Letters from the Homestead: October 2022 🍂
High on life and Diet Coke.
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.
Some things I learned from *fellowship month* ✍️
I did it. Fellowship month is over and I do indeed have something to show for it. In the final hours of the month, I finished my first full draft of Margaret Fuller Magick Show, which was my biggest goal for October. I also made some pretty solid progress on a fiction project, but I’m claiming this play draft as my shining achievement.
The play is…weird? She’s just weird. She has spookiness and songs and puppets and some really wacko magic, but she is a play. A full-length, imperfect play.
Tomorrow, I’m back on my freelance grind, but I’m heading into that space with a greater sense of my artistic identity and what it takes to carve out time for my own work. Those are both great things, so I’m not feeling as much anxiety as you’d expect getting back to busting necks and cashing checks. The work-of-my-heart will find a way in; it always does.
I’ve learned some things this month, and I thought I’d share them here:
✍️ I’m more disciplined about creative writing when my plate is full. Extra work (like my day job work of grading, romance writing, and teaching) helps me stay focused when it’s time to sit down and write. I thought that I would love the open space of fellowship month, but it actually made me worse at time management.
✍️ It was exciting to get out of bed to write on the first and last days of fellowship month, but all the other days were daunting. It’s true—I was gung-ho on day one and day thirty-one, but all the other days felt impossible. It’s pretty amazing to me that I finished a project at all.
✍️ Having open time to write did not, in fact, cure my depression. I realize that free time to write is not a substitute for taking care of my mental health in a holistic way, but I had a secret hope that this rich expanse of time would have a curative effect. Like, maybe it would restore me to creative and emotional sanity. Nope. It’s just extra time.
✍️ It was really nice to rest whenever I needed to rest. This month reminded me that one of the best parts of being a full-time freelancer is that I can rest when I need to. I felt a strange, new freedom to just take a nap when I needed a nap, and the work came out better because of it.
✍️ There were times when I got intense cabin fever. To remedy this, I usually just needed to get out with friends for a bit. Shout out to the friends who helped me get out of the house when I was losing my mind over page counts.
✍️ It truly makes a difference to have designated spaces for different types of work. I spent this month shifting around to different spots in the apartment while writing. I would sometimes work at the dining room table for the play, and then I’d go back into my office/writing nook to work on fiction. By the end of the month, I was writing the play exclusively on my back porch. (I finished the play sitting on my couch, hiding from trick-or-treaters.) For me, a designated space unlocks part of the mesmerism that’s required for creative writing. I need a space that gets me 20% of the way there (to my writing brain), and then I can handle the rest.
I was lucky enough to find an old-fashioned writing desk in the alley yesterday. It felt like a sign—some kind of gift from the universe for finishing my first-ever fellowship month. I’ve set it up only for fiction writing. I need a space with much less chaos for finishing my current novel project, and this desk felt like the perfect magical talisman. Isn’t she cute?
Five Months of Sobriety.
This month marked five months of being off the sauce. And I feel…okay? It’s hard to say. On the one hand, I can tell that my body is a helluva lot happier without alcohol in my system. My sleep is better and my general sense of creativity is sharper. I’d also add that it’s been much easier to stay on an “artist’s budget” when I’m not spending money on booze or bar tabs. I’m learning, too, that most bartenders don’t charge you for a Diet Coke, so I spend my bar visits riding high on an endless caffeine buzz that keeps me kickin’ deep into the night.
However…
I miss drinking. I miss it terribly. As a self-soothing tool, nothing beats a glass of wine or a shot of whisky, especially after hearing horrible news like we had in St. Louis last week—a deadly school shooting, literally blocks from my apartment.
This is the longest I’ve gone without drinking in my entire adult life. And even though I regularly think about how nice it would be to drink again, I have this eerie sense that I won’t go back to the time before. I thought it was a “cleanse” or an “experiment,” but I’m beginning to see that this choice feels more permanent and liberating than I’d initially anticipated.
There are some hard background questions behind my sobriety, which I’ll write about soon in my Secret Letters (if you’re interested in becoming a paid subscriber, there’s info at the bottom of this letter). But for this space, I’ll just say that not drinking has helped me start to get my life straight in some much-needed ways. Above all, sobriety is teaching me to be present without the help of a substance. For me, that’s something worth holding onto.
What I’m reading this month…
Rethinking Sex: A Provocation by Christine Emba. Written by a columnist for The Washington Post, this book is an interesting dive into our culture’s general ambivalence about sexual mores. I’m enjoying it! I will say, though, it is definitely written from a “straight” perspective, so I don’t think I’m the core audience.
Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey. This book is helping me reframe my approach to rest. Hersey argues for “rest” as a radical resistance to capitalism and white supremacy, and I love it. It’s helped me take lots of guilt-free naps during fellowship month, and my work is so much better for the extra rest.
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. This is a memoir of a couple walking the South Coast Path in Wales. I love a good “walking book,” and this one is beautifully written.
The Writing Life by Annie Dillard. Got to have some Annie Dillard nearby during a fellowship month. This is such a wonderful book for writers to just dip into whenever they feel the urge. I read it in spurts and flashes.
How I made money this month $$$
I believe freelance artists should be more upfront about how they support themselves financially, rather than maintaining the illusion that they are fully supported by their art (they usually aren’t). This is me attempting to live out that principle. So, here are all the ways I brought in money to the Homestead for the month of October.
Fellowship money from the Regional Arts Commission. Thank you to the RAC for giving me an Individual Artist Grant that supported my playwriting this month!
Facilitating online graduate literature courses. Lots of grading in the background of fellowship month.
Substack paid subscriptions. Thank you to all my paid subscribers! Your support of my work as a writer means the world to me. 💜
It’s a lovely Samhain. 🎃
I hope your All Hallow’s Eve is peaceful and just the right amount of eerie. May the ghouls come to your window tonight with offerings of hope, for winter is coming.
Tonight starts a new month.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
Yours ever & etc., etc.,
Courtney, Mistress of the Homestead, and Noble Midge the Cat 🐈⬛
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