Welcome to Something Out of Nothing, a newsletter about meaning—making it, finding it, offering it. I talk about the writing life, teaching, thrifting, books, travel, obsessions and idle interests, and much more.
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I’m currently reading a 1997 memoir about a guy sailing on his own from England to Maine (Sea Change: Alone Across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat by Peter Nichols), and did you know that sailing as the crow flies isn’t a thing? Maybe it’s my landlocked Minnesota upbringing but it was news to me that you can’t simply point your sailboat toward your eventual destination, rather you quite literally must ride the current of the wind and the seas. This can make for an inefficient and indirect route.
Another thing I’ve learned is this concept becalmed, when a sailboat is without wind and, therefore, going nowhere. You don’t want this to happen. But, of course, it does happen.
Since our last issue in mid-March, I’ve cycled through several phases: over-work and complacency, personal loss and grief, rest and simplified expectations, refreshed ambition and tempered hope. My only two goals this summer have been to work on my book and enjoy the local swimming pool, and I’ve been doing both steadily.
I certainly wouldn’t say I’ve been going nowhere but I am feeling a little becalmed, if you will. In two years, I’ve published 40 issues of SOON, and it feels like the right moment to look back.
Before we do, though, I want to share an opportunity: In a few weeks, I’m teaching a newly-conceived essay-writing class through the Sundress Academy for the Arts. The class is FREE, ONLINE, and OPEN TO ALL LEVELS. Mark your calendars for Wednesday, August 12, from 6-7:30pm Eastern. Here’s the class:
“Giving Shape: Retrospection & Projection in Personal Essays”: When we attempt to reiterate personal experience on the page, we often stick too closely to the facts and forget that the passage of time gives shape to the telling. We create “shape” in many ways, including a unique structure, imagery or sensory repetition, or playing with retrospective parallels. More than that, we forget that personal narrative is also about wonderment, and on the page this can look like an imagined projection of the future: hopes, assumptions, fears, expectations. In other words, the parts of the story that—before this point of arriving at the page—only existed within our hearts and minds.
More info & registration can be found here.
Selective Recap: The First 40 Issues
Currently, I’m hanging at a hotel in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, as one of my kids attends college orientation. We stopped through Greenville, South Carolina, on our two-day road trip. Here’s a peek at the indie bookstore we explored while there and then a peek at the indie bookstore we explored just yesterday in Tuscaloosa.
I’ll be featuring each of these beautiful shops in the ongoing Visiting Every Bookstore series (currently backlogged, many gems ahead!). Catch up on where we’ve been already:
Road-tripping to Alabama has, of course, brought back memories of last summer with my mom, and all the secondhand shopping we did on the 4,800-mile roundtrip journey between Virginia and Montana.
Didn’t catch last year’s road trip? Read it here and check out the vintage haul after:
If you’ve wondered why those promised "monthly-ish drops” of vintage treasures never happened, it was another casualty of my teaching schedule. But I am currently cleaning and organizing my workroom (again and always), and I’ll be posting new inventory in the coming month or so—with a special notification & discount code for my SOON readers, of course.
One of the most popular issues of SOON was about graduating from your MFA program and unlearning/moving beyond the well-worn routine of a workshop dynamic in order to develop your own writerly instincts around your work. I also wrote about getting hobbies, for the love of god, in order to be more playful and take the pressure off writing as one’s sole artistic pursuit.
This issue was also my only experiment (thus far?) with the “how to” angle of advice. I remember hemming and hawing over it, but I do stand by the guidance. I still haven’t really returned to workshopping, though my story collection is nearing the finish line (whatever that is) and I suspect I’ll be asking a couple of folks to read it and give thoughts.
Speaking of my in-process short story collection, I’ve written much about the many years of drafting and revising, with total rewrites followed by long gaps where it was all I could do to just make a living and pay the bills, followed again by renewed energy and routine (like now, right now, as I’m living & breathing this summer). This year, so far, I’ve gone on two self-imposed writing retreats, with the first back in February, in a tiny house in Durham, North Carolina, where I wrote at this table while an ice storm swept through:
And then I did another retreat toward the end of the semester, just three days in a hotel about thirty minutes from home. It was a folly. After a few months of brain-overload from teaching, and being almost entirely disconnected from my book, I found it painfully impossible to just show up at a desk and command myself to get back into it. I spent those precious few days angry and antsy, with very little work on the book to show for it, but I did apply to some residencies (for 2027) and do some tangentially-related brainstorming about what I want my writing life to look like in the future. I also swam in this pool, once, and took that as a win:
Writing a book, making a living, being a teacher, a spouse, a stepmom, a daughter, sister, friend, and person to myself… It’s a lot, and it takes a lot of time, and I don’t have answers about how it can all move faster or more efficiently. And the fact is, even if one thing could move faster—say, writing the book—then wouldn’t that theoretically increase the speed of my entire life? And I don’t want that. It moves too swiftly already. And time is a necessary part of writing and creating, of the discovery and experimentation. Shouldn’t the process be allowed time and not begrudged for it? My work becomes more the thing it’s seeking to be, and so do I.
With that in mind, here’s the very first issue of SOON, where I talked about learning to walk away from the work of a story that no longer compels me:
And here, chronologically, are the other issues of SOON that talk specifically about writing my book:
There’s more I could recap (the Taking Care series—it continues and we’ll be getting updates from previous respondents!) but just know that I truly appreciate you being here. One of the BEST ways to show your support is to forward this issue (or any issue that you enjoyed) to the folks in your life who might appreciate it. All SOON issues are free, with voluntary paid subscriptions being another way of showing support. For that, you can just hit the button below.
Hoping for warm, steady wind in your sails as the summer fully tips into its second half. We’ll see each other again very soon.
POSTSCRIPT
Again, check out my upcoming free, online class for creative nonfiction writers—it’s going to be about the past, the future, imagined alternate timelines, and using the boundlessness of projection to help us experiment with shapes for our personal stories. Come join me in the time travel!
Also, if you’re in Richmond on August 8, don’t miss the chance to join our abundant writing community for a day-long Lit Crawl event! FREE!! Here’s the full schedule, as well as the poster for the line-up I’m flattered to be apart of at the tiny-but-mighty community arts organization, Quarry, on Cary Street.
Lastly, if you’re in Richmond and looking for affordable classes, I’m teaching a few “fast craft” classes at the Brighton Green Community Center in Bon Air. One hour, $15, with date options in July and August. You will come away having written, I promise. These are the last community classes I’ll be teaching for awhile (as I seek to give myself more time to write, here at SOON & elsewhere) so I hope to see you!
We are multifaceted and curious. Share SOON with your favorite people.
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