Hello! Here in Cambridge the sky is blue and the clouds are cotton and gardeners (and the people who can hire gardeners) are, I hope, feeling proud of themselves. Rains in the last weeks have flipped the switch on spring from pastel to jewel-tone. The dogwoods are out, the tulips are overblown and technicolor, and I wish I knew the names of more flowers.
Did you know that the flowers that look like bunches of tiny little blue bells are not, in fact, bluebells? They’re grape hyacinths. I have to re-learn this every year. I even forget the re-learning until I’m halfway through looking them up again.
I’m fully vaccinated now! Yesterday I walked into Porter Square Books and walked out with a copy of Arkady Martine’s new book, Karin Tidbeck’s new book, Allison Bechdel’s new book, and a small volume of Kay Ryan essays. PSB have been champs for us throughout the pandemic—door delivery service, pick up and drop off, mail order. But it felt good to pass through that door again. Get your shots, when you can.
I walked in not knowing what I would carry out—my favorite way to enter a bookstore, as if entering the Questing Wood. I knew Martine’s book was out, and I knew Tidbeck’s would be out sometime this summer—it was sneakily shelved over in the capital L Literature section, which the SFF authors continue to infiltrate—and I had heard there was a new Bechdel book. The Kay Ryan find was a delight. Brian Staveley—whose next book The Empire’s Ruin is a masterpiece of that fantasy genre I like to call “the no-good truly awful very bad day”—introduced me to Kay Ryan’s poetry a while back, and I’ve been slowly, slowly reading The Best of It, her big collection, ever since. I’ll sometimes put it down for months or years, not because I’ve lost interest, but because a particular poem sends me out into the wilderness of my soul to punch bears and level grind and try to grow as a person. If you’ve never read her work before, they’re sharp, simple, stunning pieces. I’ve had Why isn’t it all more marked? on my mind a lot these days—a google search will find it for you—and her poem Doubt is the best little bit of writing advice I know. “Doubt uses albumen at twice the rate of work” is one of those phrases that belongs stenciled onto my wall, or in an elegantly calligraphed print on my desk, or tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.
Not all great artists are great at writing about their work, of course—but I’m hopeful, here. Maybe because I’m chipping slowly through George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, which my Dad sent me. When it comes to books about writing, there are many books about extreme fundamentals—basics of structure and revision and character and the publishing process—that will help writers achieve competence but don’t give you much of what you need to aim for mastery, sort of like a cheery youtube Introductory Tai Chi video. Then there are a few really great books about the profound secret Wudang Mountain inner disciple stuff (Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, for example, and Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel), which are heavy on allusion and visionary power, but if you come to them without some deep understanding already, they may not help much. The Saunders fits right there in the underserved middle—it’s a careful close reading of great 19th century Russian short stories, from a craft perspective. Why this detail here? Why that one? What does it add up to? What can we learn? If this book had come out fifteen years ago it would have saved me a lot of time.
I’m sorry for disappearing on you last week. I’d just completed a full sprint through line edits for my next novel, only to get broadsided by a minor household... I’ll call it an issue. Nothing that registers on the grand scale of absolute badness. Let’s just say that trying to arrange child care support, now that child care support feels practical and no longer life-threatening, is a challenge.
If you’ve never done this yourself, start by visualizing the lighthearted joy of apartment hunting in a competitive market. Only you’re not looking for yourself. You’re looking for another person. Let’s call them The Most Important Person in the World. But due to some strange plot contrivance, TMIPitW will not really be able to tell you whether they like the apartment you’ve chosen for them! And the apartment might, in a moment of inattention, cause something horrible to happen to TMIPitW. Perhaps it’s infested with cthulhus. Or the plugs aren’t child safe. Or there are lions in the basement. You didn’t even know people had lions in their basement! So, you read about how to make this decision, what criteria to use, what questions to ask. There are many resources for this thing, many websites and articles with practical advice, but the bottom line tends to be, trust your gut instinct and your sense of people. These are definitely strong suits for yours truly, who spends as much of his professional life as he can manage sitting alone in a room thinking about dragon arbitrage and faith default swaps and how time travelers would kiss.
So that’s fun.
Speaking of dragon arbitrage, I’ve been typing up the manuscript of a Craft Sequence project. I can’t say much about it at this point, but it’s a joy and a strangeness to go back to this place and these people—every page I wonder at how much time has passed since I first met them, since we started to encounter the problems of their world together. They’ve grown, and I’ve grown, and the world has changed a lot—theirs and mine. Mine maybe even more than theirs! But the same question remains: how did we get here, and what happens next?
So that’s what I have. Less of an essay and more of a check-in this week. I plan to be back next week, closer to our normal schedule and format—but this was fun! Maybe there’s room for this space to be more than an essay broadcasting vehicle. I did dream of using it to play around—it’s so easy to fall into habits by accident. Regardless, I hope you’re safe and well. Take care of each other. Talk soon.
Great to hear! And I *love* the checkin post -- doesn't have to be an essay every time :) Great to hear about new books! Best of luck with the childcare hunt! And so exciting to hear about the Craft project!