Please Steal This Story Idea

Independence mine on film

I’ve been working on revising a draft of my novel and I told myself I couldn’t write this newsletter until I was done, but not writing this newsletter has been surprisingly hard- the urge has been itching at me, so here I am. I didn’t realize what a release this newsletter has become for me. Before falling asleep I am full of thoughts and I type them in the dark into the notes app on my phone, thinking add this to the newsletter. I have dreams and I want to tell you about my dreams. I want to tell you that I didn’t have fake feta for a whole week because it wasn’t on sale, but then it went on sale again and I bought four tubs. I want to tell you about how it’s good cold winter now, and about the mystery novel I’m listening to that is fifteen hours long (The 7.5 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, it’s pure chaos but it’s teaching me a lot about creating a certain vibe within a novel), and about Except For Palestine, which I’m still reading. I’ve always had an urge to share things, this sort of frantic fear that if I don’t tell a story about something then that thing will be lost and it'll be as if it never happened at all. I don’t know why I have this compulsive urge and I also don’t understand why other people don’t have it. I guess this newsletter has become a thing that helps fulfill that need for me.

ski frens on film

What’s been going on:

-Winter

-My novel

Winter: I love winter. I am often overcome with feeling these days about how much I love winter. The other day some new snow was falling and I went out and walked in the hush of it and it glittered in the streetlights and brought up within me memories of my earliest experiences of wonder. I’ve been skate skiing a lot and one evening I ice skated on a huge frozen lake in the dark and it felt like floating in space. I didn’t ski as a child (too poor) and I only ice skated a little bit so I’ve been learning these things since moving back as an adult, and this is the first winter that I feel competent enough in them that my experience is more fun than it is frustrating. It’s amazing how that happens- we can be a total beginner but then time piles up without us even noticing (as time is wont to do) and suddenly it’s not your first winter doing a thing but your third, and you’re actually having fun. It’s not so much about the effort as it is about the waiting- waiting for your brain to integrate new knowledge, waiting for your body to get used to new movements. And then one day you’re no longer taking off your skate skis to walk every downhill or falling every time you have to cross chunky ice on a lake on your ice skates. I am not an athlete, I have never been quick to learn physical stuff. I am exactly medium and I learn at an exactly medium pace. I feel like I’m a great example of how we can learn new physical things just by making practice part of our routine and then… waiting. 

My novel: I have been so lost in revisions of my novel these last two weeks, in a good way. I’ve been working on this book for four years- it’s my first attempt at fiction, and the learning curve has been steep. I suppose I could’ve take a fiction class or read some books on writing fiction, or literally anything! But instead I just started writing it, and then rewriting it, and rewriting it, and learning through my own mistakes (and the feedback of my beta readers and my agent and her assistant- thank you!) For a long time it felt like many things were missing in the story, and then fewer things, and I may have just fixed the final big problem, but we shall see. Last year I was like “I don’t know if this is any good” and now I’m like “I’m pretty sure it’s at least not boring?” which honestly is all I hope for, in writing. I don’t want to bore the reader! That is where the bar is at, for me. That is always the bar. One thing I know for sure is that writing this novel is the most fun I’ve ever had writing anything. Fiction is such a blast, and now that part of my brain is cranking all the time and I keep thinking up ideas for new stories and books, but I don’t have any time to even try to write them! For example, a friend mentioned to me the other day that she wanted to write a short story about people living on a cruise ship, and then I got to thinking about cruise ships, and then tiktok started showing me videos from different people who are all currently embarking on the same 9 month world tour cruise. There’s 700 people on this tour, and several of them are making tiktoks. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) They’re all rich rich in different ways, and if one wanted too, one could use these tiktoks as character studies for a book about a nine month cruise where something goes horribly awry and then all these super rich people are, say, trapped together at sea with limited supplies and they have to find a way to survive… The story could also be commentary on the lack of walkable communities in the US and the choices people make as a result (apparently this is one of the appeals of cruise ships) and also our culture of isolation and the basic human need for connection and the choices people make because of that. (Like joining cults. And maybe a nine month cruise? That could become a cult in this story?!)

Someone please steal this idea because I want to read it!

v cool double exposure- I don’t know how I did this or how to do it again

That pretty much sums up my life lately, being outside in magical winter and staring at my computer while my dogs sleep on my bed, doing work for my novel and my guiding business. And speaking of guiding!

I’m offering three guided backpacking trips in Alaska’s Brooks Range in summer of 2024! These hikes are for women, trans and nonbinary people who already have some long-distance hiking experience and who want to learn to make routes in caltopo- we’ll spend hours on zoom together, making a route in the Alaskan arctic, and then we’ll hike it! You can find more details and the application here. It’s gonna be a really special time.

That’s all for now,

Carrot