Too Many Tabs

A status update for my readers

Dear readers,

I turned 28 and I’m making a resolution: to write to you here once a month for the year. That’s 12 times in the year ahead, at minimum. It might be something short or something old. Or some new thoughts of the day, typed up and then sent off in more of a hurry than my other writing. My one and only Big Goal™ for the year is to get some of my writing published somewhere exciting, and I’m hoping this resolution helps me move towards that goal. Because I forget, sometimes, that I can call something done and share it with readers as I see fit, when I choose to, without approval from professors or editors as middle men.

We talk a lot, in the MFA world and in writing circles, about finding your readers. It is perhaps the piece of advice, or rather a proclamation about the purpose of MFAs, that I hear the most. “Here, you will find your readers,” professors and visiting authors love to say on stage in front of the green velvet curtain. Or sometimes, peering down from the podium: “When I was in your seat, I found my readers.” And I have, in fact, been so lucky as to find some really great readers here at Sarah Lawrence. Which doesn’t mean great friends who also have read my work because we were in class together, although I have a handful of those, too. Finding your readers is finding the people who care about your work and know how to engage with it, know how to reflect it back to you so you can improve it. It’s a reader who knows how to read you.

And I forget that you, too, are my readers. You have been since before this MFA started, you will be after it ends. My captive audience. I forget how lucky I am, in fact, to have you here. (And for the few strangers who have slipped onto this mailing list lately, hello, you are now captive, too.) I have had my fill of readers, really, at school, but as I start to look ahead at what comes next, I’m returning to you here.

I was encouraged to make this resolution recently by a handful of dear friends (whether they knew it or not):

• My email pen-pal/former workshop leader extraordinaire Isabella Welch who wrote a truly beautiful piece about moving and writing in her own Substack recently - go read it, it’s so good. Which reminded me of the delight of a long email from a friend, like this, the reason I started this thing in the first place anyways. The fact that it is a nice treat to be an occasional reader to a friend, too.

• My dear college friend/fellow bicoastal/constant inspiration Michelle who, in response to something or other, DM’d me recently to say: “I need a story from YOU!”

• My life-long best friend Juliette who asked to read my novella recently, again and exactly when I needed a reader this time. When I finally sent it her way, she read it so quickly and had exactly the kind of response I needed to hear.

• My girl Isabella, rest-of-my-life bestie, who is always willing to read or hear about what I’m working on, so much so that I sometimes forget it’s a real ask and kind favor.

• My new MFA poet friend Kerry who, after I read at the last of the student readings of the semester, really kindly insisted I send her some more of my writing.

• And my crew of friends collected on a couch at the end of my birthday dinner, who so willingly listened to me read the same five pages - a perfect captive audience.

• And many of the rest of you who have said variations on the above recently or a long time ago.

So, in honor of (or in thanks to) all that, I’m bringing this channel between writer and reader back to life. Here’s a status update for now, for you.

I’ve been saying this past month or two that I have too many tabs open in my brain. This whole semester, really, has been too many ongoing open-ended projects at once. I forget this newsletter can be a way to close some of them.

The open tabs, at the moment: a short story with a hole in the middle I need to fill, another with an ending I need to re-order. A novella that I have a love-hate relationship with, that has a third act I entirely need to scrap, that I want to get right. An essay about the New York subway I need to add just a handful of sentences to. An essay in vignettes about home I need to give a final read-over and submit out there, or share here. And 25 or so pages of a brand new project that is still taking shape, that needs my time and attention. Not to mention the craft essay about genre I will need to turn in to my advisor come late January. Or the tabs for all the literary magazines I vaguely consider submitting work to until I miss their latest deadline. Also always open, my inbox, with its endless influx of new things to read.

So. I’m trying to close some tabs. But it’s hard to focus on one page long enough to make it to the end, these days. The next deadline arrives before the previous thing is polished and done. It’s a fight with my own perfectionism, and with the many other non-writing things calling my attention and time away from my desk. But I’m making a resolution, and starting with this.

Closing this tab, not over-editing, sending it your way. And starting off 28 with a check mark on the to-do list.

xo,

Cléo