New Book....someday
Top Secret Mode
Can we talk about finding your way into a new project? Ha, it’s my newsletter and literally no one can say no! How refreshing! Let’s talk about it.
Books are such slippery creatures. Sometimes they appear, more or less fully formed, and you just have to write it down as quickly as possible. Sometimes you have to wrestle with them for years and in the end, you limp across the finish line feeling like you’ve just donated blood, a kidney, and half your brain. I just had a wonderful A-HA moment with the novel I’m working on, and it feels so good, and then last night, I looked in my 5 year diary, and it was exactly a year ago that I started. A year! So it’s taken me a year of feeling around in the dark.
Anyway, today I took a walk with my husband and my kids and they were all talking to me about my book (my younger son has an idea for a MUCH MORE SELLING version of the book, aka my book with lots of murder in it) and we were all laughing and it was so much fun.
Fun is important, don’t you think? I think the world is so utterly fucked up right now, in most ways, that devoting a little brain space to fun feels revolutionary. Last week, my husband and I went to see Cole Escola’s “Oh Mary", which was the best ninety minutes I’ve spent in ages. If you’re able to get to it, you won’t be sorry.
Also, Girls 5 Eva is back! Hallelujah! If you haven’t been watching, it’s not too late. Renee Elise Goldsberry is a true national treasure. She can do anything! She was great on One Life to Live, she was great in Hamilton, she is great in this. I laugh out loud at every episode, which is such a GIFT, don’t you think?
Okay, I am getting back to work on my book, but here are a few more things that I find purely, beautifully fun, just because maybe you need it too:
Stew Leonards. The only fun grocery store. Sorry, Trader Joe’s.
This list of funny books in the NYT! Thank you for writing about funny books! You can do it more than once a year/decade, too, I believe in you!
Voice memos. I live for a voice memo. Leave your friends voice memos!
Barbra Streisand’s audiobook. It’s about fifty hours long (really), and feels completely extemporaneous. I could listen to Barbra talk about vintage shoes and couch-surfing and sandwiches and Elliot Gould forever. Sometimes she starts a sentence with, “AAAnyway….” I love her.
I also wanted to say thank you to all of you who commented and/or wrote to me about my last anxiety-ridden newsletter. You are all so kind, and so many of you shared great tips and ideas. I feel grateful to each of you.
Dear Emma…I follow a decent handful of favorite authors because their books have spoken to me in some way shape form. (I promise you’re in good company— hello Maggie Smith, Ann Patchett, Marisa De los Santos, et al). You, though…with your beautiful and/or heartwrenching and/or funny (and always, somehow, no matter what, upbeat) newsletters…you are the author I most wish I could sit down and share a cuppa, a story or twelve, chat about the confetti joys, the hidden tripwires of life (the good, the bad, and the Ovaltine). I look forward to your next book almost as much as I look forward to your next newsletter. Thank you for being so open, so you, and especially for shining light (or sharing space on hiding-under-the-table days) in this very unshiny time. 😘
Thank you for your newsletter. Books are slippery creatures. I have been trying to work on a novel of my own and have been stuck for weeks. I literally wrote for months without pause, desperate to get it all on the page, and now I stare at it like a stranger. It is nice to be reminded that sometimes that is just part of the process.
I started to reread "This Time Tomorrow", I was saving it like a treat because I loved it so much the first time. But I have no self-control so I decided being stuck meant I should treat myself now.