March 29, 2024
Katherine Heiny Gave Me Permission
I’m so happy with my latest essay on Substack (which puts me 1/4 of the way toward my goal of writing an essay every month!). It’s called “Katherine Heiny Gave Me Permission”, and I hope you like it too.
This is my last free substack essay—beginning in April, they’re available to paid subscribers only. Because I really appreciate my blog readers for being here all along, I have three free one year paid subscriptions to give away, and two are still available. If you’d like to receive one, email me at klclare AT gmail DOT com and let me know!
February 29, 2024
My February Substack Essay
As you know already, if you’ve been following along, I’ve set myself a challenge of writing a long-form essay every month this year. The second one went live this morning and I am really proud of it—“In Praise of Pieces: Commonplace Books, Friendship Quotes, and Our Bookless Book Club.” I’m posting these essays on Substack, because the opportunity to monetize my writing is something I want to explore, because I want to try something new, and also because Substack offers podcast hosting (the teaser for my new podcast came out yesterday!).
It’s funny though because Substack is working very hard to embrace elements of social media platforms (they just introduced direct messaging, their “notes” is like a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook) and I’m just not interested in any of it. As always, I keep coming back to my blog, to the opportunity to be read in semi-obscurity. And I appreciate the readers who show up here so much.
My first three Substack essays will be available for everyone to read, but thereafter (beginning in April) will be for paid subscribers only. To show my gratitude to the readers who show up for me here, I’d like to give away paid subscriptions to the first three people who get in touch to claim them. Drop me an email at klclare AT gmail DOT com! (I’ll put a note here when they’re gone.)
February 26, 2024
Reading and Writing
If you receive my newsletter (February edition went out last week!), then you already know that I’ve had a rich and fulfilling month in terms of reading and writing, and creating. And if you don’t receive my newsletter, well, you’re now officially up to date, since you’re already here on my blog and my newsletter is a digested version of my blog posts and book reviews anyway. EXCEPT for my new creative project of writing a long form essay every month, of course. (Last month’s was about the delights of rereading Danielle Steele—have you read it yet?) I have taken exquisite pleasure in writing these pieces, and my next one will be arriving in inboxes on THURSDAY. It’s called “In Praise of Pieces: Commonplace Books, Friendship Quotes, and Our Bookless Book Club” and I’m really excited to share it with you. As with last month’s essay, and like next month’s, these essays will be available for all subscribers, and thereafter for paid subscribers only. As I wrote in my newsletter, “I entered into this enterprise with the lowest expectations, with the intention of finding a different way to be online and channelling my thoughts and ideas into long-form projects whose composition seemed like it might help to further mend my brain after more than a decade of fragmentation on social media. And let me tell you, it has felt so good to write these longer pieces, so rich and satisfying. And it has felt even better to have so many of you become paid subscribers to receive these pieces.” Thanks to everybody who has read, shared, or supported. Challenging myself in this way has been so satisfying. It has also meant that I got to spend part of last week rereading Katherine Heiny’s EARLY MORNING RISER, because my March essay is going to be all about her work and what it means to me.
If you’re not on my newsletter list yet, you can sign up here.
January 25, 2024
The Writing is the Point
I texted my husband a few months ago with an idea I had for a new novel. He replied with a comment about how he was excited that I was excited about writing something new. “I bet you are, ha ha,” I wrote back, because he’d been the one to console me through my months of post-publication ennui, but he affirmed that he really meant it, because he knows that writing is a thing I do, even if it’s not a wise thing, and certainly not a financially lucrative thing, even if publication itself is not a destination that delivers me much in the way of satisfaction and contentment. And that is why I love him, and this is what love is, I think, someone who gives you permission to make bad choices that are the right choices, because even though they might know better, they also understand.
Towards the end of December, I was feeling paralyzed creatively, any confidence I’d felt in my abilities and expertise totally zapped by how hard it had been to publish my latest novel. I felt like a fraud. It was painful, and dispiriting, and I’m so grateful for the long break I took over the holidays, to retreat from the FOMO of the online world and take solace in actual real life people (to quote a certain Anna) and a huge pile of books, to feel my soul grow back, and begin to feel creative and inspired again.
In 2021, I hadn’t been without a project in years. I started Mitzi Bytes in 2014, I started Asking for a Friend in 2015, published Mitzi Bytes in 2017, and started Waiting for a Star to Fall in 2018. That makes for almost a decade with something creative waiting in my back pocket, an easy answer to the question, are you working on something new? Plus there was a global pandemic still going on and, though I didn’t know it at the time, I was well on my way to a mental health crisis that was going to break my brain, so it’s not so surprising that I was having some trouble thinking up a new idea for a book.
Somehow I broke through that pressure, however, and started writing a novel about a woman who has just left (exploded) her marriage and who begins a new life in a Toronto rooming house, a novel about a character I’d envisioned as a modern day Barbara Pym heroine. I had a framework for the novel, 12 chapters, each one taking place over a month, the entire novel the course of a year. The trouble started, however, when I’d reached 70,000 words and wasn’t even six months in, plus the problem of there being no plot. So I abandoned that project, and decided I would write a thriller, but then that fell apart, and then I fell apart. Speaking of paralyzed.
Imagine my surprise, however, when I reread the modern-day Pym book a year later…and realized it was really good? (It was really good because, though my crippling self-doubt of last fall would tell me otherwise, I’ve figured out a thing or two about writing novels, and also because I started writing it under the influence of Katherine Heiny, whose work has taught essential things about enlivening fiction and highlighting the absurdity of everyday life). I decided to abandon the 12 chapter framework, broke the chapters down into smaller pieces, conceded that a literary arc could be possible in a six month period, and just fell deeper and deeper in love with Clemence Lathbury and her world.
Last year I set to revising the manuscript, in between edits and revisions on Asking for a Friend, preparing for that book’s publication, and working with manuscript consultation clients…and I didn’t get much done. Something was missing, and I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t have the focus. Maybe there’d been nothing there there after all? But the bits of dabbling I was doing over the fall suggested otherwise. At the end of December, as I recovered from a difficult season and prepared to start creating again—remember, I had this idea for another new novel, this one a family saga—I set a goal of first getting Clemence’s story into fighting form by the end of January, if such a thing was even possible. Was it possible?
But reader, I did it! Yesterday I added the final link in the thread that had been missing from my narrative, and today I read the final chapter and the epilogue, and was just absolutely dazzled by the ending, which I’d forgotten altogether, and I was properly impressed with myself for pulling it off. I begin working with manuscript consultation clients for the next two months, but will commit to a read-through in April, after which point I will likely (!) send it off to my agent. The prospect of which terrifies me to no end, because while I think that my agent will like it, and that it’s the best book I’ve ever written (so fun! so smart! so full of humour and light!) I’m also the author of three poor-selling novels, which is not a stellar track record, and the deeper on gets on that path, the harder it becomes to change course. Sigh.
But right now, I’m choosing not to focus on that, instead to celebrate my win of getting to this finish light, amidst global crises, and mental health breakdowns: I have written another novel and I really really love it. I am also having fun putting together my new newsletter, and I’m recording the first interview for my new podcast tomorrow! And at some point in the next few months, I’m going to start writing that family saga, and maybe I won’t be able to pull it off, and maybe no one’s going to want to publish it even if I do, a challenge I’ll face if and when it arrives, but in the meantime I will do what I do, which is write, because I love to write, because the writing is the point.
January 8, 2024
One Hand in My Pocket
I’ve been thinking a lot about Shawna Lemay’s New Year’s post, “Learning to Be Of Two Minds,” mostly because my own personal 2024 quest (which is to be more human) involves precisely that, I think—even if I also struggle with this sense that I possibly might not know my own mind, the voice in my head consistently taking down any coherent narrative I’m offering it, which is exhausting, flip-floppy, though maybe the problem is that I’ve not learned to be of two minds, but rather my two minds are forever in conflict, which is something I need to resolve, to learn to let those two minds be.
Shawna’s post (which quotes Alanis Morissette and Marilynne Robinson) spoke to me in two (of course!) central ways, both creatively stimulating. First, it made me realize that the title of the novel which I’m working to have a new completed draft of by the end of the month needs to be titled ONE HAND IN MY POCKET. Why? Because it’s about a character whose life is a work in progress, a woman for whom it all comes down to that she “hasn’t got it all figured out just yet.”
And second, because of how the idea of having one hand in my pocket (as well as not having it all figured out just yet) really speaks to me in terms of where I’m at personally, and creatively. I feel like I’ve spend the last 10+ years showing all my cards, sharing my process, all the time, and that kind of openness has become unsatisfying.
In a piece in The Toronto Star this week (promoting her new book Let It Go), author Chelene Knight writes: “When I share something painful or heavy, I ask myself what I need in return and ensure I share my pain in spaces where I can receive what I need. I’m grateful for my intentional community. This is why social media is more of a highlight reel for me — the online world doesn’t get to have both my joy and my pain; they receive only the pieces I’m willing to give away because it’s unlikely I’ll get back what I need. But sadly, we don’t always consider social media as an intentional exchange.”
In 2024, I want to be more thoughtful about such transactions, and keep more things—more the joy and the pain—just for me, and the people in my life. Which is to say, I want to keep one hand in my pocket (and the other one is giving a high five. Or gathering sea glass. Probably not flicking a cigarette).
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.
- 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.
- 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!)
- 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.
- 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….
October 15, 2022
Two Spots Left!
I’ve got TWO MORE spaces for manuscript consultations in December before I close up shop to spend the next few months on on my own writing, so if you want to work together, this is your chance!
Here’s how it works: I charge $1000 CDN plus tax for fiction manuscripts 80,000 or less. I will receive your draft by December 1 and get back to you mid-month with a detailed letter outlining my responses and a draft of your ms with my annotations, and then we’ll have a one hour online meeting to talk about how great your book is and what its possibilities are.
My approach is big picture, plot and plausibility, character development, narrative style, and I’ve worked with everything from first drafts to manuscripts already contracted for publication. My job is to make you excited to tackle the challenges of your next draft, and to use what I’ve learned from my experience as an expert reader, book reviewer, anthology editor, and author of three novels to help you take your work to the next level.
I love this work SO MUCH, and that’s partly because of the confidence with which I can say I’m really good at it.
And I’d love to work with you! Email me to claim your spot.
June 9, 2022
I want to read your fiction!
I’m just a woman…
standing in front of a mural…
…dreaming up ways to help you take your fiction W.I.P. to the next level!
I’ve got spaces available for manuscript evaluation this summer!
With decades of expert-reader experience (including as a book reviewer and anthology editor), along with everything I’ve learned (a lot!) as author of three novels, I know I can help you get your manuscript to where it needs to be.
Email me (kerryclare@gmail.com) if you’re interested! I charge $1000 CDN for a manuscript 100,000 words or less, and only accept projects where I know I can give you your money’s worth (ie for your novel about faeries, you may need to talk to someone else).
Looking forward to working with you!
April 27, 2022
The Direction of Your Dreams
I was recently writing in a journal of prompts in response to the question of what I’d like to tell my younger self about my life right now. And what I remembered was how much possibility my younger self once found in the phrase attributed to Thoreau , “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams and live the life you imagine.” Inscribing it into all kinds of scrapbooks, perhaps purchasing a poster of a sunset with it quoted.
What I’d tell my younger self: “Look! I did it.”
*
Two years after my first novel came out, I’d found myself in a creative jam. My publisher had rejected my next novel. I was proud of Mitzi Bytes, but its sales hadn’t set the world on fire, and I was feeling pretty despondent. Like this was my chance, and I’d blown it.
(Never mind that so much of things like book sales are outside an author’s control. Suspicions I’d long held were underlined in a really smart and candid recent post by novelist S.K. Ali, who wrote, “Your book sales are not yours to bear…if you love marketing, great! but a publisher has the greatest pull of all and can put a book on any list — NYT, Indie, USA Today etc — without you moving a finger. So, Sajidah, keep doing all of that stuff you do, giveaways, tiktoks, AMAs, but only because you love your readers. [Those things don’t move book sales. YOU don’t move book sales. Don’t bear that burden.]”)
It was late 2018, in response to that despondency, and feeling like I’d used up all my chances, that I decided to conjure some more. In 2019, I launched the #BacktotheBlog Movement, which led to Blog School, and also a wonderful bookselling project I’m still so proud of, the now-departed Briny Books. And then, in the midst of that summer, I signed a deal for my second novel, everything coming up Kerry after all.
*
I wonder if any advice I have to impart about going in the direction of one’s dreams would be as relevant if I hadn’t ended up defying the odds and getting that book deal in the end? I think it probably would, because my happy ending was not the end, but just another chapter (hurrah!), but experience has shown me that an author is never set, never really arrives, that writing, like everything, is a process of becoming, and the next thing is never sure. That the advice about going in the direction of one’s dreams never stops being applicable.
*
When I say, “Keep going! Don’t give up,” I’m not saying that you should keep beating your head against a brick wall. Sometimes “keep going” means doing something different, a shift, a pivot. I finished a novel in 2007 that nobody wanted to publish, and I’m glad I didn’t go to the ends of the earth in an attempt to find a publisher, because I might have found one if I’d tried hard enough, and that novel wasn’t very good.
What I’m saying is don’t stop creating things. Don’t stop being inspired. The wonderful thing about literature is that readers are so central to the form—there’s nothing passive about it. Keep reading. Keep engaging with ideas. Keep a notebook. Keep a blog. Maybe you have bigger dreams of projects you’d like to get to the end of, but in the meantime, a notebook, a blog. A quilt. A cake. A conversation. All these things are tangible and real. In keeping with the life you’ve imagined.
*
*
I started thinking about all of this in response to a recent post by Kelly Duran, whose kindness, generosity and candour as an author has been so refreshing to encounter. Her feelings about where she is two years out from her debut novel resonated with me for sure, and made think about the metrics we have to measure success. As well as the dangers on fixating where we’re going instead of noticing and appreciating where we are right now.
With writing, its always about the next thing. And while I understand that, but it’s not the way I want live my days, to measure out my life. I want to rest on my laurels. I want to breathe. I want to rest.
*
I started thinking about all this in response to the book Creative Not Famous: The Small Potato Manifesto, by Ayun Halliday, whose comics I used to read in Bust Magazine back in the days when I was learning to call myself a feminist. I think I am the small potato I am because of Halliday’s influence, because of her example that it’s possible to live a creative life, to combine that life with motherhood. Blogging’s DIY ethos in line with her zines and off-off-Broadway plays. Her example of how exactly one goes about confidently in the direction of one’s dreams and lives the life she imagines.
Most of us are never going to hit the big time. But is that really the reason we’re doing it?
It’s not the dreams themselves, it’s the direction.
I’m thinking of yoga, and how much of a pose is about reaching for it instead of actually getting there, and how it’s really the reaching that makes the process worthwhile.
If you didn’t have to reach, what would be the point?
*
I remember thinking about my goals when I was a little bit older, too old to be penning axioms by Thoreau into pretty notebooks, and I wasn’t actually thinking about Thoreau at all. But I was plotting out my life the way one might be plotting the trajectory of a line on a graph, and it occurred to me that if I tried to be a writer, to write, that even if I never achieved such goals as a published book (or two books, or three, or a bestseller, or a prestigious prize) that I’d end up in a very different and likely more interesting place than if I hadn’t tried at all.
That it’s actually impossible to lose this game.
*
What Thoreau actually said, from Walden: “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
March 18, 2022
Home Office
The desk we bought to replace a patio table we’d been using indoors at the height of WFH (about a year ago; things since then have improved and half our household now leaves the house to go to school) finally has a proper chair, thanks to Tiny Beaches Interiors, from whom we also got the desk. And I’m working here today because it’s March Break downstairs and I’m spending this morning working on Draft 2 of my new novel, which I’m billing as “Emily Henry meets Katherine Heiny, with maiden aunt Barbara Pym looking on approvingly.” It’s a lot of fun.
