Of Sunscreen and Slushies
With a few writing updates and fun links thrown in for good measure. 🍉
It’s summer, y’all!
I hope this warmer weather finds you taking stealth PTO, a term I just learned about and was baffled by (like, why do we care if people are doing working vacations? I swear to jeebus), and slathering on the sunscreen, ideally a mineral-based one that is less likely to kill a coral reef.
I’m serious about the sunscreen. Our solar system’s star is in her genuinely insane era, everyone. I’m from Virginia (as you may have guessed based on the setting of my debut novel), so when I moved to Florida a decade ago, I didn’t consider that I’d need to wear SPF in a f@#king car. Or indoors. Tell that to the three moles I’ve had shaved off my body for testing in the last calendar year. (One was kind of scary, but ultimately okay, and melanoma doesn’t give a rip what your skin tone is, so anyway, don’t forget to book your annual skin check for this fall!)
Okay, fine, Mom. I’ll get my skin checked. Now. How’s the writing going?
Writing has been going well of late. I had a personal/travel essay published on Typewriter Tarot last month; I was wait-listed for the highly competitive residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts this fall; and this week, a recording of my poem “Mary Shelley, On Vacation” is on Rose Books Hotline! (Dial 844-300-ROSE to hear me read it to you. After Monday, June 3, you can find it on their Hotline archive.)
Apart from those wins, I’m putting together a list of revision work I need to do for one of my works in progress. I’ve been describing All the Ways It Wounds You (working title) as being about a queer Southern witch who cons her way into a practical effects job in Hollywood’s golden age of horror, but I’m realizing that’s only part of it.
The novel worships film, it explores a significant mother-daughter wound, and it needs to support its supporting characters better than it already does. The work before the revision looks like considering various narrative structures after reading Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode (gifted to me by the amazing
) and incorporating the shutter, two reels, and twenty-four frames per second of a film projector into the novel’s structure. (It’s also looking like reading other novels that involve spirals and loops as symbols, like The Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern, recommended to me by Cecily Sailer of Typewriter Tarot!)This is all pre-revision, a re-exploration of who these characters are, what they want, how they interact, and how their story will be told. It’s deep thinking, though, so I’ve given myself the better part of the year to accomplish that process and the ensuing revision to-do list.
Do I think it’ll actually take me that long? No. But I also have learned that it’s better for my self-confidence to expand a deadline and take less time than needed than to push myself to the limits of what free time I have!
Maybe you feel the same way? How might you be kinder to yourself and more embracing of the craft of a project when it comes to deadlines?
Internet Magpie Time!
This SubStack is obviously evolving and changing. My goal for its twice-monthly installments moving forward is to always share some useful tidbit or piece of encouragement, then to close with a few fun or useful things I found around the internet since I last wrote to you. Here are some right now!
Climate Changemakers. This is another Cecily Sailer recommendation. While speaking with her at AWP in February, I bemoaned the feeling that I don’t have enough time to do things to act on behalf of issues that are important to me. (Remember, I barely have time to put a novel revision to-do list together some weeks.) Enter Climate Changemakers, which is akin to 5Calls, with a new issue, usually environmental in nature, for you to read about and act on each month. Action plans are broken into small, easily digestible steps, and seeing myself make real progress while checking my email inbox feels great.
The Kristine Mann Library. While researching the spiral as symbol for All the Ways It Wounds, I learned about this Jungian library in Midtown Manhattan. (What? Just tucked away in the East Thirties like it’s no big deal?!) I’m going to be in the city next month, so 10/10 will report back and let you know if it’s worth the trip.
Watermelon Slushies for Summer (booze optional). BOGO watermelon slices at my grocery store + Memorial Day weekend = I found this slushie recipe, and I think it’s about to be my summer beverage of choice for 2024. (To accompany my summer album of choice, which is a three-way tie among Dance Fever, The First Two Pages of Frankenstein, and Cowboy Carter.) Pro tips: Freeze your watermelon in chunks so you don’t have to water this down with ice cubes; add 1.5 ounces bourbon per serving. Cin-cin!
I hope the start of summer is treating you kindly. Read good books, drink lots of water, and have fun!
XOXO,
Jessica
Loooove the structure idea with reels and shutters and frames. Excited to hear more about your revision plan! 💛