2024 in review
year-end favorites and plus goals and plans for 2025!
hello yes i know i’m cutting it a little close but it is still technically 2024 so my year-end wrap up is not late!!!! it’s FINE!!
this newsletter includes:
3 favorites from 2024
a preview of my 2025 (publications, goals, etc)
also unrelated to either of those things but pls point me in the direction of any substacks you enjoy!!! i’d like to have more to read in the new year
2024 FAVORITES
last year i listed my favorites in no particular order. this year there IS a particular order in that the first thing i will mention is my runaway favorite of this year (and probably next) and surprise surprise it is my own work1
1. KILL CREATURES
i have of course loved my work before lmao like please can someone tell my other books not to take this personally! i loved them when i wrote them and i love them now
but writing the first draft of KILL CREATURES felt special. even when the work was frustrating or fruitless or absolutely impossible, i always felt that it was mine. that the only person who mattered when i sat down to work was me.
when i started writing, that kind of cocoon-state seemed much easier to reach. now i find it gets further and further away. and even when i do reach it, i have to work hard to sustain it instead of giving up and googling “what kind of book people love popular goodreads rating over 4 help how write”2
but for KILL CREATURES—for that first draft—that cocoon-state was right at my fingertips, which meant i was very nervous when we announced it and very VERY nervous when we shared the cover. or at least i thought i was nervous? i definitely felt like i was going to throw up and then i texted a friend of mine like “how did i get through this with my other books how have i survived this feeling four separate times i think my liver is gonna leak out of my eye sockets” and she said
“are you sure it’s anxiety though? like are you sure it’s not excitement?”
guys it was excitement.3 i can’t wait to share this book with you okay!!!!
also in case you forgot what it’s about:
Last year, Nan's three best friends ventured into the canyons near their small town and never returned. Now one of them is back, and Nan can't believe it...because she's the one who killed them.
2. GOING TO THE MOVIES
a return favorite from last year continues—nay, expands—its dominance!! god i love the movies. it is really so funny to me to think that this time two years ago the idea of going to a movie alone would’ve sent me into cardiac arrest and now it is something that i look forward to with an enthusiasm that borders on deranged
standout trips to the cinema include:
dune 2 and furiosa for the sheer “brooooooooo just LOOK at that” energy
excuse me where the hell is furiosa in the awards conversation. where is she. you’re telling me we can’t toss chris hemsworth a supporting nod SOMEWHERE at the very least?
conclave for the gossip girl of it all and also for the pair of women a few rows in front of me who approached the screening with the audible bafflement and in fact terror of people experiencing their first ever motion picture
points deducted for the fact that they all had the little square cardinal hats in front of them when they were voting but NONE OF THEM put the hats ON!!!! surely the square hat is half the reason to become a cardinal!
meme sourced from user beepupkin
challengers for the scene with zendaya in the blue dress because i think that might be the most beautiful anyone’s ever looked on film
like this isn’t even doing it justice the substance for demi’s yellow coat and margaret’s heart-shaped hoop earrings4
oh look they're both in yellow hmmmm could that possibly be on purpose do you think interstellar in imax gets an honorable mention and would have placed higher if not for the two (2) fire alarms that went off back to back during the last 5 minutes of the movie
another honorable mention to fellowship of the ring which i saw with some friends this summer when they showed the trilogy in theaters again and oh man that was so good like i so vividly remember seeing it for the first time as a snot-nosed nine year old and — spoiler alert? i guess? — when gandalf falls telling my dad (probably a bit too loudly) “don’t worry he comes back in book two” and how weird and cool and fun to see it again on that huge screen with a sold out theater
would’ve placed higher but that would be doing a disservice to the aforementioned trip as a nine year old during which i should also note that we were in the very front row bc we got there right at showtime and this was before assigned seating
my dad got me situated and then went to out to get popcorn which meant i watched the prologue alone and it was utterly terrifying
incredible movie-going experience, no notes
3. ARTFUL by ali smith
my mom gave me this book like four or five years ago i think and since then it’s been sitting on my shelf untouched waiting for its moment, which came this summer. i was stuck in this feeling that i get more often than i’d like that’s best summed up as: “prose and long-form fiction are these incredible tools and yet when i pick them up i keep using them the same way i always do to make the same thing i always make i know they’re capable of more but i don’t know how to figure out what that more is.”
the way to treat this particular malady is almost always to read and in august i spent a few weeks doing what i called Appetizer Reading which meant i pulled six or seven books from my shelf5 and every day i would read 10-20 pages of each one. some were fiction, some essays, some non-fiction, and some… whatever the hell ARTFUL is. it’s fiction but it’s also a quartet of lectures on craft? the new yorker calls it “a stimulating combination of literary criticism, essay, and fiction”6 while the summary copy on the book’s retailer pages calls it “a magical hybrid” which isn’t really very helpful.
what you need to know, i think, is that ARTFUL felt like genuine innovation. also it made me cry.
AN IMPORTANT ADDENDUM.
you may have noticed that there is no TV mention on my favorites list which is odd coming from me a person who watches television approximately 22 hours a day but to be honest whenever i try to identify some favorite or significant television watching experiences this year i can only think of how i watched 10 seasons of vanderpump rules in like two weeks and i don’t really know that we need to spend a whole lot of time discussing that!!!7
LOOKING AHEAD
where you can find my work in 2025 plus some goals for the coming year
PUBLICATIONS
the Critical Role Vox Machina anniversary anthology i wrote a story for releases on march 4th! you can get a hint as to who i wrote about in the summary copy on the website (and by hint i mean it says it pretty directly but i’m Not Supposed To Tell You Yet)
and then KILL CREATURES releases on june 3rd so everybody just jot that down
GOALS FOR 2025
WRITE MORE WORDS. like literally write a higher number of words. i say this not because i have a number in mind that i’m shooting for, total, in 2025, or even because i have fixed daily goals. i mean yes i love when the little boxes on my word count tracker spreadsheet change color because i wrote enough to put me in the orange bracket instead of the purple one — who wouldn’t — but this goal comes from a lesson i THINK i have finally learned which is “when stuck, use the page to figure it out.”
like. brainstorming? thinking it through? considering every angle and wisely deciding which is best? no i cannot do those things or at least i cannot do them in a way that is more efficient or more enjoyable than when i just say “okay let’s get this baby on the road and see what we’re working with.”
so many times this year i got stuck and so i Stopped and Sat and Thought and Imagined like serious thinky writers do and do you know what!!! if i had just sat at my keyboard and TRIED some things i might have been a little more successful unsticking myself AND i might’ve had a little more fun while i was at it
this is of course not a one size fits all approach! but in general i would like my instinct, when stuck, to be “write some more stuff.” like instead of thinking my way to the bottom of the ocean why don’t i just fuckin swim, you know?8
TRUST MYSELF. in 2024 i said i wanted to swing hard at every pitch, by which i meant that when i didn’t want to play it safe or hedge my bets. big swings, big risks, and if that led to big failure, then that was okay. for 2025 i’m going to re-angle the baseball metaphor here and say that yes, when you swing, swing hard and swing big, but you don’t have to go for every pitch. sometimes something in your gut says “not this one. let it go.” and you should listen to that something or at least like give it a second to explain itself
i spent the back half of 2024 ignoring my gut and instead i pinwheeled through a bunch of projects, each time confidently telling my agents “this is totally what i’m gonna work on!!! see you with a full draft!!” only to come staggering back six weeks later like “well. not that i guess”
the thing is i think i knew what i wanted to work on the whole time but i was waiting for somebody else to say “yes that idea” which is so SILLY! i am lucky enough to work with incredibly supportive people and if i had just been honest with myself — and subsequently them — they would’ve been totally behind me but noooo i didn’t believe “i’m interested in it” was a good enough reason to pursue an idea.9
and look maybe the object of my creative affections will change in another two weeks or two months or two hours. i’ve never been accused of being a particularly…. focused… person. but we’ll cross that bridge (or swing at? that? pitch? the metaphors have escaped containment) when we come to it
this has been an odd work year for me. i went into 2024 hoping to produce a lot of new words (specifically a complete draft of a new book full of pure next level GENIUS thank you very much) and instead it ended up being a year about revising, both in the actual and metaphorical sense. a year of stress-testing the habits i learned to implement in 2023, of adjusting, of reworking and securing and deleting and polishing. i hope this means i’ll be ready for new things in 2025. and frankly i’ll be doing them whether i am or not, so!
happy new year from me my laptop and my cat! sending you the very best wishes for 2025. stay safe; stay well. we will see you soon.
i know i’ve waxed poetic about how much i loved writing KILL CREATURES before but you’re all just gonna bear with me and listen
i take the fact that i have not been able to find answers this way as even more proof that google is broken now. if this were 2017 google would have the answer for me and i would have no problems ever!!!!
did some googling to help sort that out too
reading this list back is making me laugh like oh you liked dune 2 and challengers and conclave and the substance? yeah you and every other letterboxd gay on the internet!! but LISTEN!!!!!! we like them bc they’re GOOD!
i find i have the most success with Appetizer Reading when the books i select are ones i didn’t buy for myself or ones i bought just on cover vibes or something — the less i know about it the better
i think they could’ve done a bit better than “stimulating” but all right
that said i will still talk about it with anyone who wants to
what do we think the odds are that next year my goal is like “stop rushing ahead when you know there’s a problem” or something
do you SEE why kill creatures was so special????? the cocoon-state! she eludes me!