2023.
i'm gonna tell you about my year via a list of ten of my favorite things and it's gonna be a great time
well well well. look who’s back again.
i last wrote to you from june of this year and now it is december. in the intervening 6 months i have:
been back to greece for the first time in a while (and specifically back to my family’s Ancestral Home for the first time in even longer), started to write an essay about it, and then forgot about said essay until right now as i’m typing this sentence
turned in a book, gotten notes back, revised the book, turned in that revision, gotten notes back, and begun another revision, which i’m working on currently
attended three weddings, none of them mine (or were they ALL MINE! you’ll NEVER KNOW!)
finally learned the names of my barista best friends who very kindly give me discounts and look the other way when i stare at my laptop for an hour with a horrified expression because one (1) single word in the paragraph i’m working on doesn’t have quite the syllabic weight i want
2023 was a big writing year for me. a lesson in working hard without much to show for it in public—a wholehearted embrace of the habits i’d started to adopt at the end of 2022—an exercise in prioritizing my own creative instincts in my work, and a reminder that i’m better at my job when i love what i’m doing.
i think i’ll have more to say about all of that soon, when this book that’s dominated my year gets a little closer to being yours to read. until then, some of my favorite things from this year in no particular order.
also maybe tell me some of yours
anyway let’s go
FAVORITE ONE: in an orchard grown from ash
yes! the book i released this year! i love seeing this book on my shelf next to garden and knowing that i got to take so many of my favorite things — greece, sibling stories, fantasy epics with a ton of moving parts, a girl falling out of love with her zombie boyfriend and into love with a bitch queen, a Tall Stoic Dude Holding Two Swords But Wow He Cares About You!, incorrect translations of ancient texts — and smash them together into a series
what? are those not you favorite things also?
“a raw, emotional journey of a family created and broken by the consequences of their actions” — Library Journal, starred review
“the longest book I’ve ever written” — me
FAVORITE TWO: being a regular at a local spot
three cheers for my local coffee shop i.e. the workplace of my aforementioned barista best friends! prior to lockdown in 2020 i was a regular/did my writing at a different coffee shop but i was mortified by that fact and did everything i could to stay invisible…. yes partly bc my writing routine then involved a lot of public weeping in frustration and nobody needed to see that but ALSO bc i was sure that if i ordered the same thing every day the baristas would gather after work to have a “hey what the fuck is up with that Large Iced Coffee And Raspberry Bar bitch” meeting
but starting last fall i’ve changed coffee shops (better dogspotting plus this one has sandwiches. can’t resist a sandwich.) and decided that you know what??? it’s fucking FINE!!!! i don’t have to try to be invisible! they can know my name! i can know theirs! they can know that i like a medium iced caramel latte with oat milk! (so can you i guess!) i can know who usually closes on weekdays! that’s allowed and it’s fine and in fact it’s NICE to go in and see a couple of the same customers at their same tables and maybe whoever’s working has already made my latte bc they saw me parking across the street or maybe they haven’t but it’s a space that is mine (that isn’t mine).
it is all right for people to see you, it turns out.
FAVORITE THREE: dead ringers
okay i swear i wrote about dead ringers some other time this year but when i went back through every newsletter i’ve sent (not a hard job considering there’s like 2) i couldn’t find anything about it so!
i loved dead ringers! rachel weisz giving two incredible performances plus a vibe that is aggressively trying to Accomplish something instead of just. being a vibe. definitely check content warnings before you watch bc it is fuckin GROSS and nobody has a good time in it but i had a great time watching it and i love shit that is just like. idk how to put it. this show is a grimy little freak. i’m going to kiss it on the forehead.
FAVORITE FOUR: baldur’s gate 3
i have racked up close to 500 hours playing this game like i had to uninstall it from my pc bc if i hadn’t i would be playing it right now instead of writing this. i think i finished four playthroughs? maybe 5 if we add up the couple ones where i’ve gotten to act 3 and just immediately bailed and started over bc i like the first two acts better. if you have played leave your favorite tav build below — for me it’s a tossup between gloomstalker/thief, an absolute WRECKING BALL oathbreaker paladin/blade warlock (holy SHIT), and full sorcerer w/ a high con saving throw (twin spell haste baybeeeeee)
FAVORITE FIVE: whether violent or natural, by natasha calder
i blurbed a couple books this year and am still thinking about natasha calder’s. will you like it? i honestly cannot think of a question more immaterial to my purposes
what matters is that i took pictures of like 6 or 7 different pages and texted them to everyone i know because the prose was so fuckin ELECTRIC and i know i know that’s such a blurb word to use like what does electric really mean
i will SHOW you
that’s the first paragraph!!!! bro!!! what the FUCK!
reading it reminded me of how it felt to read the first sentence from hotel world by ali smith1 which was so exciting to me because it was a reminder of what language can do and how much it can move and twitch and spiral and sometimes i get frustrated with my prose and how bluntly i wield it as a tool so how invigorating to be reminded that language can do Whatever you want it to do. you just have to keep working it.
FAVORITE SIX: spreadsheets (or charts, or tables, etc)
if i’ve learned anything about myself this year it’s this: i will make a spreadsheet for anything. book revision? spreadsheet. packing for a few weeks away? spreadsheet. someone wants to start watching the x-files? spreadsheet outlining which episodes they should watch, which are good (not always the same thing), and which episodes are key for the mulder/scully of it all.
i am not a particularly organized person so the idea of using tables/charts/spreadsheets for stuff never seemed like something that would suit me but i AM a visual thinker and apparently google sheets is my soulmate idk man
my favorite spreadsheet? christie yant’s word tracker. if you know christie tell her i love her. i’ve been using it regularly to track my fiction writing for about 2 years now and while my workdays aren’t always the kind that can be recorded in terms of “words produced” — a revision day, for instance, might be a lot of work but only result in like 2 new words — i still try to mark them as time spent so that i have a semi-accurate picture of my writing habits. i’ve never thought of myself as a particularly hard worker (whether that’s a correct self-assessment or not, who can say) and don’t always trust my own memory of things, so it’s been incredibly gratifying and validating to see my effort and time represented visually.
FAVORITE SEVEN: flyaway, by kathleen jennings
i will begin by saying yes, mom, i know i owe my vibe-connection with australian fiction to your repeated telling throughout my childhood of the story of how you almost went to film school in australia. yes, i know it’s because you kept talking about the year of living dangerously. yes, it’s probably also because you kept talking about picnic at hanging rock. (did you talk about that? i feel like you did) we can discuss this in full when i get to your house tomorrow for the holiday.
and now i will continue by saying this is a great little novella that tells its story in a cool lyric woodcut folk vignette inkprint sunburn old house kind of way. you know what i mean. yes you do.
FAVORITE EIGHT: the art of the drive-thru diet coke
picture this. it’s 6:27 pm. you just finished your work for the day. you could go home, sure. you could open your fridge and take out a can of diet coke and drink it. yeah you could do all that. OR.
or.
you could go 10 minutes out of your way on the drive home to go through the wendy’s drive through that’s kind of hidden under that weird overpass so it’s never busy and you could order a large diet coke. and when they say “anything else?” you say “no” and you know that whoever is pouring that diet coke is thinking “wow. this customer knows how to LIVE.” because what is better i ask you than a large fountain soda with a straw? a large fountain soda2 with a straw that you drink in the car.
you’d think that these sodas are such a good experience that they should be added to the end of every workday, but you would be wrong. i can’t even tell you how to determine which day should be a soda day. i will just tell you that you know. some part of you knows. is today one such day? shhhhh. listen. what does your heart tell you
(yes)
FAVORITE NINE: going to the movies alone
this spring i decided to be the bravest girl in the entire world and go to a movie by myself because a little theater near me was doing a special showing of aftersun and i’d wanted to see it during its original run but nobody had time to go with me AND i knew that when it hit streaming i’d put it on my list to watch and then never watch it because i’d never feel like i could pay enough attention to it if i was just watching in my living room on my laptop SO!!!! i WENT!! and it was fucking great! (the movie and also the experience)
since then i’ve gone solo to see to maybe eight or nine movies this year and i really cannot recommend it highly enough. i get to arrive exactly when i want to arrive (extra early so i don’t miss the previews obv)! i sit exactly where i want to sit! nobody laughs at me when i cry during the first 30 seconds of asteroid city bc it’s so cool to see someone making art that is so specifically Them in both form and content!
FAVORITE TEN: succession
it wouldn’t be a post about this year without some mention of succession aka the great love of my life but don’t worry i won’t go on and on any more than i already have
i will just say that i miss kendall roy and i hope he’s doing okay (he isn’t)
NEXT YEAR
some predictions
i will forget to send another newsletter until at least april
i will be able to tell you what i’ve been working on for the past year
scallion will ratatouille me
i’ll watch more tv and tell you about it
some goals
write more
write agile write alive write like an uppercut
write scream-needle-whetstone-snakebite shit that either hits just right or fails big
that’s it really
i hope you’re well. i hope you’re finding things you love and keeping them close, and i’ll see you in the new year 💚
which reads as follows:
“Woooooooo-
hooooooo what a fall what a soar what a plummet what a dash into dark into light what a plunge what a glide thud crash what a drop what a rush what a swoop what a fright what a mad hushed skirl what a smash mush mash-up broke and gashed what a heart in my mouth what an end.”
i’m saying fountain soda and not diet coke specifically to allow for those of you who prefer a diet dr pepper. no other choices will do. i mean… regular coke? regular diet dr pepper? OR WORSE? SPRITE? what’s happened to your tastebuds!!!!! disgusting!!!!!