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~
When I was a 6th grader, I wrote.
I had a Language Arts teacher named Mrs. Littlefield. We switched class rooms then, as a way to ‘prepare us for junior high.’ For some reason, I was in the ‘high reading group,’ with the smart kids. I didn’t consider myself smart. I was okay. A conscientious learner and good listener. I heard the words and felt the words. I could write pretty things. The bratty/popular/mean girls were not in this class. It was a reprieve. So I kept my head down and wrote. Poems and stories and the dreaded 5-paragraph essay. And then one day, Mrs. Littlefield called me to her desk just as class was letting out.
She handed over a paper I had written. Loose-leaf, three holes down the side. It was tidy, so what was the problem?
There were red marks on it, starting with the margin, where my name was. My face felt hot. My ears started buzzing then everything went silent. This is 6th grade. Everything makes us self-conscious.
Mrs. Littlefield’s red pen made my lowercase ‘l’ in my my first name an uppercase ‘L.’ She did the same for my last name (only then it was an ‘s’). She pointed to it, “Why is this not capitalized?”
I shrugged like every other tight-rolling, hair-crimped, Bass-loafer wearing 6th grade girl does. And then the proceeded to make me feel as if I didn’t know a darn thing about punctuation or grammar. “You do know that proper nouns are to be capitalized,” she said.
Of course I did.
“Are you…okay?”
I told her I was just fine. It was just easier to start my name with a lowercase letter instead of a capital. I was trying something new. Branding, maybe. Perhaps I was tired of the big, loopy cursive ‘L’ I had been taught by earlier teachers.
“Are you…depressed?”
NO!
I looked over my shoulder at the comings and goings of students, the late afternoon chaos of an elementary school. Chairs. Desks. Trapper Keepers.
“Well, let’s try to work on that.”
Work on…what, exactly? Capitalizing my name? Not being depressed? (Could I have been depressed? Maybe. My parents were going through a nasty divorce).
But here’s what I did: I wrote more. And more. And more still. I made art and carried anxiety with me until I couldn’t hold it anymore. It came out in the form of floor plans of houses, in exercise and music. It came out in rebellious forms of breaking the rules of grammar, like not capitalizing my name. Big deal. Now, I know. It’s about style. Artistic license. Choice. Independence. Identity.
But–and we all know this–before we can break the rules, we have to know the rules.
How are you breaking the rules in your own creating journey? Tell us…because, really…
This is the good part!
What Brought you here?
Find me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook and let’s chat!
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 Mark Haber about the history of the essay, writing, and so much more. 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’m at this stage in my writing career where I feel I’ve ‘gotten’ most of the craft aspects and now just desire the time to practice and perfect them. I need TIME. Maybe you are feeling the same? Definitely looking at this residency in cozy New York. Options for juried selection or just committ-and-go (Steeplechase). Click HERE to learn more about Millay Arts.
- Maybe you’d like to write in the Himalayas? This retreat nestled in the mountains of India is being offered through Writer’s International in 2025 with the lovely and talented Abby Geni leading. I can attest to her great instructional style and crisp writing. It’s nearly all-inclusion, with the exception of your flight. Sounds like an amazing opportunity! Learn more HERE.
- This is a FREE online event from the fab folks at Corporeal Writing in Portland. It’s about hibernation and turning inward, and that’s definitely something I can appreciate. This is a December offering and you do need to register, even though there is no cost.
New! Featured Author|Insights
Mark Haber
LESSER RUINS: A Novel
Bereft after the death of his ailing wife, a retired professor has resumed his life’s work–a book that will stand as a towering cathedral to Michel de Montaigne, reframing the inventor of the essay for the modern age. The challenge is the litany of intrusions that bar his way–from memories of his past to the nattering of smartphones to his son’s relentless desire to make an electronic dance album.
Lesser Ruins is a transcendent rumination, a study of, among other things, literature, obsession, and the mind. For all its breathlessness, a silence settled around me as I read it.
Amina Cain, author of A Horse at Night: On Writing
Leslie Lindsay:
Where did you write LESSER RUINS? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?
Mark Haber:
I wrote the majority of the book in my apartment in Houston. I began it shortly before the Covid pandemic, so I have distinct memories of working on the book through lockdown. I worked at a bookstore so I was still working and was only stuck at home for about a week, but I remember long mornings of making coffee and letting my imagination wander as I wrote the book.
I enjoy writing in the mornings. Coffee. Silence and a bit of the dream-state of the night before always helps. Once the world and its news (usually bad) invades it’s difficult to find a place of mental solitude (a subject in the book).
Leslie Lindsay:
If you weren’t writing, you would be…
Mark Haber:
I’ve taught middle school and high school, though I wasn’t very happy. So perhaps a librarian or a job that requires solitude and quiet. I can be gregarious and outgoing, but I’m most comfortable as an introvert.
Leslie Lindsay:
Where would you like to set a story? Obscure places welcome!
Mark Haber:
I love places that exist but are blended with the fictional. My ideal, which I’ve strived for in my novels is what I call the “third place”, not the real Germany or Argentina, for example, or a fully imagined Germany or Argentina, but one that uses places and names which exist mixed with invented and imaginary places – street names, neighborhoods, mountain ranges, etc. That is my sweet spot.
Leslie Lindsay:
What gets you get of bed in the morning? It doesn’t have to be literary.
Mark Haber:
Probably books and coffee!
For more information, to purchase a copy of or to connect with the author via social media, please visit his website.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Mark Haber was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Florida. His debut novel, Reinhardt’s Garden (2019, Coffee House Press), was longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His second novel, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss (2022, Coffee House Press), was named a best book of 2022 by the New York Public Library and Literary Hub. Mark’s fiction has appeared in Guernica, Southwest Review, and Air/Light, among others. Mark lives in Minneapolis.
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.
- I found this short poem, Autumn Dawn, After Fog, by Patty Crane in BLR quite timely and topical, as we move into the space of closing out a season and embracing a new one.
- I’m currently reading this book and it’s sooo good! I love how this is a sort-of memoir, sort-of-biography, sort-of historical fiction. Have you read it? What do you think? [Hint: it has to do with art and a pretty big name in the art world].
- Speaking of art (sensing a theme?) I just listened to a podcast featuring this book, THE WORK OF ART: How Something Comes from Nothing, and it’s a gorgeously illustrated title about all kinds of art–from poetry to painting–and covers process, mostly. I think you’ll dig it.
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 has long been an interest, but now I’m going deeper with a more in-depth study of photography, more than just ‘that looks good.’ But there’s still that, too. Check out this piece, A Woman I One Knew, first featured in Granta, July 2024.
- Oh my! This. Book. I have to have it. It’s got drawings, architecture, photographs, interior design…what more could you (okay: I) want?
- Always obsessed with architecture, this caught my eye recently…it’s a talk and book (which I won’t be able to attend), but I am drawn to this concept of using black in architecture. In fact, there are several black (or very dark) homes near me and I find them kind of sophisticated and creepy…you?
Drop me a line!
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 November, I’ll chat with John Compton about his forthcoming collection of poetry, my husband holds my hand because i may drift away & be lost forever in the vortex of a crowded store.
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 just finished listening to Kenzie Allen on David Naimon‘s Between the Covers. It covers…ha, see how I did that…archaeology and anthropology, being Indigenous in contemporary times, and some really gorgeous, moving poetry from Allen’s recently-released CLOUD MISSIVES (Tin House Books, August 10 2024)
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.
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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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