Some things I wanted to show you

It’s been a stressful month; sales took a hit and I’ve had to reassess my whole marketing engine while also burnt out from writing a lot. But I also got to sleep a bunch—always my favorite.

(I still would rather struggle through this job than another one, but also I wish that every single Republican president of my lifetime could just not crash the economy. That would be nice.)

The cold weather is coming in, and combined with the darkness at 4:30p or so, I am leaning in to hibernating for the next few months. A lot of movies and books and bingeing in my future.

The Full Transcript of Zohran Mamdani’s Victory Speech : “Tonight we have spoken in a clear voice. Hope is alive. Hope is a decision that tens of thousands of New Yorkers made day after day, volunteer shift after volunteer shift, despite attack ad after attack ad. More than a million of us stood in our churches, in gymnasiums, in community centers, as we filled in the ledger of democracy.”

How to Build a Romantic Resurgence : “Environments built for metrics eventually become uninhabitable to the people inside them. Once, every scientist was also a philosopher. In the 18th century, a single mind might compose symphonies, write treatises, and experiment with electricity. Today, hyper-specialisation is encouraged from undergrad through to tenure, creating silos so narrow that no one can see how their work connects to anything else. It’s disorienting to not know why your work matters.”

Subverting the Female Bildungsroman : “Rhys, in comparison, destabilises these assumptions, giving us what I would suggest is a subverted bildungsroman, rather than a failed one, and that this is likely Rhys’s realistic interpretation of life for women like Anna.”

How to get your best ideas on to the page : “The most important thing is that all this writing is completely free of judgement. The whole idea is to get the gunk out of the way, so you can find what’s hiding underneath it. So, if you feel like you’re writing garbage on the page, that’s wonderful: you’re getting the gunk out! If you feel like you’re capturing a little magic, that’s wonderful, too.”

Becoming the villain you’ve always needed : “To this day, I’ve never quite shaken my wish to be very good. And I’m starting to think this desire holds me back—as both a woman and a writer. In groups of women, I notice I’m not alone. There’s a lot of performative goodness and tortured ethics in femme circles. Research supports this too. Women often pay far heftier prices than men for breaching arbitrary standards of morality. This isn’t even to mention the ‘nice girl tax’—the invisible psychological and social penalties women pay for maintaining agreeableness.”

WATCHING :

The Woman in Cabin 10 (fine, underwhelming); Mayhem* (so much blood); Heavenly Creatures* (finally made Spencer watch it and what do you know he loves it); Bugonia (absolutely incredible); Frankenstein (in the theater on Halloween; incredible); There Will Be Blood* (Spencer’s first watch, amazing); The Diplomat S3 (I love this show so much); Thelma and Louise* (Spencer’s first watch, it’s still so good); Virgin Suicides* (I forgot how stacked that cast is); White Lotus S3 (rewatch); and lots and lots of FB ad course videos

READING :

Minor Black Figures* (very Brandon Taylor, very my kind of book); Sandwich* (good, possibly over-hyped); Final Girl Support Group* (every single Hendrix book is great); and catching up on a couple of Vanity Fair issues

( *these are affiliate links. If you make a purchase through any of these links I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you )