Saying the right thing
one last post for 2024
Happy almost new year!
Before I get into anything, I want to welcome my new subscribers. I see that there’s quite a few of you, and I’m happy you’re here. If you care to, please leave me a comment now and let me know where you’re coming from or what brought you here, and what you hope to see. New and OG subscribers alike, please feel free to tell me what kind of posts you enjoy and what, if anything, you’d like to read more of here.
Some thoughts on this space
The beginning of a new year seems like an appropriate time to plan out my blogging goals. Yeah, I said blogging because I do consider Talk About It to be more of a blog than a traditional newsletter. It’s where I come to talk about whatever I feel like in that moment. Sometimes I want to talk about my personal life, other times I have something to say about the literary world or publishing industry, and sometimes I have some fiction or poetry that I want to post somewhere and want people to read immediately instead of waiting to submit it to some lit journal for it to possibly be rejected.
I think I started posting on here back in 2020 as a creative outlet outside of my regular writing practice. I had been posting random writing updates on my website’s blog, as well as emailing my entire address book on Gmail (sorry if you found those “lil newsletters,” as I called them back then, annoying and intrusive) with news of my upcoming publications and events, but I wanted a way to reach more people. A friend of mine was an early adopter of Substack and used it to further grow her community of regular readers, so I decided to give it a go as well.
A good decision, as it’s turned out. It seems like more and more people are flocking to Substack as a way to connect with their community in lieu of using traditional social media, which feels increasingly vapid with every doomscroll. People have something to say here, and there’s less hateful garbage (at least from what I can see), so it’s all around a more inspiring place to spend my online time. Opting in to emails from writers who take the time to type out a thoughtful essay is a nice change of pace.
What’s my point? I don’t know, I’m just talking. And letting you know that I’m pretty open to writing about whatever, so if there’s something specific you would like to see more of I’m happy to oblige. That’s not a promise that I’ll definitely write a longform essay about the history of rat catchers in the United States (I just looked out the window and watched as a rat scaled the side of a slanted roof across the street then creep into some opening near the chimney — oh, Philly!) or whatever, but I’ll certainly take it into consideration. Prompts can be fun!
Do you have this problem?
Here’s a question for you: have you noticed that you’ve become a bad replier? Like, if someone sends you a text or an email, does it take a long time for you to send back a response? I hate this terrible habit I've developed in the past ten years where I get overwhelmed by the thought of replying to a text or email so I just don't until it's often too late. It’s an anxiety thing, I think. I’m so afraid of not saying the right thing, so I wind up not saying anything at all. Recently, I’ve been trying to combat it by giving a quick response to let the sender know that I’ve read their message, so I don’t come off as rude. There’s no reason to psych myself out about saying the wrong thing in a text message.
Maybe it’s the demand for immediacy that’s become common in modern communication. We’re expected to always be online, always be available. When I was working, I always had my Slack set to active, always received notifications and pressured myself into addressing everything right away. It got worse during the pandemic when we were all working from home. I didn’t want to put my employment at risk and give the appearance of slacking off (slacking off by not being immediately responsive on Slack lol), so I was just always online, always by my computer, always ready to rush home, if I happened to to have some off time, to fix whatever issue had come up.
Personal texts, messages from colleagues, emails from friends and family, these all seemed less urgent in comparison. There was no reason to rush to reply. And thus a procrastination/guilt loop developed: the more time I spent not responding to these messages the more I worried that so much time had passed that whatever I had to say was no longer relevant. I have some several-months-old messages in Instagram that are awaiting my response and I’m not sure what to do with them. I could reply now and apologize for the extreme delay. That would probably be the best thing to do, to confront my problem head on, but the desire to slink back and pretend these messages don’t exist because really, would you be happy to finally get a reply to a message you sent six months before? likely, you would have already written that person off as a flake and moved on with your life, right?
I dunno. I think maybe I will go through my inboxes and see if I can work up the courage to suck it up and respond. It can be a new year’s resolution.
Manifesting for 2025
I did a lot of cool stuff in 2024, and I’m looking forward to doing more in 2025. I completed my third novel and started querying agents. I threw some great events. I even did some traveling for events in which I was a featured reader. Tonight, instead of partying or going out or watching fireworks, I’ll be at home with an open notebook making a list of all the stuff I want to accomplish in the new year. I invite you to join me and make your own list! Put it down on paper (or put it into a post or a comment on this post) and put it out into the universe.
Also! Inspired by this post from
, I have decided to bring my idea to host a literary fiction book club to life and would love to have you on board.I’m thinking we can read one new (or newish) literary fiction book per month and talk about it informally on a WhatsApp or Gchat group chat. I definitely don’t want to do a zoom call or make it an in-person thing. Just keep it relaxed and chill where you can chime in when you want. If this sounds like something you’d like to participate in (or simply lurk in), let me know.
At the very least, you might get some use out of peer-recommended books to read. Reading is more fun when you have other people to chat with who are reading the same thing. It’s a bummer to read something you really love (or really hate) and there’s no one to gush or rant to. And if you’re anything like me, having a deadline and encouragement from others who are on the same journey can help you stay on task and not find a multitude of reasons to do anything else.
2024’s best posts
Yesterday I saw another Substacker do a highlight reel of their most popular posts, and thought I would do the same.
Here are my most popular posts from 2024. Check em out, if you haven’t already.
A Writers Party 2024
We’re back with another weekend of fun and free events happening online and in-person (in Philly). Last year we tested the waters with an online open mic and a writer-packed live event and because it was so much fun we decided to do it again. This is our alternative to AWP, the annual writing conference hosted by MFA programs, which can be a very fun and cool experience and a great way to meet other writers if you can afford to travel and take time off work. Over the years I’ve gone to a few AWP conferences, and by that I mean I’ve been fortunate to be able to travel to some of the cities where the conference was being hosted so that I could attend the off-site events and sneak into the convention centers to do some mingling. I’ve definitely had fun when I’ve gone, but the past couple of years it just has not been feasible for me to go, which is why we started putting together this free alternative to AWP. We even stole the acronym.
2024’s A Writers Party was a blast and yes, we will be doing it again (and bigger and better) in 2025. You can read more about that here.
I thought about submitting this piece to some lit mags, but Halloween was coming up so I decided to just post it here.
Why I'm not writing this week
It’s just a bummer, but it’s not the end of the world. I’m trying to have perspective. And I’m sharing this with you because I’m embarrassed about it, but I probably shouldn’t be. It’s just a real thing that happens to some people, and hopefully talking about it helps someone.
My first post about my weird and annoying pregnancy issue which made me push back my mini writing vacation to a different weekend. It all turned out for the best though!
Craving some time and space for my writing practice
I love chatting with other writers about their own writing practices. It’s cool to compare and contrast what works for us, but one thing I’ve noticed when talking with other fiction writers is the time aspect. We need heavy uninterrupted time.
This post was basically me manifesting my mini writing vacation that I ended up taking in August after dealing with my weird pregnancy issue (see above post). I haven’t posted about the vacation yet, maybe I’ll write about that soon!
A March of Marys
A beautiful stranger washed up on our shores with only death as a companion and she was like, this is either gonna be a horror movie or a porno, and it turned out to kinda be both.
Back in March, I did an experiment where I edited and serialized my out-of-print first novel, American Mary, on my Substack. This was the first installment of the serialization, in which I included the first two chapters, and was my fifth most popular post of 2024. Throughout the month of March, I posted the entire novel in short daily excerpts.
That’s it for now! I hope you have a happy new year! Don’t forget to eat some cabbage and some black eyed peas for good luck!
I'm so glad you're doing it!
Well, you eventually brought me here, I’m grateful for that…many thanks & happy new year…