I’m on submission! For those of you without the therapy bills of being involved in publishing, this is the period where a new book is sent to editors of publishing houses and the author waits to here and haunts their phones on Wednesdays and Thursdays (pub board days). This process can take up to a year, but I think it’s more like six months and then you can call it.
This type of waiting is like the wait to find out if you’re pregnant or the wait to go into labor or the wait for medical test results or the wait for a reply to that terribly risky text—you can do all sorts of things to distract yourself, but there’s a part of you that is simply trying to breathe in the agony of it. I say agony because it used to feel that way. When I was younger, all those periods I just described were excruciating spaces and tested my mental strength. I can accept any outcome, but the waiting for the outcome would kill me. Now, it’s not so much agony as it is just another part of the process.
I think sometimes that learning to simply breathe—both while fighting in BJJ, and also pranayama breathing—helped me learn more than any other trick how to live through waiting. Both include the sense of breathing into discomfort or into certain places in the body to create space for yourself. I used to think any surrender was a loss of power, but the surrender to process, to waiting, to your own breath is such a powerful thing. It’s just as much an important part of the cycle as any other. This is the moment to crawl back inside your own body and use your breath to make space for yourself. During my last birth, right before pushing began, I was curled on my side trying to suck down enough air through the pain and I realized how much of a difference it made to breathe into the pain, to breathe to the very bottom of the discomfort and the darkness. It’s like that, but on a much less agonizing scale.
Many authors suggest writing your next book in this time period, but that’s never worked for me. There’s something about the balance of fate that doesn’t allow me to focus on writing and over the years I’ve given up trying to force myself into it. This probably helped ease the agony. I’m thinking about my next book. But mostly I’m doing other things. Less pacing the fence and more wandering around for pieces of grass to nibble on until the gate is opened or I’m sent back to the barn.
Working
It took two and a half years but we are finally embarking on a brand refresh at my dayjob. Even though I knew this was needed when I started, it took this long to ensure the brand was in a stable position for growth and that I understood the brand and it’s customer’s well enough to move the story forward. Now, it’s the exciting stuff. It’s the storytelling and new creative and working with other artists. Sometimes at work I’m in a period of outward focus—the algorithm, culture, trend reporting, business development learning, etc. But right now it’s all about internal work—the story of the brand itself and where it’s going. It’s these cycles that make the work so interesting to me. Our rebrand is more in line with my personal tastes, so that’s more fun. It’ll be a process, but an active one, which fills in the need for creative labor. I honestly find work really satisfying, but especially this job because of its creativity and freedom and livable wage. I should start a portfolio for the future, but honestly I’m scared.
Reading
Sometimes you can’t read while you wait, but when you can—it’s magic. And oh I love reading so much. Bookstores make me so emotional and humble—like look at all these incredible books! I love to read widely, but that being said, I don’t read a ton of adult literary fiction because I find it’s ennui boring. I have loads of ennui, but not that kind! Here’s what I’ve read in the last few weeks:
Feminist Theory, bell hooks
Should have read this years ago!
Disobedient Women, Sarah Stankorb
Divine Rivals, Rebecca Ross
Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden
Silver Nitrate, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
A Kiss at Midnight, Eloisa James
I adore Eloisa James and have never read her fairy tale series, so I’m rectifying that. These are classic romance and I loveee it.
Guardians of Dawn: Ami, S. Jae-Jones
Ami is my bias.
Vampires of El Norte, Isabel Canes
*Shrieks* READ IT! (My favorite kind of horror and my favorite kind of romance, like omg inject it into my veins.)
Our Share of Night, Mariana Enriquez
Mountain Magic, Rebecca Beyer
Savage Appetites, Rachel Monroe
Southern Cunning: Folkloric Witchcraft in the American South, Aaron Oberon
I didn’t like this one. It was too free with the spirits for me.
Media
I basically didn’t watch TV for months to finish my book (excepting my background TV of Dateline, Cops and The First 48, which I will probably never watch again, lol). But I haven’t been rushing to catch up on anything. I should—it’s helpful to understand culture movement when I’m also consuming culture—but I’m just not in the mood and it seems like Netflix has less and less interesting stuff. That being said, I loved most everything I watched.
True Detective: Night Country
adored, hello cosmic horror is back
Percy Jackson
Saltburn
the vibes are impeccable but the story is lol ok
Dune 2
incredible! gorgeous! cinema!
Priscilla
Contrapoints: Twilight
if you read or write romance or conversely dislike genre romance, PLEASE, watch this. It’s so worth it and it’s everything I’ve ever thought about romance
Mostly these days I watch Cocomelon because I’m trying to work and entertain a baby at the same time. Thank god my work is incredibly supportive and understanding.
Try New Things
This is the time to let the waters come back in, to explore and wander and be idle and bored and try things you’re bad at. It’s like you put art on simmer and then dick around in the kitchen while you wait.
I went running for the first time in twelve years (I was really nervous about it, but it was fine). I also have been drawing. I rented a macro lens for work and spent three days shooting product. And back to the usual things that inspire me like hiking. There’s power in this kind of breathing to make yourself some space. Don’t underestimate that power.
Love,
Lemon