March Newsletter

Hello hello!! If you’re new to the newsletter, welcome! Below, you’ll find some updates, some recommendations, and some insight into my writing life. Always feel free to reach out on Instagram if you have any questions for me about writing or reading or translation or anything else!

These are snippets from my blog posts on Patreon. Feel free to explore those memberships at the link below:

Writing Life Updates

I Read My Novel! And then I got distracted with grad school, so I haven't been able to do much more yet. I want to spend some time figuring out a summary of the version I have now (the non-linear, messy version), then I'm going to read it in a linear order and see how that changes the narrative. Then I think I'll actually get to have fun rewriting it.

Recommendations

Books

• Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors edited by Grist is a lovely anthology of sci-fi stories that all take place after climate catastrophe, but are all incredibly hopeful. It's been giving me a lot of joy to read it this week.

• Through the Night Like a Snake edited by Two Lines Press as what I was planning to buy before I spotted Afterglow. It's a collection of translated Latin American horror stories, and it's definitely on my list to buy soon.

Song

• Not Like Us by Kendrick Lamar is still featuring heavily in my music mixes. It's just so catchy.

In Depth Review-Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

The first thing I'm going to say is this: I don't think you should judge an artist's work based on the last thing they did. Liz Gilbert has this great moment in Big Magic where she talks about how artists can get smothered under their own success to the point of paralysis, and part of that is because culture is always comparing the new work to the previous 'great' work. I actively try not to do that. I do my best to go into every interaction I have with art with no expectations or assumptions based on anything else I've seen from the artist before. So, that's how I approached Mickey 17, the first of Bong Joon Ho's movies since the Oscar-winning Parasite.

If you're looking for 'the next Parasite,' then this isn't the film for you. BUT, if you're looking for some excellent, heart-warming sci-fi, this is a great movie.

Behind the Scenes

I've realized over the past few months that I'm not doing much to either be creative or foster creativity in my daily life. On the one hand, I think it makes since where that's coming from--I work full time, I'm in grad school part time, and I'm also trying to have some sort of a social life AND be in a successful relationship. I'm very, very busy.

But, I'm also a writer. And I really feel like that is the most important thing about me, and it's what I tie a lot of my identity to. So I decided I needed to make creativity a habit.

The solution I came up with, oddly enough, was to start a new blog.

Want to see snippets from my work-in-progress? Subscribe to my Patreon for free below!

Love and gratitude, friends. See you next month.