Productive procrastination with some beautiful reads

I don’t know if I’m the only one who has felt so affected in the month of April by all the politics. It feels like every morning I wake up in Australia, some outrageous thing has happened on the global politics stage. I have been scrolling through more ragey political threads on social media (and getting ragey myself) than all the previous months combined, and it’s eating into my Rewrite #2 time. Grr. My goal this month is to rein it in and get back on track.

Maybe it’s because of all that side-tracking, or because I’ve pushed myself so much to finish Draft #1 amongst some hectic months at work, but I’ve definitely lost some steam on my WIP 🥲. The pros of that are some fairly productive procrastinating:

• I have officially changed the name of this newsletter from Millie’s Musings (a vague, temporary name when I had no better ideas) to Silk & Shenanigans, which I think better captures the Tang dynasty-inspired setting I am working with (when the Silk Road flourished) plus the comedy vibes in my writing;

• while side-tracking from Rewrite #2, I have finished another chapter of my Red Riding Hood novella, leaving only 1-2 chapters left to go;

• wrote a brand new poem that twists the Bluebeard folktale; and

• polished the dust off another old poem based on Sleeping Beauty.

(Is there an obvious theme going on here?) It might be procrastination, but writing something is better than nothing, right? Right?

If there’s one literary thing I can be unabashedly proud of myself for, it is how broadly I read. In the past month, I’ve read non-fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, a short story and a graphic novel. Out of these, the ones I cannot recommend enough by order of date read:

• What’s God Got to Do With It? by Robert Ingersoll, edited by Tim Page (Non-fiction/Politics): before stumbling upon this read (because I had a sudden urge to read something religion-related), I had never heard of Robert Ingersoll. This book is a compilation of Ingersoll’s essays written in the late 1800s, published by Pulitzer Prize winner Tim Page, and it amazes me just how progressive and relevant these essays are today, and especially so in the current political climate. It baffles me that America has allowed such a wise politician and thinker to fall into obscurity, all of his lectures ignored and forgotten in favour of hatred and division.

• 長安的荔枝 (The Litchi Road) by 馬伯庸 (Ma Boyong) (Historical Fiction/Chinese): a rich story of politics and friendship told through an intelligent, adventurous and epic quest to deliver fresh litchi/lychee (which goes off after 4 days max) into the hands of the emperor’s most beloved consort, from Lingnan to Chang’an, a distance that took at least 15 days to cross during the Tang dynasty. It is apparent how much historical research went into this book and the story brought tears to my eyes. The C-drama series of this is being released in July (Trailer)! Highly recommended for anyone who reads Chinese.

• The Master Jeweler by Weina Dai Randel (Historical Fiction): brilliantly written and touching story that takes us through the glorious and tragic days of Shanghai and other parts of China in the 1920s-1940s. So many distinctive characters. So much character and relationship growth. So many tears shed. I cried another two times after I finished the story, just from recalling the last parts of it. With thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for an eARC copy.

I am still a Procreate noob, so I was surprised to see that a few bookstagrammers have been using the bookshelf reading template I drew on a whim back in January, and that it’s been saved by almost 100 users on Pinterest too 🙀. So I decided I’ll create new templates on a seasonable basis — I wish it could be monthly but there’s this pesky little concept called time.

For April I made this cute candy shop template for my reads, which again can be downloaded from my Instagram or Pinterest!

Goal for May: stop procrastinating and finish the developmental work on Rewrite #2!