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~
You know, you really should…
Recently, my husband said, “We need to get you some new life experiences, so you can stop writing about _________.” I was shocked. Appalled. _________ was who I was, what I stood for as a woman, mother, writer. Plus, I have plenty of ‘life experiences.’ Granted, not all of them were as traumatic as _______.
This comment made me think about a lot of things:
Am I nothing as a writer if I don’t write about ______?
Must writers have capital T trauma to write? What about lower-case t trauma?
What defines ‘trauma,’ anyway?
What is ‘life experience?’
What is at our ‘core?’
How do our obsessions feed into our trauma, life experiences, and core? Are they the one and the same? Different? In what ways?
No one wants to read about rainbows and unicorns, people with impossibly white teeth and high metabolisms. They don’t necessarily want to read about your stepdad shooting your mother or your miscarriage, however horrific and life-changing. They want real characters/people (read: flawed) doing normal-ish things, wanting stuff that is just out-of-grasp; they want pitfalls and worry. Sometimes readers want everything tied up with a bow, others might prefer a more ambiguous ending. I’m in that later camp. To have the story continue to play out in my mind, to linger, that’s where I want to be. Mulling. Considering. Puzzling.
So when my husband made this comment about ‘life experiences,’ I balked. I’ve had plenty. Life is rich with things to write about. They can be as quotidian as life in the day of a family during the pandemic lock-down (that would be DAY or DAYSWORK by or THE LIGHT ROOM by Kate Zambreno, and I’m sure there are others). It could be about dropping out of medical school or a writing retreat gone wrong (THE DEEPEST LAKE by Andromeda Romano-Lax), it could be about buying your first house, about the recession of 2008, your family history, your hike on the Superior Hiking Trail or the Appalachian Mountains. It could be about studying for the GRE, traveling as a solo woman in Italy and Greece after your divorce or the death of your partner. (Okay, wait–traumatic).
There are a gazillion things I could write about–that YOU can write about–it doesn’t have to be traumatic. But it does have to resonate, mostly with you. You will be stuck with this experience through the drafting, the researching, the writing, the revising, the polishing, the selling (to agents/editors, then readers), the promotion, the post-promotion, all of it. You are going to need to mull over these thoughts and ideas while you are driving, washing dishes, pumping gas. You’ll start to dream about it. You’ll start to fear it. And love it. It will become you.
That’s why I think his comment stung a little. Did he not love the me I became while writing this book? What about the me that lived through that experience? There’s value there, too, right? Yes.
This is the good part!
Action Item:
Make a list of your ‘life experiences.’ Maybe go decade-by-decade. Or in 5-year chunks. Think of your jobs, aspirations, schooling, travels, trials…things you’re still thinking about. Things that keep you up at night. Keeping adding to that list. Then sit back and circle the ones that feel like they won’t leave you alone. There’s your project.
Question:
Does a writer need to be traumatized to churn out ‘good’ work?
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 Amy Shearn about her new fiction, DEAR EDNA SLOANE, about writing and publishing (Red Hen Press April 30 2024). Also? Total cover crush! Hippocampus Magazine, plus poetry in Ballast, Neologism Poetry Journal, Empyrean, photography in Western Michigan Review, and a photo-essay featuring miniatures in On the Seawall.
Musings & Meanderings is a labor of love. Lately, it’s been more labor than love. I’m going to try just one per month in order to focus on my own work. Find me on IG and Twitter, where you’ll find recently-published interviews, essays, photography, and poetry.
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:
- Looking for some insight on poetics? I love this interview with Oisin Breen in BOMB magazine, which also discusses the root word of ‘art,’ which is actually artifice, as in artificial (And that’s something that could almost go down the list under ‘obsessions). Aside from that, collective unconscious, imagery, mythmaking, and multiplicity of selves is discussed.
- Are you really a writer? Have you fallen victim to saying this about yourself, of diminishing your own work? Ah…that sneaky imposter syndrome. I attended a panel at AWP in February about this very thing. Imposter syndrome is something ‘high-achieving’ people do when they aren’t sure they cut it. [You do. You are]. This blog from Writing Workshops discusses more, “Can We All Fake it Together?”
- Can rejections prompt more writing? Sometimes. Plus, other things this writer learned after 121 rejections from literary journals.
New! Featured Author|Insights
Amy Shearn
Dear Edna Sloane is a funny, fast-paced epistolary novel about fame, writers, ambition, and the ups and downs of a creative life.
Leslie Lindsay:
Without responding in complete sentences, what would you say DEAR EDNA SLOANE is about?
Amy Shearn:
writing
publishing
not writing
not publishing
frustration
desire
the eternal question of how to make a life
the 80s
Leslie Lindsay:
Where did you write DEAR EDNA SLOANE? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?
Amy Shearn:
For me this definitely changes with each project, in part because my life is always a little differently shaped. When I was writing Dear Edna Sloane, I had a day job on an editorial staff and worked in an actual office (imagine!), and my kids were still at the ages that require very hands-on parenting, and my life was feeling crowded in a somewhat unyielding way – and the only time I felt I had to play with was my lunch break. So much of this book was written on lunch breaks, in phone notes, in actual emails I actually sent to myself – the kind of time I had obviously shaped the book, and vice versa, the epistolary nature of the book demanded only short bursts of writing time.
Leslie Lindsay:
If you weren’t writing, you would be…
Amy Shearn:
I’d be a pastry chef in a bucolic small town, who solves local crimes on the side. Well, probably more likely I’d be a high school English teacher, the only actual job I can imagine I’d be qualified for. But I’m manifesting the former, just in case.
Leslie Lindsay:
What are you working on next?
I have another novel coming out! Animal Instinct is about a recently divorced woman who decides to use AI to create the perfect person for her to date. So I’m still a little bit in the world of edits with that book, which is being published by Putnam in the spring of 2025.
“I’ve long been an ardent, near-obsessive fan of Amy Shearn’s sophisticated, hilarious, big-hearted fiction, and with Dear Edna Sloane, she once again knocks it out of the park. This charming, compulsively readable novel–which I read in one sitting, laughing out loud every few minutes–brilliantly satirizes the literary world […]”
— Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year
For more information, to purchase a copy of DEAR EDNA SLOANE or to connect with the author via social media, please visit her website.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the novels Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here, plus the forthcoming novels Dear Edna Sloane (Red Hen Press, 2024) and Animal Instinct (Putnam, 2025). She has worked as an editor at Medium, JSTOR, Conde Nast, and other organizations, and has taught creative writing at NYU, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, the Yale Writers’ Workshop, and Writing Co-Lab, which she helped to found. Amy’s essays have appeared in many publications including the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, O: The Oprah Magazine, Coastal Living, Poets & Writers, and Literary Hub. Amy has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and lives in Brooklyn with her two children. You can find her at amyshearnwrites.com or @amyshearn.
Browse my Bookshop.org for more books featured on Musings & Meanderings, and see what I’m reading in 2024…and more!
Three Readerly Things:
What books or essays you’ve read and enjoyed or felt energized by lately? Is there a book you’ve been consistently recommending? If nothing comes to mind, can you make a plan to pop by your local bookstore for a second? I promise, you will find something. You can respond in the comments or shoot me an email or connect on IG.
- THE HOUSE OF PLAIN TRUTH (Zibby Books, Jan 30 2024) by Donna Hemans is still influencing me, even though I read it awhile ago. Maybe because she tackles so many questions I’ve been grappling with for a long time. Houses and homes. Family. History. All together now. Here’s the Zibby Books Discussion guide, recipes, music, and more that might enhance your reading and/or book group.
- I always try to shop at local bookstores. They’re cute, fun, support small businesses, and I walk out feeling a little better about myself and excited about reading. When I travel, I always go to an indie bookstore and bring home a book. It serves as a souvenir, too. Plus, indies are ‘holding steady,’ and I’ll take that over any kind of ‘decline.’
- Such a beautiful piece in Khora by Grace Loh Prasad on Mandarin, remembering the way grandmothers smell, orchids, her a new book THE TRANSLATOR’S DAUGHTER, and more.
Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:
- Such an important and affirming interview with the lovely award-winning journalist Meg Kissinger about her recently-released memoir, WHILE YOU WERE OUT (September 2023, Celadon Books), about a large family with mentally unstable parents, a family plagued by suicide, plus a plea to improve housing for mentally ill. In the November issue of Hippocampus Magazine.
There’s more to this newsletter. Keep scrolling.
What’s Obsessing Me:
- Love this story architecture featured in The Paris Review Daily.
- In keeping with my art/architecture/design fascination, I am equally drawn to these installations by artist Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong as reported in Granta Magazine.
- Art + Book + House? Yes, please! But seriously, this is (self-proclaimed, ‘fledgling’) organization, Artists Book House https://artistsbookhouse.org/in Chicago is very much like is sounds…typeface, journal-making, and more. It was founded by Audrey Niffenegger, author of THE TIME TRAVELERS WIFE, and offers many classes, workshops, talks on keeping spaces available for (literary) art.
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.
Sneak Peek: In June, I’m going to Southern Italy and Sicily with my family and can’t wait! In preparation (or maybe on the plane), I’ll be diving into this collection of short stories, ROMAN STORIES by Jhumpa Lahiri, written in her adopted language of Italian and translated to English.
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’m hooked on The Next Big Idea with Rufus Grissom and really love this episode on middle-age…once a crisis, now an opportunity, 5 Reasons Life Gets Better in Your 40s with Chip Conley.
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.
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 : )
Wishing you all the best this spring
Find me on Instagram for this exclusive content: @leslielindsay1| #booknerd
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!!