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~
Welcome October!
~Fall Reset~
Are you making space? What does that even mean? A clear-out, a re-set?
Must it be physical? Can ‘making space’ also mean psychological or emotional? What about electronic?
Recently, I cleared out my closet, my in-box (a whopping 22K emails deleted from various folders), and also my purse.
It felt amazing. Relieving. Lighter. No one really sees the inside of my electronic in-box. No one but me will glimpse my closet or even my purse. It’s not that I’m a hoarder or excessively messy.
What I’m getting at is: none of it’s visible.
But it’s heavy.
It could be self-imposed to-do lists, clothes that don’t fit or are ill-suited for the season, articles you’ve been meaning to read (you won’t or you would have by now). What’s the point in carrying around old receipts in your bag? Dirty Kleenex? A crumbly granola bar? Get rid of it. It’s not serving you.
Once all of that clutter is cleared away, it opens your space to receive new information. This could be literal, as in now you can read something and absorb it better. But it may also be metaphorical. The less junk that is burdening your inner life, the likelihood of being receptive to a shiny new thing is greater.
Sure, it’s a bit of work, a bit of a reset, but I guarantee if you try it, it’ll unlock good information, a glittering new opportunity, an openness to new experiences.
Maybe even in your writing or other creative pursuit. Kristine Langley Mahler talks about space, being haunted, home, and more in our mini-interview (scroll down), and also ‘special time,’ that is writing, as well as this concept of ‘receiving.’
Question:
Have you tried this? Does it work? Maybe it wasn’t super life-shattering, but perhaps you felt lighter?
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] 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 Kristine Langley Mahler on her memoir-in-essays, A CALENDAR IS A SNAKESKIN (October 31 2023). I have new interview up at Hippocampus Magazine (Alice Carrier’s memoir, EVERYTHING/NOTHING/SOMEONE) poetry in Ballast, Neologism Poetry Journal, Empyrean, photography in Western Michigan Review, 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:
- Want to edit and revise without breaking the bank? You don’t have to take fancy classes, workshops, or hire an editor. Check out this FREE replay: Writing, Revising, & Editing Without Going Broke from Writer’s Bridge. Click to join Writer’s Bridge for FREE.
- Khora is the literary journal spill-off from Corporeal Writing/Lidia Yuknavitch and they are always seeking beautiful 500 words and images. Enter the waters HERE.
- On the hazards of teaching and writing at the same time. In LitHub
New! Featured Author|Insights
Kristine Langley Mahler
A CALENDAR IS A SNAKESKIN
Kristine Langley Mahler is tracking the signs. The year she turns thirty-eight, she keeps finding snakes, bears, ghosts, and ancestors at her doorstep, pointing toward the person she needs to become.
Leslie Lindsay:
Without responding in complete sentences, what would you say A CALENDAR IS A SNAKESKIN is about?
Kristine Langley Mahler:
Fears and home and parenting and the ache of growth and watching for signs through eclipses and snakes and bears and ghosts and ancestry and manipulating all those signs to make meaning.
Leslie Lindsay:
Where did you write A CALENDAR IS A SNAKESKIN? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?
Kristine Langley Mahler :
My main ritual is lighting a candle when I begin writing. It’s simple but it makes me remember I’m entering Special Time—the early, protected version of just getting words down and not judging them. Now, during editing, that candle doesn’t get lit, haha. When I think I’m done drafting, I print out the work and cut it into segments, mix them up and then start to arrange it, looking for flow between sections.
Snakeskin was written in three parts—the first section (Ghostwatch) was entirely composed by hand (something I rarely do) during a month in New Mexico. Ghostchoke and Ghostheart, however, were written at my desk in Omaha.
Leslie Lindsay:
If you weren’t writing, you would be…
Kristine Langley Mahler :
Not working, that’s for sure! If there was another career I wanted, I’d be training for it, but writing (plus my work directing Split/Lip Press) is the work I want to do right now. Another way to consider the question, I suppose, is what DO I do when I’m not writing, and the answer would be: receiving. If I’m not writing, I’m receiving what I will later write about, gathering experiences and ideas simply through trying to be present in my life.
Leslie Lindsay:
What ten words do you use on a daily basis—either in spoken or written language?
Kristine Langley Mahler:
honestly, I, try, calling, and, asking, could, you, please, love.
“Ghosts thread A Calendar Is a Snakeskin like stars pinhole the astrological sky, making a home in time. This book is a talisman of stone, of milk. It dreams and sheds its skin and lights our path beautifully, generously, past the edge of the known.”
–Dennis James Sweeney, author of You’re the Woods Too
For more information, to purchase a copy of A CALENDAR IS A SNAKESKIN or to connect with the author via social media, please visit her website.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kristine Langley Mahler is the author of A Calendar is a Snakeskin (Autofocus, 2023) and Curing Season: Artifacts (WVU Press, 2022). Her work has been supported by the Nebraska Arts Council, named Notable in Best American Essays 2019 and 2021, and published in DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, Brevity, and Fourth Genre, among others. A memoirist experimenting with the truth on the suburban prairie outside Omaha, Nebraska, Kristine is also the director of Split/Lip Press. Find more about her projects @suburbanprairie.
Browse my Bookshop.org for more books featured on Musings & Meanderings, and see what I’m reading in 2023…and more!
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.
- Whether you write or read poetry, the practice might be best described as a meditation. Read more about this concept by Leonard Kress in Cleaver Magazine.
- I came across this book, Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Living & Loving Alone by Amy Key by perusing an agent’s list of books she represents. I started thinking about how the color of one’s childhood home (interior and exterior) can influence our future spaces, even our writing. I’m not sure of that’s what this book is really about, but it was just a tendril of extraneous thoughts that came my way.
- Interested in books about motherhood? Here’s a great round-up from MomAdvice Amy Allen Clark. Check out the list.
Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:
- It was an honor to speak with Alice Carriere about her new memoir, EVERYTHING/NOTHING/SOMEONE (August 29 2023, Spiegel & Grau) about family dysfunction, mental illness, art, houses, among other things, for Hippocampus Magazine. Check out our conversation, and grab yourself a copy of the book!
- 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:
- The smell of an image. Bear with me here. Our memories are closely linked to our olfactory bulb, which is the seat of emotion. That means a scent often has a memory, and emotion is attached to it. That’s why sometimes you might say, “It smells like a memory.” Try looking at old photos. You might be tempted to tell a story about what was happening, but can you imagine the smells? Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil, muddy boots, grandma’s house. Write about that. Write about the memory that bubbles from the scent of the situation in the photo.
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.
What I’m Listening to:
I recently came across this memoir, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun, about the author/poet (Shane McCrae) being kidnapped from his Black father when he was four years old by his racist white maternal grandparents. This one is about writing down memories that weren’t always clear, why they aren’t exactly ‘facts,’ and the way his story affected his loved ones, more. Listen to the NPR interview hosted by Tonya Mosley on NPR’s Fresh Air.
Photo by Leslie Lindsay
Get the book HERE
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.
More than 2,800 folks read Musings & Meanderings.
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.
Learn more HERE.
Are you following us on Instagram?
That’s where you’ll catch bookreels, cover reveals, & bookmail : )
Sending you all happy fall vibes!
I support writing organizations, authors, publishers, and more. Occasionally, you’ll get a peak behind-the-scenes, too.
Get occasional bookish news delivered to your inbox.
One last thing: I love Between the Covers podcast with David Naimon. Not listening yet? If you’re a serious reader and writer, I don’t think you’ll regret it.
Leslie A. Lindsay 
Got something to say? Tell us!!