Letters from the Homestead: May 2022
Constantly recalibrating my writing practice, my status as Rejection Queen, and a really great dumpster chair.
Emily Dickinson called her Amherst home “The Homestead.” I lovingly call my apartment in St. Louis the same thing (although I definitely get out more than Dickinson). This monthly newsletter is my attempt to work through what it feels like to put down roots as a writer in my own Homestead. In it, I’m honest about what’s saving my life right now, what’s hard, and what I’m pouring my energy into.
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On constantly recalibrating with writing.
I feel like each monthly newsletter I write brings a new update on how my writing practice is changing and recalibrating, often shifting with the seasons to accommodate the daily stuff of living. I go through periods where writing comes easily and I knock out an hour a day of focused work-of-the-heart writing while still managing my day job writing. These periods feel incredible, but I’ve yet to crack the secret of how to sustain them for long stretches.
This month, a wrench got thrown in my schedule when I came down with a bad case of breakthrough Covid (double vaxxed and boosted over here!). I’d managed to escape the blight of the panorama for two whole years, but it finally came for me in early May. I am a pretty sturdy young woman and lemme tell ya, it knocked me out.
It wasn’t so much the cold symptoms that put me out of commission. It was the fatigue—a brutal, disorienting breed of fatigue that I’d only experienced in the wake of bad alcohol hangovers. But even the hangovers I’ve had in the past couldn’t compete with the pure heaviness I felt during days 6 and 7 of my Covid symptoms. When I first tested positive, I had a mild sore throat, and I figured this downtime would be the perfect space to quarantine and work on some projects. That did not happen. My body rebelled, and the forced rest of my Covid week put my life on pause.
When the fog lifted, everything had to be reset. And one of the first things to change was my writing practice.
So, what’s the State of the Writer right now, you ask? She’s moving slower, working when she has the energy, and resting when she doesn’t. She’s trying to welcome the new ideas as they arrive or politely tell them to go bother someone else. She’s reading the paper every day, not looking for anything in particular and collecting the bits and bobs that might come in handy.
And the strangest thing? She’s writing at night. I’ve never been a night writer before, but something about the hot summer days is making my after-dark back porch all the more welcoming for writing. The hours between seven and nine in the evening make sense right now, and the writing comes so much easier when the brightness of the day is over. This is baffling to me—uncanny even.
I’ve been writing so much on my back porch at night that I’ve had my eyes open for a new deck chair. The one I have is literally falling apart, left behind by the last inhabitants of my apartment.
And today, I found it. While out walking this morning, I spied this perfectly good outdoor chair in one of the nicer alleys in my neighborhood. There isn’t a thing wrong with it except for a few stains on the cushions. Did they not think just to turn the cushions over?!
Who knows. It’s mine now, and she’s made for nighttime writing.
Just call me the Rejection Queen 👑
One thing I understood clearly when I left my job as a professor to turn to full-time writing and creative work was that this new season would come with an excess of rejection. When I was an academic, the rejections were limited to the academic job market (which I only did once) and to publications. If you were settled in a tenure-track job and relatively productive, then three submitted journal articles a year might earn you a handful of rejections, but that would be it.
As a full-time writer, I am inching close to one hundred rejections just in the past year. Half of those are for the novel I’ve been querying (if you’re a praying person, please say a prayer that the agent who is currently reading my full manuscript loves it and wants to offer me representation), and the other half comes from a mixture of playwriting, fellowship, pitch, and residency rejections. In the past three months alone, I’ve been a finalist (top ten!) for two competitive residencies and both of them ended in a no.
That’s a lot of rejections, but it’s part of the game. In fact, it’s most of the game.
I’ve been thinking about what this surge of rejections over the past year has done to me as an artist, and all I can come up with is the standard menu of side effects: thicker skin, more willingness to just submit to things, less fixation on perfectionism, and more excitement for dabbling in multiple projects rather than just one.
But I think there’s also pride. I’m lucky to be a part of an amazing community of St. Louis playwrights, and it feels like a membership card to be drenched in rejections. All of us are getting them, all the time. If we have any successes, they are draped in reams of rejections.
So, just call me the Rejection Queen. Maybe the next year will bring some news of a “yes.”
Thirty-Four Weeks of Salad Days 🥗
If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you know that when I launched “year two” of Letters from the Homestead, I added a new paid subscriber option that includes Secret Letters (literally secret letters) and Salad Days (excerpts and analysis from my mortifying college diaries). I love sending out my monthly Secret Letters post on the fifteenth, but I’ve really gained a lot from the Salad Days posts. It’s a true deep dive into the psyche of a past self, and it’s taught me a great deal about what’s remained unchanged in the last two decades.
For the past thirty-four weeks (I know this because each Salad Days post is numbered), I’ve sent an entry from my college diaries with a little bit of accompanying commentary. Sometimes the entries are gushy and obnoxious, sometimes they are whiney, and often they don’t make any damned sense at all. This weekly practice has not only helped me stretch some different writing muscles, but it’s also taught me a few Very Good Things.
Here are two big things I’ve learned in thirty-four weeks of Salad Days.
We all experience embarrassment when we confront a past self. But you’ll be better off if you acknowledge that the embarrassment comes from a recognition of how far you’ve come. Don’t hate a past self; show good humor and compassion because you are already becoming another past self with each passing day. I never shame my old self in these Salad Days posts. I just laugh and let her be who she is.
This has been an incredible way to share my introverted, bookish, uncomfortable, and heavily closeted queer late adolescence with my parents—in a way I never would have been able to when I was eighteen years old. They read my weekly posts (my mom is a top commenter!), and I feel like I’m doing the work of sharing myself with parents I love in a way that aligns with my personality. I’ve always been better at writing than talking, and this Salad Days project is an expression of that.
Speaking of parents, here they are visiting me in St. Louis before embarking on their 8-week Great American Road Trip with their camper:
What I’m Reading this Month…
Codependent No More by Melody Beattie (Audiobook, so not pictured). Everyone should stop what they are doing and go get this book. Read it immediately. And then read it again. This is hands-down one of the most significant books I’ve read for my healing process in the past few years. If you have any history of people-pleasing or pouring your energy into accommodating others’ needs (before your own), you need to read this book.
The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom by Felicia Rose Chavez. This is a great guide for making writing workshops more actively inclusive and helping writers maintain their voices. I’ve been eating this up as I take on more work facilitating writing workshops.
Mastering the Process: From Idea to Novel by Elizabeth George. I’m writing a new romance novel for my day job every 5-6 weeks, and this book has been a good touchstone for when I feel stuck.
The Promise by Chaim Potok. I read this novel almost every summer—it’s a coming-of-age story that’s set when the main character is supposed to already have “come of age,” a good reminder that we are constantly arriving at new selves.
How I made money this month $$$
I believe freelance artists should be more upfront about how they support themselves financially, instead of maintaining the illusion that they are fully sustained by their art (they usually aren’t). Here is me living out that principle.
Working with artists and devising/writing/curating a showcase play for Prison Performing Arts’ Alumni Theatre Company. Some really fun playwriting work this month with an organization that I love.
Romance novel writing. This month, I turned in Valerie Falls in Love with a Voice. I’m leaning into a schedule where I write about one 40K romance novel per 5-6 weeks as “Miranda Markwell”. This is a dependable source of freelance writing income, and it keeps me sharp for my other writing.
Zoom reading of a really awesome new play by my playwright brother Colin McLaughlin. St. Louisans, keep your eyes open for ACTION, coming this December!
Facilitating online graduate literature courses. Grading, facilitating, and managing online graduate courses for an education company.
Substack paid subscriptions! Thank you so much to all my paid subscribers for this newsletter. It means to world to me. (If you’d like to become a paid subscriber, scroll down to the bottom of this email for more info.)
Happy Pride!
June starts Pride Month, so may I present you with some bisexual begonias on my front porch. Begonias are the only flower that I can successfully keep alive and blooming for all of spring, summer, and even early fall. Highly recommend getting yourself some begonias if flower care makes you nervous.
Tonight starts a new month.
Thank you, as always, for reading along.
Yours ever & etc., etc.,
Courtney, Mistress of the Homestead and Noble Midge the Cat 🐈⬛