January 5, 2024

Creative Goals for 2024

We woke up to 2024 with a thin layer of snow on the ground, surprise, surprise, particularly in this winter that isn’t—not that I’m complaining about that. But the snow delighted me, a fresh coat, a blank canvas, the perfect note on which to begin again. And for (at least?) the fifth year in a row, we returned to the lake to greet the year, to the edge of the land, where the waves come in again and again, where the beach is forever changing, never the same place twice.

A fresh coat, a blank canvas—these things invigorate me. I’ve spent the last three weeks laying low, staying quiet, coming back to myself after an autumn that left me quite exhausted and feeling creatively paralyzed, most uninspired. The space and quiet making me feel ready to create again, to get excited and make things. To switch up my routines as well and try some new things, to recalibrate. And to decide that the following are where my creative focus will be directed.

1. Finish my novel! This is my Emily Henry-meets-Katherine Heiny-with Barbara Pym as a maiden aunt-book, which I’ve been writing since 2021, and which just might be the freshest, funniest, smartest thing I’ve ever written. It currently needs its final third radically altered, and my goal is to have the draft ready to go by the end of January.
2. Focus on long-form writing (ie sign up for my Substack!): I spent all fall yearning to write an essay about why a museum takes up so much real estate in my novel, but lacked the time/focus to get it done, until I was called on to write an author talk for an event in November, and finally getting that piece on paper just felt so good. I want more of that! And I want less of the fragmentation of thinking that results from so much time spent on Instagram. AND SO…I am trading that time for a commitment to writing one fun, rich and engaging essay every month throughout 2024, and after the first three months, those essays are going to be for paid subscribers only on my Substack. (If you already subscribe to my newsletter, which is a digest of blog posts and book reviews, you’re automatically signed up for the Substack—watch your inbox for my first essay [on Danielle Steel’s Jewels, naturally!] at the end of the month!)
3. Create a podcast! Coming in March. WATCH THIS SPACE!! I am excited to learn more about audio recording and editing and to have some fun conversations about books and reading.
4. Begin a new book: There is a story in my head, or rather a sweeping family tree, and I think that all this might be a book I want to write (a book that inspired me to pick up Danielle Steel’s Jewels again, actually!). I want to write a saga! A saga necessitating the fact of historical fiction. Am I up to it? Can I pull it off? The only way to find out is to try….

December 31, 2016

Listen. Be Better.

I eschewed principles in general about twenty years ago—this after a painful attempt to compile in my journal a list entitled “What I Think About Things.” I recall that “abortion” was an item, and that while I’d never have one myself, I wanted other women to have the freedom to choose. Each item in the list was written in marker, alternating colours. I was trying to stand for something, because I’d read that if you don’t you’ll fall for anything. (I think I read that in someone’s high school yearbook grad comment.) Eventually, I gave up, because life itself is fluid, evolving, confusing and weird. And I think that this giving up was a vital part of my process of growing up, as much as the time I realized that if I was sure I was right about something and the person I was arguing with was just as sure of their own rightness, then what even was the point of being right? Did it mean nothing? Put that in your journal with a swoopy script and sparkly ink.

I consider all this now coming out of a year that’s been defined by polarities in broad communities and narrower ones. A year in which I’ve discovered that the kind of people who write racist comments responding to newspaper articles about First Nations people, just say, are actually people who exist in the world and are surprisingly fuelled by self-righteousness. So too are people who hate feminists and blame women for their sons’ unemployment. And those for whom “Blue Lives Matter” is a legitimate hashtag. It’s been a year in which believing women has been raised being the opposite of justice, and a movement against cultural appropriation seen as cultural oppression. “Yes, and,” I want to respond though. “Yes, but…” I want to answer. So what are we do to?

I’ve spent the week offline and reading biographies—Jane Jacobs, Claude Monet and Shirley Jackson. More about all of these in a post-to-come, but what I’ve taken away from all of these is the vastness of context, and how none of what we’re going through right now is remotely new. (Georges Clemenceau getting death threats in 1916 from right-wing religious zealots—do you too take heart from the fact that this sort of this is not a recent phenomenon? People have always been this stupid.) And what I’ve taken as well is the importance of keeping calm and having a long-view. Of doing what you can, but also acknowledging that getting hysterical is not going to serve anyone. These books and some time to think have led me to what, I think, will be my mantra for the year ahead.

Which is: LISTEN. BE BETTER. And that’s all. Be better than them, than that. Than you. Be better than the way it’s easiest for you to be, I mean. And understand that your willingness to listen is more important than anything you might have to say, or think—this is especially important if you are a white person considering issues of culture and race, for example. Which is not to say that one should not stand for something—I for one will be participating in the Toronto satellite of the Women’s March on Washington on January 21. It’s just that as I stand, my mantra will be the foundation of my action, rather than fervent self-righteousness or religious fervour, just say. I will acknowledge complexity, incongruity, tension, disagreement—all those things that make the world interesting, if, alas, it makes it tricky to hold in your hand.