don't go blindly into the dark
finding joy in your writing practice + December intentions
Welcome to Write More! This is the monthly intentions email, which goes out the last Sunday before a new month starts. It’s a chance to fight the Sunday Scaries by thinking through your goals and intentions for your writing practice in the coming month and to reflect on your progress in the previous month.
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Hi, friends. Here we are in late November, in the gooey, sparkly part of the year between Thanksgiving and Christmas and the year’s end. How are you?
The tagline for this newsletter says it’s about why writing is hard and how to do it anyway—and that approach has been really important to me in recent years. It’s valuable to figure out where you’re getting stuck and how you might unstick yourself. It’s essential to know that you’re not alone, that you’re not the only one struggling while it seems like everyone else is blissfully typing away and racking up publishing wins. (It only ever seems that way, I promise.)
But for this month, in this season that’s full of both celebration and 4pm darkness, let’s think about how we can find joy in our writing practice.
When I talk about joy, I don’t mean feeling happy all the time, or writing about light, easy things, or just pretending that you’re not suffering if you are. The kind of joy I’m interested in now is more a practice than a feeling. I love the way Ross Gay talks about joy, in this On Being interview:
Sometimes I think there’s a conception of joy as meaning something like something easy. And to me, joy has nothing to do with ease. And joy has everything to do with the fact that we’re all going to die. When I’m thinking about joy, I’m thinking about — that at the same time as something wonderful is happening, some connection is being made in my life, we are also in the process of dying.
You might notice, too, that the interview is titled Tending Joy and Practicing Delight. I love the verbs there, which remind me that you don’t have to wait for joy and delight to find you. You can tend and practice joy. You can seek joy.
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How to Seek Joy in Your Writing Practice
You could start by writing about something that’s joyful for you. I’m working on a narrative nonfiction book about early motherhood, and much of it is pretty hard, especially in the first half—but even those darkest parts have moments of tenderness and joy. So I’m making a list of those flashes of joy and spending some time this month writing into them.
You can find joy in the writing itself—the sound of a sentence, the pleasure of getting something right in revision. Even if you’re writing about hard things, there can be joy in rendering those moments precisely. Even when the work is difficult, there’s joy in working hard at a practice that matters to you.
Sharing your writing can be joyful. In the first pandemic winter, I taught a reading poetry class to seniors on zoom, and one of the participants write a birthday poem for each of her grandchildren. I was so moved by her using writing to share what was special about each child each year. And one of the best things about the essay I wrote recently for Catapult, about the mom from Home Alone and my own childhood with a really fierce single mom, was getting to share it with my own mom.
The practice of writing can be joyful. When you write, you claim a space for yourself and your own mind. One of the writers in my recent Blue Stoop class shared that, for her, writing is about autonomy, that it’s a way of asserting her agency and clarifying her own perspective.
The rituals of writing can be joyful. Maybe you light a candle as you sit down to write, or you have a pen you love. I have a pretty notebook I’m saving for the beginning of the year as a charm for a new year of writing.
And living a writing life—being someone who is attuned to the world and who practices that attunement through writing—can be joyful. I love this exercise, from Chade-Meng Tan, about finding thin slices of joy:
“Notice the joyful moments in your day, however small, however fleeting. Notice how good it feels to have that first sip of your drink. Or how tasty that first bite of food is. The pleasurable feeling of your skin in warm water when you wash your hands or take a shower. The moment of delight and comfort when you see your friend. These thin slices of joy only last a few seconds but they add up! The more you notice joy, the more you will experience joy in your life.”
Where do you find joy in your writing life? How will you seek joy in your writing practice this month?
if you’re shopping for yourself, or a writer or reader in your life . . .
Catapult is offering 20% off all its writing classes through Monday, November 28 with coupon code MONDAY20. I’ve taken a handful of classes through Catapult and have found them really useful. (For what it’s worth, I’ve had better luck with classes that have a really specific concept, like essay revision, rather than general workshops.)
Bookshop is offering free shipping on all orders and 15% off select holiday picks through Monday, November 28. (When you order from Bookshop, you support local bookstores. They’ve raised a truly astonishing nearly $24 million since they launched in 2020!)
There’s also a Write More, Be Less Careful Bookshop that includes lots of my favorite books from this year and books I’m looking forward to reading next year.
I think a pre-order of a spring book makes a great holiday gift—you can print a copy of the book’s cover and include a note saying when your loved one’s book will arrive. It can be a fun way of stretching the holiday season into the spring! (I’m especially looking forward to Jenny Odell’s new book, Saving Time, Nicole Chung’s A Living Memory, and Virginia Sole-Smith’s Fat Talk. What books are you looking forward to?)
LSU Press, publisher of Pocket Universe, my newest book of poetry, and so many other books I love, is offering 40% off all their books through December 15 with the discount code 04SAVENOW
***this month’s newsletter title comes from this Florence & the Machine song that feels really right for this season: Don’t go blindly into the dark, in every one of us shines a light of love.
Write More, Be Less Careful is a newsletter about why writing is hard & how to do it anyway. (And also how writing can be joyful, and how to seek that joy.) You can always reply to this email, comment below, or find me on twitter (@nancy_reddy) and instagram (@nancy.o.reddy).
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excited to read your home alone essay! i watched it with my kid last year and had the same reaction, like "thank god all she had to do was apologize and move on." my mom had five kids, oof.