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 Really Should Write About ___
What I should WRITE is almost like asking a chore. When people learn I am a writer, one of two things happens. That person might say,
“Oh! You know…you really should write about…”
OR
“I’ve always wanted to write a book!”
Sometimes there’s a variation of this…and it goes like,
“Would I know anything you’ve written?”
Probably not.
It’s okay. I’m not into this writing thing to be famous or well-known; I just am a writer. I think about words and story and I’m constantly collecting ideas and images that often often just stick in my brain (but the older I get, the more they fly through like a sieve). Sometimes I just write a nonsense thing that allows me to make a little sense of the chaos.
So when someone has a “great idea” for me to write about something, I take it into consideration. For about 12 seconds. And that sounds…mean? Also? We have more ideas than we could ever write!
But here’s the thing, we writers must be injected with some kind of passion for a subject. We are going to have to spend hours upon hours of time with the subject. Reading about it, thinking about it, sketching and cogitating about it. Writing crap that doesn’t stick. We will dream about it and think about while we drive, shower, cook, when the TV is on. We can’t help it, it’s innate.
So if you’re into acrobats flipping around in submarines, that’s YOUR topic, not mine. If YOU think your grandmother’s wedding dress is fascinating and you want to know what her life was like growing up in the Nebraska prairie, that’s your story, not mine.
When you tell me you’re an engineer, I won’t say, “You ought to go build a skyscraper in Manhattan.” I won’t say, “I’ve always loved slide rules.”
If you tell me you are a janitor or chef, I won’t tell you about what best cleans barf out of carpets at the elementary school, or what to put on your seasonal menu because if I were to say, “You should use parsnips in that soup,” what the heck…? I don’t know a parsnip from a pear.
The other thing I do is turn the question around…
“Oh, tell me more about why? What do you like about civil war fort?”
Usually, the person just wants to talk about something they love. Or something they find interesting. Maybe you can use that for a character in your story or it could be a jumping off point to something deeper. so much. Sometimes I can get a little research talk in. Maybe I could steer the conversation–however slightly–to something that piques both of our interests and could maybe, possibly, turn into something I put in writing. Being a writer is about being a listener, an observer, and then taking that information and turning it into story/essay/poetry.
Here’s the thing:
People like to be part of stories.
They like to feel seen, heard, and as if they contributed to your art.
This is the good part!
Action Item:
Can you recommend a topic to a writer? Let me know what happens? Do you try your own hand at writing it? Does your friend use it in his writing? Do you go read a book, blog, or article about it and satisfy that curiousity?
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 Lauren Aliza Green about her debut fiction,THE WORLD AFTER ALICE, about writing and publishing (April 2 2024). I have a new author conversation in 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:
- I recently had the pleasure of taking an online workshop with Steve Almond about irresistible narrators. And he just wrote this piece for LitHub, about how to write egoless prose (at least for a little while), as well as had a craft book launch, TRUTH IS THE ARROW, MERCY IS THE BLOW. Check it out.
- Beth Kephart will be teaching a masterclass in writing the details by focusing on several published (and acclaimed authors), how to zero-in on one or two details (rather than all of them). This is a one-shot webinar offered through Cleaver Magazine later this month, fee-based.
- ROOM, a Canadian-based literary journal is accepting rolling submissions of CNF, poetry, art, fiction, etc. by women-identified individuals. Check out the call HERE.
New! Featured Author|Insights
Lauren Aliza Green
THE WORLD AFTER ALICE: A Novel
Named One of Forbes’s 2024 30 Under 30 in Media
One of Lit Hub‘s Most Anticipated Books of 2024
For readers of Seating Arrangements and The Most Fun We Ever Had, a gorgeous and gripping story of two families brought together to celebrate an unexpected marriage, twelve years after a devastating tragedy upended their lives.
Leslie Lindsay:
Without responding in complete sentences, what would you say THE WORLD AFTER ALICE is about?
Lauren Aliza Green:
Family; memories and their permutations; ways of grieving; the madcap antics of weddings; love and the myriad forms it takes.
Leslie Lindsay:
Where did you write THE WORLD AFTER ALICE? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?
Lauren Aliza Green:
By nature, I’m not a highly routinized person. If anything, I chase the sense of the unknown—of being out in the world, in uncharted territories, trying to navigate my way around. All I need is my notebook, pen, and a cup of coffee.
Leslie Lindsay:
If you weren’t writing, you would be…
Lauren Aliza Green:
I’m inclined to say an astronaut, though I have terrible flight anxiety. To keep it safe, let’s say a composer of movie soundtracks.
Leslie Lindsay:
What is obsessing you? It doesn’t have to be literary.
Lauren Aliza Green:
I’m obsessed, at present, with magic. This is an old obsession that rekindled itself after I saw Asi Wind’s magnificent show in New York City. Now, I can’t stop watching magic videos, practicing tricks, somehow trying to sustain the illusion while also figuring out how it’s done.
“The World After Alice is a lovely debut novel that glimmers with fine writing and notes of human insight. There’s a quiet beauty to Lauren Aliza Green’s work, and I am now a fan.”
–Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful
For more information, to purchase a copy of THE WORLD AFTER ALICE or to connect with the author via social media, please visit her website.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lauren Green’s work has appeared in Conjunctions, American Short Fiction, Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of A Great Dark House, winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship. Other recognitions include the Eavan Boland Award, sponsored by Poetry Ireland and Stanford University, and a spot on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, class of 2024 .
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.
- This interview with Uche Okonkwo really spoke to me, and her book, A KIND OF MADNESS: Stories (Tin House, 2024) is so gorgeously rendered, featuring the simplicity and vulnerability of child narrators, friendship, tragedy, and more.
- Chicago Review of Books (Greg Zimmerman) put together this list of 5 books about booksellers. I might also plug the forthcoming BOOKSHOP: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Fiss (Viking, August 2024). What others might you add?
- Our love languages look different. I give books and praise and little gifts. Some people give money. This short, beautiful essay, ENOUGH, by Miriam Mandel Levi published in Riverteeth, is so tender and spot-on.
Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:
- What if you went to a writer’s retreat/workshop and the unspeakable happened? What if you were berated and torn to shreds and then worse…you went missing? Were presumed dead? That’s what happens in this novel by Andromeda Romano-Lax, THE DEEPEST LAKE, whom I interviewed for Fugue Review. Seriously, you don’t want to miss this one. It’s also about writing craft and the workshopping experience.
- I spoke with Barrie Miskin about her mysterious mental health struggles during pregnancy, the broken mental health system, and maternal mental health in Hippocampus Magazine. Check out her raw and moving memoir, HELL GATE BRIDGE (Woodhall Press, June 2024) and eavesdrop on our conversation, too.
- Suzanne Scanlon appears as if she has it all together in a literary sense–and she does–but there’s a darker history under the surface. She was once hospitalized in one of the nation’s most well-known psychiatric institutions. I loved COMMITTED: On Meaning and Madwomen. Check out our conversation in Hippocampus Magazine.
- Susannah Kennedy, author of READING JANE: A DAUGHTER’S MEMOIR (Sibylline Press, September 2023) and I chat about the archives we’ve read, carried, and made sense of after our mothers died by suicide, but we also discuss so many others in this February 2024 interview in Hippocampus Magazine.
- Identity and closed adoptions, plus a thirty-year journey to publication, Susan Kiyo Ito and I discuss her award-winning memoir, I WOULD MEET YOU ANYWHERE (Mad Creek Press, 2023) in the January issue of Hippocampus Magazine.
- 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 2023 issue of Hippocampus Magazine.
Click HERE for more of my published writing.
There’s more to this newsletter. Keep scrolling.
What’s Obsessing Me:
- Photography. How it’s a bit like an elegy, a portal, an artistic moment.
- Hollow spaces and how maybe the white space/the blank space really IS the story. Perhaps we can dwell there for a bit?
- Creeks and landscape…how they never really change but we–and the culture around us–does.
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 July, I’ll be featuring Lauren Az Green’s debut, ALICE
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:
In this 50-minute BOMB Magazine podcast (Fuse) with Maggie Nelson, she talks to about how to capture magic in adult life, balancing doubt and trust, and Maggie’s first experience writing about art.
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.
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Wishing you all the best this spring
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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 
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