By Leslie Lindsay
A curated newsletter on the literary life, featuring ‘4 questions,’ reading & listening recommendations, where to submit, more
Leslie Lindsay|Always with a Book
~MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS~
Hello, Fall!
Rest & Rejuvenate
When we think about rest, we may not be thinking about creation. How can anything get made, produced, while you’re resting?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. If I’m constantly in that flight-or-flight mode of creation, then I am not allowing new ideas to percolate. Or even form.
We’ve often been taught that it’s worthless to ‘rest.’ Being active and productive is so much more virtuous. I agree in some regards. Full disclosure: it’s hard for me to rest. I like to do, it feels good, I feel accomplished.
I’m considering carving out a time each day/week/month to simply gather information.
This might be a ‘sit spot,’ each day for fifteen minutes. Maybe I just watch the birds or the chipmunk scurry about my patio. That’s something I can easily do in a small increment of time.
Or, maybe I’ll take a walk if I have more then 15 minutes. No podcasts, no music. Just silence and the sounds of nature.
Another practice might be setting aside time each week to just flip through literary journals and curate whatever calls to me. It could be an image or word, poem. It doesn’t mean I know exactly what I’ll do with it (that’s work, not rest). Later, I might interrogate why that image, word, poem spoke to me. Maybe I’ll make a file of these items/clippings.
It seems strange to schedule rest or creative gathering time, but in our busy, fast-paced world, it might do us some good to slow down, sit back, and make a plan to simply observe. You can think of it as curiosity curation.
Question:
What do you think? How do you practice this creative life? Do you carve out time to allow your mid to ‘be soft,’ receptive to new ideas? Whatwords for you? Maybe it’s mediation, gardening, biking, music, journalising.
Respond here in a comment, or find me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.
xx,
~Leslie : )
This issue of Musings & Meanderings is jam-packed with some really great stuff to get your [writing and reading] year off on the right foot. Coaching, book recommendations, journals to submit to, reading recommendations, author interviews, recently published prose, and a quick 4 questions insights interview with Debbie Chein Morris on her memoir WE USED TO DANCE (SWP, October 24 2023). I have new a new interview up Hippocampus Magazine, featuring Alice Carriere’s memoir, EVERYTHING/NOTHING/SOMEONE, poetry up at Ballast, Neologism Poetry Journal, Empyrean, and a photo-essay featuring miniatures in On the Seawall.
There’s more to this newsletter. Keep Scrolling.
By the way, I do not get any ‘kick-backs’ or other kind of payment (in-kind, or otherwise) for mentioning these classes/workshops/books/individuals. Sharing because if helps me, maybe it’ll speak to you, too.
Three Writerly Things:
- Jennifer Fawcett leads writers through a four-series class on how to keep your readers up at night. A combination of asynchronous and synchronous events, fee-based, offered through Cleaver Magazine, October 22 thru November 12, Sundays 2-4pm ET.
- How about the psychology of memoir? I always, always say there’s much psychology in writing. Character motivation, urgency, tension, backstory…it’s all psychology. But that’s not exactly the aim of this webinar, which is about blueprint, writing for other, and more. This is with Lisa Ellison Cooper, fee-based.
- How about mastering the flashback? Yep–there’s a time and place for this, and if we do it rigjjt, it’s realy quite beautiful.
New! Featured Author|Insights
Debbie Chein Morris
WE USED TO DANCE:
Loving Judy, My Disabled Twin
What happens when a woman is told she must place her severely disabled twin in a nursing home? What happens to that twin when, after spending her entire life with her parents, she is sent to live with strangers in a place she doesn’t know? Frank and moving, this memoir tells Debbie and Judy’s story.
Leslie Lindsay:
Without responding in complete sentences, what would you say WE USED TO DANCE is about?
Debbie Chein Morris :
- my severely disabled twin sister being placed in a nursing home after having lived in our family home for 53 years
Leslie Lindsay:
Where did you write WE USED TO DANCE? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?
Debbie Chein Morris :
- in my home mostly in a comfortable spot with my laptop propped on my lap
- no special routines or rituals, just sitting myself down and getting started
- pretty much constant with any project
Leslie Lindsay:
If you weren’t writing, you would be…
Debbie Chein Morris :
- Reading, doing a crossword puzzle or a jigsaw puzzle, knitting, playing piano, taking a walk with my partner, or visiting with family
Leslie Lindsay:
What five words describes your feeling about your book being out in the world?
Debbie Chein Morris :
- excited
- hopeful
- nervous
- curious
- accomplished
“Morris’s story of identical twin sisters recounts a lifetime of loving care and hard choices. . . . A tender and skillfully written account of deep joys and difficult challenges.”
–Kirkus Reviews
For more information, to purchase a copy of WE USED TO DANCE or to connect with the author via social media, please visit her website.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Born in the Bronx, NY, Ms. Morris lived on Long Island (Plainview) for most of her adult life. The youngest of four children (she was born five minutes after her twin sister), family has always been important to her. Married for forty-four years and since widowed, she is mother to three wonderful sons, two amazing daughters-in-law, and an adorable granddaughter. Ms. Morris worked in the field of early childhood education, receiving master’s degrees from Queens College, Hofstra University, and Bank Street College of Education. Her work included classroom teacher to preschool and kindergarten children and reading teacher to kindergarteners needing extra support. Ms. Morris is retired and loves to read, take walks in nature, solve NY Times crossword puzzles, and knit for charity. She currently resides in Mt. Kisco, NY, with her partner.
Purchase When We Danced HERE.
Browse my Bookshop.org for more books featured on Musings & Meanderings, and see what I’m reading in 2023…and more! See Memoir Recs HERE.
~November is National Family Caregiver’s Month~
Three Readerly Things:
What’s on your fall reading radar? I want to know : ) You can respond in the comments or shoot me an email or connect on IG.
- I’m not typically interested in books centered around war, or even war as a backdrop, but this one, by Jayne Ann Phillips speaks to the ancestry buff, the mental health advocate, and social history nerd in me. Check out NIGHT WATCH (Knopf, September 19 2023)
- The latest (Fall 2023) issue of West Michigan Review/Luddington Writer’s is out now…it’s all about thresholds, which is so my thing. In fact, one of my photos made the copy. Check out.
- I can’t get enough of this piece, several excerpted poems about archiving, in BOMB Magazine.
Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:
- This piece, MODEL HOME: A Study Under Compression, in On the Seawall, is something I am so proud of. It was conceived in a craft store when I wandered down the model train aisle. At home, I already had the moss and tiny house and vials. I wanted to depict something with words and photography that would spotlight my family falling into disarray…my mother’s mental illness, the ‘perfect’ home, the family divided. This was my answer. It’s my first text + image publication. Here’s a sampling:
- I am bowled over by the reception my poem, CREVASSE, received by Luke Johnson in the Spring 2023 issue of Ballast. Check out our dialogue about one another’s work HERE. Also, that landing page! Swooning.
- You can find some of my other poetry at Empyrean Literary Journal. This piece was conceived in a workshop at StoryStudio Chicago in which the prompt was to combine two totally different things with one’s childhood street. I chose my grandfather’s profession as stained-glass artist and the year 1989. The resulting piece is COLLAPSE.
- This interview with poet Pattiann Rogers in LitHub was such a dream. Pattiann is 82-years-old and still writing and publishing poetry. This piece is about nature, curiosity, and the flickering that happens in all creatures.
- Super-excited about this illustrated review in DIAGRAM, which has sorta been like a dream place of mine to get work published. It’s a beautiful melding of all things that bring me joy: fonts, words, ideas, art, books, and the human body. I mean…the only obsessions missing for me is architecture, travel, nature, and basset hounds. Check it out and the book, YOUR HEARTS, YOUR SCARS: Essays by the late Adina Talve-Goodman (Bellevue Literary Press, Jan 24 2023), which happens to be a Powell’s pick for January.
- Hippocampus Magazine…Juliet Patterson’s SINKHOLE: A Natural History of a Suicide (Milkweed, September 2022).
- Kathryn Gahl in conversation with me about her poetic memoir, THE YELLOW TOOTHBRUSH (Two Shrews Press, September 2022), about her incarcerated daughter, perinatal mood disorder, more in MER, November 28, 2022.
- Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s HALFWAY FROM HOME (Split/Lip Press, Nov 8) in Hippocampus Magazine, about her working-class unconventional childhood in California, moving across the country to pursue writing, home, displacement, and so much more November 13, 2022.
- Prose in SEPIA Journal Oct/Nov 2022 issue. Interiors is about an Appalachian family, black bottom pie, trains, and ear aches. It was inspired by my own family lore, and also: this journal is STUNNING!
- An essay about an experience at a workshop/retreat, featuring design/architecture, and how we are all works-in-progress, in The Smart Set.
- Speaking of Apraxia: A Parents’ Guide to Childhood Apraxia of Speech, 2nd edition (Woodbine House, 2021) through some online retailers, your local library, used bookstores (it’s now officially out-of-print), and the audio edition is downloadable (with additional PDFs, resources) through Penguin Random House.
There’s more to this newsletter. Keep scrolling.
What’s Obsessing Me:
Songs, music. How a singer-songwriter can really move a listener. You’e probably heard the Luke Combs summer remake of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car. Whether you like the original or remake better is really beside the point, it’s the melancholy storytelling that gets me. How, in just three minutes or so, this song has a beautiful character arc. Can you expand on this ‘story’ and write something more? Is a song a character study?
Other singer-songwriters to consider: Carly Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seeger.
Much of writing is made up of obsessions. We might use our obsession as catalyst, something that gets us writing and, if lucky, keeps us writing.
Sometimes we write about our obsession directly, hoping (perhaps futilely) to be purged free of it, once and for all.
Susan Sontag, while talking about writing and the writer’s life, said it simply:
“You have to be obsessed. It’s not something you’d want to be—it’s rather something you couldn’t help but be.”
What subjects do you keep returning to—from harmless infatuations to downright obsessions? Is it a piece of art of music? Why are you (okay, me) so obsessed with houses and homes? Old photographs? Paper and erasers and pencils? Basset hounds? Postcards? Old letters? Miniatures? I mean, really….the list could go on and on.
Until next time, happy writing & reading.
You are reading Musings & Meanderings, a consistently inconsistent weekly newsletter about the literary life from Leslie Lindsay, and home of an archive of bestselling and debut author interviews. I’m also on twitter and instagram. I try to answer comments as best I can. Feel free to find my book suggestions on bookshop.org, and also check out the authors I’ve hosted in in-depth interviews HERE.
In the meantime, catch me on:
Reviewing books and talking about them with others on-line and in-person is one small way to engage with & support the literary community.
Thank you for letting me guide you on your bookish journey.
Let’s walk this bookish path together.
THANK YOU!!
Some of you have been reading my reviews, interviews, and meanderings for more than a decade now. That’s huge and I am so humbled. Thanks for being here.
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Wishing you a lovely fall season
Created by Leslie Lindsay. I’m a proud book nerd. Connect with me on Instagram, and Twitter. See what I’m reading on Bookshop.org. Find my reviews on GoodReads. I’m also a Zibby Books Ambassador.
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Leslie A. Lindsay 
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