Cheering On Fellow Writers
Celebrating a good friend's book.
Here in Jacksonville, FL, I’m teaching a class on Novel Revision Tactics on Tuesday, November 14 at 6:30 PM at the Beaches Branch Library. It’s free!
Other writing classes will be announced here in the newsletter soon.
There is nothing better than watching a friend’s book get published. Finally, I always think, other people are acknowledging how brilliant my friend is!
I felt that way last week my good friend Lexi Kent-Monning’s first book came out.
When I first met Lexi, she wasn’t writing a book. Or at least she didn’t know she was writing a book. We met in 2018 at the Mors Tua Vita Mea workshop in Southern Italy, where Lexi showed up to the workshop table with 20 pages of some of the most real and raw fragmentary writing I’d ever read. It was Maggie Nelson’s Bluets but with sharpened fangs.
The writing was based on her divorce, which hadn’t been finalized at the time, and Lexi was very much still living the story as she was writing it. We all encouraged her to keep going. She had to! Everyone agreed: we didn’t just want to read more. We needed to read more.
And Lexi kept going with her book, because that’s who she is. If she’s scared of what she’s writing, she teaches herself how not to be scared. If she’s intimidated by the idea of writing a book, she perseveres anyways. When I met Lexi, I was scared of writing, intimidated by any writing project of any length. Watching her finish her book made me want to be less afraid.
I was lucky to be this book’s first completed draft’s very first reader. When Lexi finished a draft, she mailed me a copy of it, and I brought it along with me to a writing conference in Northern California. In the freakiest of all coincidences, the conference took place in the exact same place where Lexi’s book is largely set: a commune in Big Sur. I was noticing things described in the book in real time as I was reading it: the cliffside hot springs, the storied security guard stand, a circled-up group therapy session in the sprawling garden. Lexi wrote about a collection of plastic toys cast in cement in the doorway of the commune’s main office. I read that page, closed the book, and went into the main office to buy stamps, stunned when I spotted those same plastic toys in the doorway.
Thrillingly, I was able to attend Lexi’s book launch party in New York last week. Thursday lead singer Geoff Rickly, author of Someone Who Isn’t Me, interviewed Lexi onstage, and I think I can speak for the entire audience when I say that we all felt like flies on the wall during their candid conversation about fictionalizing their own lives on the page. There were cupcakes! There was pizza! There were squeals and giggles and happy tears and so so so so so much pride.
There is nothing more inspiring to me than watching my friends make incredible things. And this book, The Burden of Joy, is an incredible thing.
Buy The Burden of Joy. Read it and share it with your friends.
And if you’re a writer, hold onto your writing friends. Nothing will make you want to keep writing more than they will.
SPEAKING OF NEW BOOKS
I reviewed the new book by Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy.
I thought the book had a great structure, but I wanted Tweedy to stop apologizing for having opinions about music! From my review:
As a Wilco fan myself, I’m always eager to read Tweedy’s thoughts on music and life. Though at times, I do wish the man could be a little less humble. This book contains an overwhelming amount of bordering-on-apologetic language, dozens of statements like, “What is there to say about this song that hasn’t been said?” Tweedy has had an active music career for over 40 years. He should have opinions about music and not apologize for them, even if he’s in agreement with the masses about how great Bob Dylan is!
Maybe Jeff Tweedy should read this:
CAN’T GET ENOUGH BOOKS?
Boy, do I have the book club for you! Book Club for Writers will start up again in January.
BOOK CLUB SCHEDULE
Sunday, January 28, 1-2:30 PM EST: Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami
Wednesday, April 24, 8-9:30 PM EST: You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir by Maggie Smith
Sunday, July 28, 1-2:30 PM EST: 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round by Jami Attenberg
Wednesday, October 30, 8-9:30 PM EST: Writing Wild: Forming a Creative Partnership with Nature by Tina Welling
HOW DO I JOIN THE BOOK CLUB?
Paid subscribers of this newsletter are invited to attend the Book Club for Writers. Subscribe for the month for just $5, or save 27% and subscribe for the whole year. Subscription prices are going up in 2024, so if you want to join, sign up before the new year! Click below to upgrade to paid.
Now go cheer on your writer friends!
💛 Hurley
I love you so much 😭
wow the big sur synchronicity!!!