Kdot in tdot
I didn't bring my Minolta because I was paranoid about it getting confiscated, so I got a disposable camera. I didn't want to use flash because it felt disruptive and I couldn't see much (lots of tall people all around, which is my reality as a 5"2 girlie) so I jumped whenever the pyrotechnics went off!!! 🧨🏮💥
I haven't posted about my novel in a long time but lately I've been feeling like sharing again. I used to share so much on here— about my failures and successes and my belief in the importance of demystifying creative process so that art isn't this scary, elitist thing we only engage with in pristine final form, but a messy and glorious opportunity, if at times a slog.
Last year I finished my first novel after five years of working myself to the bone over it. I'd open my laptop and break down in tears because I was so exhausted by the project, but still so in love with it. It's a modern retelling of a brutal, misogynistic Irish legend I read when I was a child. It's a challenge to the toxic tropes we see in romance plots. It's a Montreal mythology. It's a love story. Chapters are introduced by dream sequences ranging from the quirky to the folkloric to the satirical. It's experimental and strange and intentionally unsatisfying.
I sent it out, but it wasn't accepted anywhere. In spite of knowing the odds, it sucked. It's crazy how we can understand these things with common sense, but then the body feels them anyway. These days I'm interested in falling in love with my current and future projects. And there are lots of really cool pockets of lit community popping up all over the place, which makes me happy, and I remember we are the people of the flow state and it's all about doing the thing.
If you're feeling disheartened with writing, take the time you need to replenish. You are not a word factory. Trying to be creative within the crumbling silos of late-stage capitalism is hard. Writing in a world that demands you justify your art through academic jargon so it has a "valid pedigree" is hard. Sharing on IG is hard—even writing this, I'm second-guessing so much of it; wondering if it will come across as self-promotion rather than a bid for connection.
May we all have projects that make us feel alive and the energy to realize them. 💕💗💖💞
