mirror as if he suspects the passengers are up to something. This one’s chatty. That one plays the “please move to the rear of the bus” recording way too often.

There’s one who smiles at you whenever you get on board. He has a tattoo sleeve on his right arm; it peeks out from underneath his shirt and you wonder how far up his arm it goes, and if he has any in other places.

To read the rest, go over to The Citron Review and check it out. And be sure to take a look at all the other amazing selections (if I do say so) in this issue. Special thanks to guest editor Seth Fischer, who selected my story for publication and for the incredibly generous things he said about it in his editor’s note.

Wednesday Links; also, Saints & Sinners

Tomorrow morning at “where’s the sun”-thirty, we’ll be hitting the road for New Orleans and the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival. I suppose I should start packing, shouldn’t I?

If you’ll be down there, I’ll be giving a reading at 10am on Saturday at the Hotel Monteleone—I guess I should decide what I’m going to read, right?—and then at 1pm (same day, same place) I’ll be on a panel moderated by Candice Huber, “Creatures of the Night,” talking about the horror genre and its intersection with queerness. (I always feel smart when I use the word “intersection” and I’m not talking about streets.) Actually, I’ll probably be doing more listening than talking because the people on the panel have lots more experience than I do (but ask me sometime about the paranormal detective vampire idea I’m working on…). Anyway, if you see me, say hello!

Right, let’s move on, shall we?

“One of the great rights of the private individual is that she or he should have the power to choose when to put something out into the world: when to speak and when to be silent. As a dear friend always reminds me, Is this the hill you really want to die on? As I get older, the act of writing and making art has become inseparable from choosing what to say, when to say it, and to whom. For me, art, literature and the best journalism are not simply mirrors held up to society or the individual; aware of all that goes unspoken despite our media-saturated culture, they contribute, with conscience, to an entirely other book of history.” “The Private Self in the Public Domain” by the wonderful Madeleine Thien. If you haven’t read her novel Dogs at the Perimeter, it’s fantastic. And look forward to her new one, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, coming out this year.

“My grandmother’s bookstore was one of the most glamorous and peaceful places I could imagine.” My friend Anna Ling Kaye writes about her love for indie bookstores, something we share in spades.

Finally, go read “Sleepy Mom” at Tin House.

It’s drafty in here

There were times I thought I’d never get to the last page of this thing. There have been many instances where I found myself thinking, “This is going to be a drawer book.” Mind you, I already have a few of those. I still worry that the novel I wrote in grad school might wind up in there with all of the other things that have somehow not turned out.

In case you forgot what my previous novel looked like…

But anyway. My point, and I do have one, is that I’ve finally finished the first draft of the sequel to The Unwanted (which you should totally buy, by the way). It’s about 10,000 words shorter than I expected it to be and it’s littered with parenthetical revision notes to myself, most of which say [FIX THIS]. So the work’s not done yet. However, I’m going to enjoy the sense that I’ve actually accomplished something for at least the rest of the afternoon.

And by “enjoy” I probably mean “have a glass of wine.”