Another morning feeling like I’m struggling to keep my head above water, another morning of Writing to Transform from UNCW – which thankfully helps me keep my head up.

This morning was “Send Word” with Anna Lena Phillips Bell, and the purpose was to inspire us to send postcards to connect with family and friends.

I started a Postcard Project during the pandemic where I wrote a few lines of a story on a postcard, mailed it to a friend, and had them write the next few lines. An exquisite corpse by mail. It’s still going, even though that Instagram account has tapered off because social media can be a struggle. Maybe the Postcard Project is something I should transfer to this blog…

Anyway, I like my exquisite corpse by mail idea, but I also love Anna Lena Phillips Bell’s idea of sending words of encouragement and connection to others. You don’t have to be on vacation to write a postcard. Since you have limited space, don’t say “I’m sitting on the porch thinking about…” Just jump right into the thoughts, the feelings.

Participants shared a lot of blips of memory that made me think of some writing prompts, almost a continuation of Aimee Nezhukumatahil’s Monday session. But those descriptions also made memories come back to me, experiences I shared with friends that I might not be in regular contact with anymore. And I thought of describing that moment to them on a postcard, and how they might feel reading it. Comparing their memory with what I expressed. How it might make them feel to see the memory, to see themselves, through my eyes.

The session ending with a brainstorming session to list things you’re looking forward to. Most weren’t specific instances or events, of course, but more things to do every day to keep your chin up. Phrases of hope and inspiration. And I can see how these would look on a postcard, and how they might make the reader feel.

The session was inspiring and brought a breath of fresh air to my writing mindset – I can write without it having to be a story or a poem. I can write to share something with just one other person, and it will matter. I’m grateful to have a stack of blank postcards and a coil of stamps. Keep an eye on your mailbox.

I started my “first” poetry notebook earlier this spring. I say “first” because I’ve written poetry before and took a poetry workshop in college, but this was a notebook only for poems. I wrote in it from March 9th to August 17th, and though I still have a few blank pages left, it’s time for a new book.

March 9th was before my job went remote and before I knew what was coming. The notebook takes me through the “novelty” of having an extra week of Spring Break (or so I thought at the time), to trying to navigate how I can hold my life together. It captures the inspiration I felt from having access to so many author Zooms – events I wouldn’t have been able to attend if they were in-person, whether it was due to distance or having to find care for my son. Things seemed, if not bright, then at least “okay” for a time. Then it got harder and there was a lot of turmoil in my life, a lot of anger, and it showed in my writing.

My creativity has been severely stunted for the past few months, and I feel like most days I’m doing just enough to live. And keep my son alive. Most things I think about are what each meal will be and what I need to do to make money. (Writing, people, writing! No OnlyFans links here.) Over the past two months, it’s been harder for me to let my mind wander for creative writing, and sometimes even to enjoy reading. This election (I know, I know, you’ve heard it all from everyone else) has been weighing heavy on me, and it’s showing me people’s true colors in ways I’m sadly not surprised by, but still angered by. And I know that’s on me. I’m letting these people live rent-free in my mind, a saying I read recently and have been fixated on.

And maybe it’s a strange time to feel the tides of change, but I’m feeling it. And I hope it goes beyond me, but even if it doesn’t, I want to harness this feeling. I’m writing for NaNo and I’m on track (yes it’s early, but still!). I was inspired to start a new poetry notebook, perhaps one with less despair than this spring’s, or at least more discipline in anger instead of pure mopey-ness. I don’t know what tonight will bring, or the next day or the next week or the next month or January. But I have hope and I have my thoughts and my words, and I’m determined to use them.

This morning I joined UNCW’s Writing to Transform session “Who Said Nights Were for Sleep: The Power of Aubades and Nocturnes” with Aimee Nezhukumatahil. I’m a huge fan of Nezhukumatahil and have been attending many enjoyable Zoom events for her new book, but this one was a nice change of pace. While I love hearing about Nezhukumatahil’s writing process and listening to her read her own work, “The Power of Aubades and Nocturnes” was like sitting in on one of her classes, something I’d love to do.

To start a nocturne, Nezhukumatahil pushed attendees to “activate your night mind”, and I was immediately lost in thought. Of course the night mind is freer than the day mind; I love letting my mind wander as I drift to sleep (if I’m lucky) and I get a lot of story ideas then, too. Ideas I used to be convinced were SO GOOD I would remember them in the morning. But I never did, so now I have a notepad by my bed, with a pen that has a light at the writing tip. Now I can jot down my ideas without fully waking myself up, and then… find out they’re not good in the morning. BUT STILL! It’s my imagination, and it’s going wild, and I was immediately on board with the concept.

Nezhukumatahil read a few poems by others and gave us jumping off points to write our own nocturnes. What subjects most often come up in your night mind? Even making a list put me in that mindset, and then she pushed us further by asking us to list sounds and smells associated with those thoughts.

She gave us slightly specific prompts as well, which I’m a huge fan of. I love having some constraints to my writing, because instead of flailing blindly, that usually gives me a focus and I can go wild from there. She gave us four places to start, because a conversation that happens in a kitchen will be different than a conversation that happens at the edge of a lake. She gave us three different late night/early morning times as well, because a conversation that happens at 9pm will be different than a conversation that happens at 2am. I love the idea of a writing exercise mixing and matching ALL of these times and places to see how story will change.

For aubades, Nezhukumatahil had us think of types of goodbyes. Letting my mind loose like this was invigorating; I haven’t really brainstormed on a topic like that since… well, since I last led a writing workshop, probably. I only took notes during the session because I wanted to get as much as I could from it, and now I’m ready to really explore these prompts, and hopefully grow from there.

Scrolling Twitter can be a good experience or a terrible one, but I try to follow a lot of writers, publishers, and librarians so that my timeline is filled with creative, book-loving, often amusing information. One of my favorite tweets lately really got me thinking, so I wanted to share it here.

I love the idea of becoming a mini expert on something. Actually, I love the idea of following through on my notes. My phone is full of notes and reminders that are just short phrases, concepts, periods in history. Things I want to write about eventually. Things I don’t want to forget.

Things I never get to.

The idea of devoting a Sunday to become an expert is manageable, and, to fully out myself a nerd – it sounds fun!If I’ll have dedicated time to research, time to write about what I’ve studied. I can let myself be surprised by how it comes out: as poetry, as essays, as memoir veiled as fiction.

My first Sunday Expert might turn into a deep dive, we’ll see. But I’ve been wanting to learn more about the Salem Witch Trials for a long while, so here we go.

What topic would you want to become a Sunday expert in?

Last fall, when times were tough, I found a blank notebook and pushed myself to write two sentences about good things that happened each day. Sometimes it was hard, and my sentences were just “The day is over. I can sleep now.” or something along those lines. But it still pushed me to see the good, and I needed to do that.

I recently started reading The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. I love the concept of writing a short poem or essay about something good from each day. I’ve been doing some form of daily writing for over fifteen months now, and I’ve mixed it up by writing different things, or in different styles. Brain dumps, poetry, paragraphs of fiction, flash fiction. Now, micro essays focusing on a delightful aspect of each day.

Gay gave himself some guidelines for the project, and I love them and am applying them to mine as well. He started and ended on his birthday, as I am starting today. He wrote them quickly, by hand; I found a beautiful (delightful!) blank notebook just for this project. I need to sit and focus and work on these, but also make them spontaneous and thoughtful. I love taking on new projects, and I love having rules for myself and holding myself accountable. But this is also a project about delights, and I’m determined to keep it light and delightful.

What I’ll do with it in the end, I don’t know, but at least I’ll have a record of a good year, and that seems to be exactly what I need right now.

The last time I wrote was July 2nd, and I don’t even remember that. It’s just over a month ago, but it feels like ages. Isn’t that how time is passing these days? Isn’t that what we all say?

I wrote about Camp Nano, which ended recently without me winning or even finishing. I wrote every day until the last week of July, and then I just… Well. You know. It seems like we’re all feeling that way, just like we’re amazed at the strange slow-quick passage of time. How do I even describe it? The feeling that nothing matters, that there’s no point in pushing myself to finish, that it’s not good anyway, that I don’t know where to take it from here.

It’s a misleading feeling, because I did genuinely like my story. My second story. I last wrote that I had been dreaming about high school, so that’s what I started writing about. A week, maybe, of my original story about an old lady, then pivoting to a high school story. And I liked it, even if it wasn’t as suspenseful as I originally thought I would write. I think it’s something I can come back to in a few months time.

For now, though, my mind is racing with other thoughts. Two competing ideas that I can’t stop thinking about. One I’m picturing as a short story or novella told in alternating points of view. One might be a short story in verse. But also, could these two ideas work together? Should I try to combine them, or should I push myself to complete two separate stories?

It’s been so long since I completed something longer than a poem, and I need to get to that point again. I’m having ideas like I did when I was in writing workshops, and I missed that feeling. I have it back and I don’t want to lose it. But there’s also that question of “why” that seems to haunt all my hobbies lately. Why write these stories? Who is the audience? Where could it be published? Will it make any money? Will it lead to anything? Why is it so hard to do something for pure enjoyment these days? Or is it just me? It seems like everything has to be monetized to be worth doing, and I need to shake that feeling.

But there’s something invigorating about following the ideas, seeing what will happen if I let them expand into what they need to be. I used to do that, I used to get an idea that wouldn’t let me go and then I would sit for hours writing and writing until the sun came up and I had to start the day over again. I don’t think that lifestyle is possible for me anymore, as I get tired by 9pm, but the feeling is still one to be harnessed so I can ride it out.

Day Two of Camp NaNo and I’m on track with my “suspense” novella, even though I haven’t added any elements of suspense yet. I read The Last Flight by Julie Clark on Saturday, a great new suspense novel with a lot of twists and potential and, best of all, two strong women characters. A nice change from all the “The Girl” who what when where, blacked out, drank too much, tossed back prescription pill bottles, but knows she saw what she saw… That is, until the last fifty pages when you realize none of that was true, she was drugged/drunk/delirious the entire time, and actually this happened! The author presents the ending as if it a bright shiny gift you should be happy about – everything is all wrapped up and The End! But those endings anger me, make me feel ripped off, duped into investing in a story that was presented as X but really is Y. It’s gotten too common in suspense novels in the past several years, so I was so glad to see the strong characters in The Last Flight. It didn’t hurt that the story was well-done and realistic enough, too.

All that is to say I should be inspired. I should be twisting my own storylines in my mind, excitedly interrupting one train of thought with “but what if!”

Spoiler alert: I’m not. I have a few pages of notes for the story. I have a character, and I’ve spent a couple thousand words establishing who she is. No back story yet, but it’s not necessary. Just a few hints that I can flesh out later. Maybe by then a twist will come to me, and I can put something unsavory or unsettling in her past.

Mostly I’ve been having disturbingly real dreams about being in high school again. Signing up for a math class that is required to graduate, then hating math too much to ever attend. Getting lost in the hallways when I decide I should attend a session. I haven’t had high school dreams in several years, and I haven’t had a recurring dream since my son was born, and I was constantly weaving my way through mazes to protect him from anyone and everyone.

It seems like dreams should stay in the night time and the fog of early mornings, but they stick with me throughout the day. Sometimes I jolt like I’m forgetting to do something important, but it’s just a flashback to the missing math class. When I space out and let my mind wander, hoping it will give me an idea for my writing project, it drifts back to those dreams, and I find myself replaying them.

Maybe I’m focusing on the wrong thread here. Maybe my mind is telling me to write about that math class. Maybe my character should be young instead of old. What goes on in high school these days? (The obvious anser is not much, in the current situation.) What mystery could keep her from going to that math class? Is something wrong with the math teacher? What are her classmates getting into?

It’s only Day Two of Camp NaNo. I’m on track (a little ahead, even) with my current project. Seems like the perfect time to throw it away and scramble to start again.

Where You End by Anna Pellicioli, reviewed by Allison Renner 6/9/2015

Are You Seeing Me? by Darren Groth, reviewed by Allison Renner 8/25/2015

Best of 2015 Staff Picks, contributions by Allison Renner 11/28/2015

A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry, reviewed by Allison Renner 4/27/2016

The Light Fantastic by Sarah Combs, reviewed by Allison Renner 10/18/2016

It Looks Like This by Rafi Mittlefehldt, reviewed by Allison Renner 10/26/2016

I’m re-watching Dead to Me so I can fully appreciate the second season. I remember some things about the show, but not all, and the way it’s crafted, I can really appreciate the suspense and the slow revelations. I wrote about the show before, which I previously binged during a reading slump. I’m kind of in a reading slump again now, due to the current climate, but I’m watching the show and learning a lot about storytelling and writing.

It’s interesting, because I mostly write literary fiction and nonfiction, but I appreciate cliffhangers so much. I used to love Goosebumps books because every chapter had a cliffhanger, even if the resolutions were usually pretty hokey. If I’m not reading YA or memoirs, I like to read adult suspense novels for the cliffhangers (even though, again, the resolutions are often hokey and kind of infuriate me at this point). I’ve never tried to write my own suspenseful fiction; the one overly dramatic piece I wrote was still rooted in literary fiction. It makes me wonder if I should try to write what I seem most drawn to these days. Especially with the way Dead to Me is so artfully done, with characters (even the dead ones) being so multi-faceted. There’s something intriguing about how people can be so real, yet deceitful (which arguably makes them more real). I love how they are revealed little by little, seeming like one person until you learn a fact that casts them in a totally different light…

Camp NaNoWriMo starts on July 1st. I didn’t have a project in mind, but now it seems like I’m finding my way, and I’ll be attempting to write a suspenseful novella. If you’re participating in Camp NaNoWriMo (or any other writing challenge), what are you writing?