10 Things I Read and Loved in February
Reading updates from the shortest month of the year. 💖
I didn’t have much reading time during the shortest month of the year. But most everything I read in February—stories, newsletters, my tarot book, emails, texts, and more—turned out to be fantastic. Here’s my roundup.
1. Bess Kalb’s very hilarious advice on writing a book
Extremely relatable, right on down to the book party fantasies and the shopping bouts on The Real Real. (Have I or have I not considered wearing a classy pantsuit to my book party, which is not an event that actually exists yet? You be the judge.)
2. “G” by Ling Ma
I assigned this short story by Ling Ma to the fiction workshop I am teaching* and was so glad I did. The story, about a woman’s relationship with a drug that makes its user temporarily disappear, makes me want to write better fiction. It was my favorite story in Ma’s collection Bliss Montage when I read it last year.
*Interested in taking a prose workshop with me? Paying subscribers to this newsletter get 10% off tuition to all of my writing workshops! I’ll be announcing the next round of workshops soon.
3. speaking of short stories: “Birds in the House” by Kevin Wilson
I don’t think a story has ever made me laugh so hard. In it, a boy’s father and uncles fight over their mother’s estate. The mother had expected this conflict, though, and planned accordingly: in her will, she tasks each brother with choosing one shade of origami paper, folding 250 paper cranes, setting the cranes on her enormous dining room table, and turning on four fans. (Whichever brother’s is last on the table wins her mansion.)
Kevin Wilson’s entire collection had me laughing, but nothing got me quite like this story’s absurdity.
4. this article on fairy tales vs. MFA programs
One of my workshop students recommended this article to our group of writers, which raises some interesting points about modern storytelling craft techniques versus more classical techniques. (Thanks for the great rec, Bill!)
5. Marie Howe’s thoughts on resisting metaphor
Enduring the thing itself! It hurts!
6. How to Keep a Husband for 10 Days by Jessica Hatch
Only Jessica Hatch can create a sweet-yet-steamy rom com that involves a serious issue like affordable housing. Set right here in Jacksonville, FL, the novel follows Lina and Brown, a divorcing couple pretending to stay married in order to save the apartment building where they met. It was that can’t-put-down-able book I needed for a busy month.
7. an email from a dear friend announcing her online print shop
The thing that inspires me most in my creative life is watching my friends foster their own creative visions. I’m so inspired by and proud of my friend Mara Strobel-Lanka, who just launched a shop where she sells her food and beverage still life paintings.
Mara also takes commissions and did a gorgeous commission for me and my husband. I asked Alex what he’d like to have for his last meal on Earth, and Mara painted his answer (pepperoni pizza from Al’s, Emidio Pepe, key lime pie, Diet Coke) as well as mine (steak frites, grilled zucchini, San Pellegrino, Opus One).
Don’t they look perfect in our kitchen?!
8. the revision process behind “The Sound of Music”
This video chronicling Oscar Hammerstein II’s lyrical revision of “The Sound of Music” is the motivation I need as I revise my novel.
I discovered this video through Kara Cutruzzula, who wrote in her newsletter, “You can literally see and hear the song getting better, tighter, clearer, easier to sing and understand.” Yes!
Also, this video reminded me of this perfect tweet from a few years back:
lolllll
9. a text from my husband alerting me to Feist’s new music
Leslie Feist was welcome to take all the time she needed to bless us with this bounty of sonic gorgeousness!!! This track is my favorite of the three songs she released this month.
10. an affirmation from my tarot book
I am becoming a bit of a ~tarot gal~ thanks to Mara, who introduced me to the Neo Tarot deck and guidebook.
At one anxiety-riddled point during this busy month, I pulled an Ace of Cups, and the affirmation listed on that card’s page was everything I needed to hear:
“Through limitless self-love, I find purpose and fulfillment.”
CAN I GET AN AMEN?!
Also, wow, the cards are so pretty.
Book Club for Writers
During the next Book Club for Writers meeting in April, we’ll focus on Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life by Jenny Boully.
Want to join the book club discussion, get 10% off all writing workshops, and support my little corner of the Internet? Become a paid subscriber! Learn more here.
With all due respect to you and my friend Shannon and Marie Howe, I think the whole exercise of writing just observations -- the thing itself -- isn't so much about *not* writing metaphor as it is about allowing the thing itself to reveal its own figurative meaning. It's not *overengineering* metaphors (which is what I feel like 99% of similes are) -- the apple slice on the plate isn't *like* a sliver of sun above a horizon of clouds; it actually *is* that, but because it revealed itself as such, not because the writer constructed it as such.
Based on the transcript of the conversation from the On Being website, it seems to me like Howe's not actually saying anything meaningful about metaphor. In fact, when pressed by Tippett to say more about metaphor and "why it hurts," Howe changes the subject to her being made Poet Laureate of New York.
I've yet to find a better thinking-through of figurative language in poetry than Natasha Saje's book Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Critical Theory -- I highly recommend it.
Thank you for consistently providing content that I need to screen grab every single element of… Excited to read all of these things