Molten Core Momentum and Pinhole Light
Entering February with optimism, despite all signals
Last week I woke up with a scene in my brain. I was inside a dense darkness looking up at one pinprick of light shining above me. I was to focus on the light, that tiny hole that would eventually let everything in.
Reflecting on the last two weeks, I’ve certainly been caught in darkness. I’ve had many, many declines on pieces I’ve submitted. I had zero January acceptances! (This is very embarrassing, by the way.) I also recently became flat out with stomach pain, from which I’ve since recovered, but I received even more declines while laying in bed ill.
I have been going to work every day feeling mostly numb, trying to recover and help others recover from the trauma of layoffs at work. Anne Helen Peterson wrote a fantastic piece about layoffs a week ago that you should read if you haven’t yet. Things have been weird, to say the least, and AHP describes that feeling more eloquently than I can at this moment.
I realize ‘weird’ is my catchall term for not knowing what the hell is going on. I even spoke to a therapist about it, who wasn’t that helpful, but I don’t know how to properly describe existential dread in one hour so that’s on me.
For a good chunk of the two weeks since I last wrote this letter, I’ve invested a bunch of time just trying to feel safe. I’ve tried over the years to be cooler with risk but I’ve now accepted I need a certain level of stability. I’ve been looking at spreadsheets of my writing goals and finances, reminding myself that I am on track even though I feel uneasy. I haven’t been “generating” too much but I know “writing” is a broader pursuit than just creation. I’ve been staring out windows. I’ve been processing. The therapist did tell me my feelings are a data point, so I’ve been trying to figure out what the data is telling me. I recognize that something is amiss, but I am not sure what.
“It’s weird that there’s a solid iron ball kind of floating in the middle of the Earth,” said John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Southern California.
You may have seen the clickbait news that the interior molten core of the earth has reversed direction and is now spinning the other way. So maybe it’s that? Is anyone else feeling this way? I have this sense that lots of people, including those scientists, are saying, “But why!” and no one has an answer for them. There is probably a life lesson here.
In any case, I’m in no rush to figure anything out, which I recognize is a serious luxury. I study my master gardening material while our chickens scratch for grubs around my feet (I have to tuck my toenails under my toes so Pippo doesn’t peck me). My projects are moving in a direction at a perfectly fine pace for this molten-core-reversing period of time. Here’s what I’m working on.
Current projects
My novel
I started my novel! I am off from my Jan goal of 5000 words, but I am on my way clocking in at 2273. I am unearthing a cast of characters I developed last year when I began this story, revising them, writing their backstories, adding plot detail, and changing point of view from first to third. This weekend I am going with mom to a wifi-less 100-year-old cabin in Ocala National Forest to catch up on the word count goal I’d laid out at the start of the year. Wish me luck!
Letters to Dead People (poetry collection)
This month I submitted my manuscript to a possible publisher for the first time. I’ve been considering why I haven’t submitted it to more places, whether it’s actually done, and if there isn’t something else I’d ultimately like to do with it. It is so very personal, and I have some cool ideas for form I’d still like to explore that might make this a better handbound art piece than a commercial object. We’ll see!
Short stories
I continue to submit “Panther Girl.” Thank you for the kind feedback and interest. I have drafts of a couple new stories too: “The Woman and the World,” about a feisty woman who has hidden away from society in her self-sustaining food forest only to emerge after forty years to a world she would never have expected. And “Notes on the Door” which I will leave to the imagination for now.
What’s ahead
A little more of all of the above. I want to get back into my well-traveled ruts, feel better and more secure in my writing process. I want to stop focusing on submissions so much to let what’s still out there play out then adjust course as needed. I want to see what the pinprick of light opens up to. As my trusty weekly writers group (and Leonard Cohen) reminds me:
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
—Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”
My January stats
Pending submissions: 58 poems, 1 story, 19 publications
Declines: 34 pieces, 8 publications
Acceptances: 0
New or newly edited pieces: 13 poems, 1 story, 1 30pp chapbook submission Novel word count: 2273
What I’ve been reading
A favorite by the recently decesased Linda Pastan. It suits the moment – “All We Have to Go By”
“The Right Not to be Fun at Work” is a just-right news piece/essay, brought to us by the French, and Lauren Collins.
This one surprised me, as I tend to like poetry that is a little more accessible, but this concept was surprisingly so. It stood out. “Autocorrect” by Lena Khalaf Taffaha.
A couple light/dark pieces. “Job” and “The Car” by Joseph Ceravolo.
And last but not least, Poetry Cam, a WIP by Ryan Mather and Carolyn Zhang. I’m not one who believes AI will supplant artists, but I do believe it will change art, and probably make it more available to and fun for people. I’m here for it.
Anyway. Welcome to February. For fellow gardeners out there, happy planting and see you in a couple weeks, when things have grown a little taller. And hopefully a little lighter too.
xo,
cassie.