Nostalgia

(and a few important writerly reminders)

The other day I was walking Winston through our neighborhood park, and two youngish parents were pushing their toddlers in bucket swings, and I felt a pang of nostalgia. How many hours did we spend pushing the girls in those very swings? Or chasing them up and down the stairs and slides of the play structure, pretending to be monsters?

It’s not that I want to go back in time—I also remember that those hours at the park were sometimes mind-numbingly boring and that our sleep was often (almost always) interrupted. More importantly, I love my girls as they are *right now* and I want to celebrate the amazing young women they have become.

Ten days ago, Stella graduated from Smith College, and I lapped up the speeches and traditions and the excitement for everything that lies ahead for the graduates. She’s home briefly before heading to Europe with her girlfriend, then home again for a few days before starting a fellowship where she’ll be working on a breast cancer research team. She will be launched, and we’re so excited for her. At the same time, I’m left wondering, how did this happen so fast? And next week, Zoe will graduate from South High and will head off to college to study psychology at the end of August. Again, we’re so excited for her, and again—how did this happen so fast?

Maybe it was this impossible desire to slow time that led me to my old blog folder, where I randomly opened a doc titled “My Girls” from June 5, 2009, almost exactly 17 years ago. I didn’t remember writing this post nor did I remember the details of our lives at that specific moment in time, when Stella was five and Zoe was just one, but this made me smile:

I’ve been really enjoying my girls lately. Enjoying them, that is, when the older one doesn’t channel a thirteen-year-old, complete with eye rolling and exasperated whatever-ing, and when the younger one does not—within the span of two minutes—climb on top of the dollhouse and try to launch herself onto the couch, destroy a picture frame, and swallow a mouthful of toilet paper.

I definitely remember the eye rolling, but I’d successfully repressed the eating of toilet paper. Because, gross (even if it’s just off the roll). I also didn’t remember how discouraged I’d been that year about the publishing process. My first agent had shopped Ready for Air over the previous year, and I had come close with a few editors, but it had ended up being rejected by all of them. So I’d decided to write the memoir again (in a new Word doc—no cutting and pasting) and I was in the middle of that very slow process then. I was also working on the proposal for Use Your Words, about which I was very excited, but a few days prior to this post, my agent said she wasn’t interested; she’d been conferring with other agents and editors and they didn’t think my modest online presence would translate into book sales. So it was a hard no for her.

I was floundering, wondering if either of those projects that I’d poured my heart into would ever find homes. What I didn’t know in June of 2009 was that I’d sign with a new agent who would champion Use Your Words, and, a year later, agree to take on the revised version of Ready for Air, which she would also champion. Two years after that blog post, Use Your Words was under contract with Viva Editions and Ready for Air was out on submission. RFA would rack up more rejections, but eventually find a home—the right home—with the University of Minnesota Press.

I’ve needed this reminder that things happen very slowly in the publishing world and, though it’s often a very discouraging process, things *do* happen if you believe in your work and DO NOT GIVE UP.

I started querying my debut rom-com last fall, but I hit pause a few months ago to shift the whole thing into present tense and make some additional changes, all of which have made me love it even more. I’m almost ready to dive back into querying, and I will be sure to remind myself (daily) that I only need one yes. And hopefully two years from now, Book 1 will be under contract (or just released!), Book 2 will be on submission, and draft one of Book 3 will be finished. Because why not?

And in the meantime, I’ll take some advice from June of 2009:

I’ve been trying hard to be present when I’m with Stella and Zoe, to remember how lucky I am when Stella excitedly tells me about the finger-knitting they did at school, saying, “Mom, it was soooo fun, and you wouldn’t have believed it, but the boys just went crazy over it. They loved it!” Or when Zoe does her little bouncing dance whenever she hears a line of music or laughs her belly laugh after she’s rifled through the clean laundry, found a pair of underwear to put on her head, and peeked out of one of the leg holes. Or when Zoe reaches her arms for a hug from Stella, and Stella says, “Isn’t she the cutest thing you’ve ever seen, mom? Aren’t we so lucky?”

My plan right now is to celebrate everything my girls have become, to lean into gratitude, and to keep believing in the stories I’m called to write.

What are you celebrating right now? How do you continue leaning into your creativity and art, even when you’re feeling discouraged?

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My first mini-workshop/get-together for paid subscribers will be June 10th at 6 pm CDT via Substack Live. We’ll be talking craft and the writing life and have a little time to write together based on a prompt I’ll share. Paid subscribers can email me craft/writerly things you’d like me to talk about and I’ll start a list for future gatherings. And if you’d like to join but aren’t yet a paid subscriber, you can upgrade here anytime before June 10^th. I’ll be sending the recording out to paid subscribers, so no worries if you can’t make it on the 10th!