Little Update

I’ve been neglecting my newsletter but not from lack of writing.

On Saturday I embarked upon Suleika Jaouad’s 30 day journaling project, which she has run annually since 2020 as part of the Isolation Journals. I've managed to stay consistent and now I’ve made it to day five. The prompts are revelatory. They’ve been helping me write and write - and I plan to share many of these thought provoking prompts with my seventh graders come May, when we start a creative poetry writing (and reading) unit.

Recently I submitted my monthly column to the Evanston RoundTable on school safety and our nation’s gun epidemic. I realize so many of us carry around a feeling of relentless terror and dread, always present, always gnawing. It is eating me alive. The RoundTable piece is short, because what else can really be said? At this point we just need legislative action. I have loved seeing the images from the protests in Tennessee.

Also, I’ve been reading and reading and reading, currently two books: Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait. I’m about halfway through and feel at home in her distinctive sentence structure and storytelling style. And I’m also making my way slowly through What About the Baby: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction by Alice McDermott. This book is filled with excerpts from classics and lots of writing advice. It is helping me wrap my brain around the process of writing fiction. It’s also helping me to answer the following questions: do I have fiction in me? Am I interested in exploring this? TBD.

I read something today that shook me to my core. I have to share it. It’s a quote by Maggie Rogers, a musician who I really, really like.

“Throughout my life I’ve thought of vulnerability as a shield. My logic goes something like—if I tell you my whole truth, everything I’m feeling, then there’s no ammo left for you to hurt me.”

Maggie Rogers, Heard It In A Past Life

This idea, using vulnerability as a shield, is ingrained and familiar, yet I’ve never heard it stated outright. Vulnerability is absolutely my shield. Always and forever. If I let you see all of it, how can you hurt me? How can you disappoint me or let me down?

When I put it all out on the line, I don’t always get what I am seeking. Sometimes I am even misunderstood. But at least I asked. At least I tried.

Part of the reason I love reading is because we can stumble upon these kernels of truth within a text. These truths were a part of us; we just never understood how they shaped our lives and informed our decisions. How they landed us exactly where we are. Right here, right now.

This is is one of the gifts that reading can give, and I’m thankful for my literary life.