First things first: Fail Better Club is back next week! Fail Better Club is place where you send me your troublesome writing project, and I read it and tell you how I think you could fix it.

You might be thinking, “But Julie, it’s December, I have so much to do, I don’t have time to write.” Fine! But you have time to think about writing. Why not dust off that picture book manuscript that you haven’t yet figured out (but which is still nagging at you) and we’ll think about it together. Then, in January, you will have thought about it for weeks, and maybe taken some notes, and you’ll be ready write a new draft.

Or maybe you’re doing plenty of writing, and are looking forward to some help on your current project! Ok!

To join Fail Better Club, you need to be a paying subscriber to Do the Work. An email is going out tomorrow to everyone on the paid list, with instructions on exactly how Fail Better Club works, so upgrade now if you want in.

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Here’s the link to last month’s essay, about being creative and making things even if the world feels dark and heavy and disastrous.

The dot markers I love are the Kuretake ZIG markers. The notebook I got to use as a deep work tracker / focus diary is the Cambridge Small Agenda, but you get whatever works for you. I’m glad I went to a store so I could really see the sizes and interior layouts.

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Thoughts and Links

• If you’re near Portland, Maine, I’d love to see you this Saturday (December 7) at Longfellow Books for Bring Your Child to a Bookstore Day. I’ll be there with Chris Van Dusen, Tom Booth, and X. Fang!

• I was on the news, talking about Chester Barkingham Saves the Country.

• I signed up for A Vision Board Can Change Your Life, which is a class in January from .

• Though maybe also I need a Becoming Board?

• It’s 24 degrees Fahrenheit where I live, and looking at the photos in Manjula Martin’s list of the best flowers of 2024 helped me remember that spring exists.

• Two bumper stickers I saw recently and love: Romanticize Solitude and On My Way to Cry Near a Lighthouse.

• Slightly late for 2024, but did you know that November 11 is National Corduroy Day, because of the way that 11/11 looks like the wales on corduroy?

Books I read recently and loved

Disclosure: book links in this newsletter are affiliate links to Bookshop.org, a site which supports independent bookshops.

• I finally read Santa’s First Christmas by Mac Barnett and Sydney Smith. I thought it was going to be yet another Santa origin story, and was pleasantly surprised. It’s funny and cozy, perfect for December.

• Subdivision by J. Robert Lennon is delightfully weird and unsettling, one of those books that slowly unfolds and keeps you as unmoored as the main character, who shows up at a guesthouse and isn’t sure why. It reminded me a lot of That Time of Year by Marie Ndiaye — a book I love — in that it’s about someone who is trying to figure out what exactly is happening in the town they’re walking around in. I think I like books where Things Seem Normal But It Is Slowly Revealed That They Are Not Normal.

• For years, people around me have been obsessed with Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, but then it felt like they stopped short of recommending it to me. I recently found a copy in a Little Free Library, and now I get it. It’s an incredible book. One of the best-written books I’ve ever read. And also I hated reading it. It was, I can say, not for me. I am not someone who likes reading things that are icky or gruesome. I do not enjoy reading about horrible people doing unspeakable things to themselves and others. I almost gave up on it a few times from all the cringing and trying to read while also closing my eyes to it. I’m so glad I stuck through to the end. I did ultimately love it. And have no desire to ever read it again.

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Sometimes I feel like no one has ever had trouble writing a book before. People finish novels all the time! Everyone finishing a novel: you’re amazing. But I remember too that people don’t finish novels. Honestly, people are great at not even starting novels. So I’ll keep going. I want to be a finisher.

But what I’m thinking about these days is whether I do a lot of work where I look like I’m writing, but really I’m barely dipping my toe in. I feel like I could take a breath and tip backwards into the book, plunge in, get my head underwater, swim around. But instead I get my toes wet and wonder why the characters aren’t speaking to me.

Here are some of the things I talk about in this video:

• I posted two things to Instagram (and these won’t be links to the Instagram posts, since I don’t want you to get sucked in):
  1. My next picture book, Help Wanted: One Rooster, got a great review from Publishers Weekly, which starts, “The Office meets Chicken Run in this workplace comedy, in which an “extremely cool and helpful sheep” reveals how a barnyard solves its productivity problem.” (I’m realizing now that this video is me talking to you about trying to solve my own productivity problem).
  2. My friend Dorson Plourde sent me a deluxe preorder pack of his debut picture book, Garbage Gulls. I first read the manuscript of this five years ago (I was Dorson’s PBChat mentor) and it has enthralled me from day one. You should pre-order it now.

• I talk about using Freedom to turn off the internet. I recommend it.

• The new Cal Newport book is Slow Productivity.

• The other book I’m reading is Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. There is an amazing scene early on when Tess ends up walking around an estate with this horrible cad named Alec (he is not nice, smarmy, he thinks he’s amazing) and he tries to feed her fresh strawberries and she’s like, “oh, no thanks, I can feed myself” and he’s all, “ah, no, I’ll feed them to you” and she’s horrified and it’s awkward but she stands there while he shoves strawberries in her mouth (foreshadowing!). My other favorite scene so far is when Tess is eating a casual meal at the dairy farm where she’s working, and she sort of casually says, “You know when you’re lying on your back in the grass looking up at the stars and your soul flies out of your body and goes a hundred feet in the air?” and everyone is like, “uh, WHUT?”

• If you want to turn off emails from Substack newsletters, you can find instructions for that here.

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If you like videos, maybe you’ll like this class. It’s only $15. The comments people are leaving on each video are lovely and encouraging, and just as much of a pep talk as the videos.

There is so much about writing stories which involves giving up control. There are many lovely parts of a story we can control, but the flow and inspiration — those things which make a story magical and excellent — are out of our control. They happen or they don’t. For me, they are far less likely to happen if I try to wrestle them to the ground and onto the page.

It’s only really when I rip my heart out of my chest and say, “here, you take it” to the universe or my muse or the ghost of James Marshall, that I can get to that place of magical insight.

And so I cheat my way into creative control by baking bread, sewing,1 learning how to make a video, reading books by other people. Those are all important too. But the only way really to write a book is by sitting down and writing a book. And not worrying about controlling it.

I realized after I recorded this video that the main reason really that writing is so uncomfortable is because my brain wants digital distractions. Sitting and writing in a notebook, hoping for inspiration, isn’t quite thrilling enough for my brain anymore. I’ve strengthened my ability to do deep work by getting off social media, but social media is hardly the only digital distraction. I know I can check email. I know I can browse around and see if I can find that one amazing website that will change my life.

Writing is hard, but it doesn’t have to be a struggle. It’s that desire for more! fun! dog! videos! that makes it a struggle. It can be hard but fun. Writing is fun! The magic trick of making the invisible visible (thoughts into typed words) and then, hopefully, making it invisible again (a reader reads the words, and they become thoughts) is outrageously fun. Something can be hard but easeful, and when I surrender to the writing, that’s how it feels.

When I forget this and try to control it, it’s super extra hard (a struggle) and I feel like I’m not good at this anymore. When I remember, and embrace the delicious difficulty of making a whole dang story exist, then I feel like I’m a writer. Because I am.

Write your book. So many people never do. Be one of the ones who does.

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This is your reminder that The Map to Inspiration, my 4-week-long online course about reconnecting with your creative intuition, starts next Tuesday the 16th. It’ll help you embrace the notion that making art is hard, but worth it. Doors close in one week, next Friday the 19th, so if you’ve been waiting to join, now’s the time to do it. More info is on the course page on my website.

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I find so often that I am interacting with everyone like a moony toddler from a cartoon, holding out my heart, asking, “Want some?” There is a face I make that goes with this, I don’t mean to do it, but my 15-year-old says, “you’re making that face again.” The face says, “I am sad if you don’t pay attention to me.”

I’m working to quit this face. I’m working to quit the feeling behind it, too.

In the video I say there are 50,000 people on the internet. There are many more than that, I know. It’s just that that’s the biggest number of people I can even begin to comprehend.

All I can do is notice how I feel about things. When I do a lot online, I feel jangled. When I get writing done, I feel calm and powerful. The second one — I like that one better.

Distraction is a slippery slope. For me, the mistake often lies with doing something internet-related first thing (“oh, I need to order socks for Clarence, I'll do that first to get it out of the way”). I buy the socks and then I’m pulled in. But if I do something else as my first official task of the day, write or plan or read, then that too is a slippery slope. I remember the joy of that all day, and keep going back to it.

I don’t have an answer. Chris Moody wrote in The Atlantic about disconnecting his entire house from the internet. I don’t know if I need to do anything that drastic. The answer for me is to keep noticing the feelings. And then think, “Do I want to keep doing this thing?” Often it’s — “I’m feeling jangly and irritated right now, and I can get away from this.”

Reading a book is always productive, even if I’m not producing anything.

Maybe we need to bring back in-person round table discussion groups. I have enough people in my house that I can have witty banter with them, although sometimes I make The Face by mistake and that is not witty nor banter.

I really enjoyed Wellness by Nathan Hill, and there is an extended section in that book (which is a novel) about the various internet algorithms and how they manipulate us and it made all of this [gestures generally about] even ickier.

This is all complicated and hard. I just want to say — if you don’t read this, that’s fine. If you can walk swiftly away from the internet, do that. If you can stay on and be calm, awesome.

I have this thought that there are robots who are shoving more and more onto the internet, so that the humans get overwhelmed and go live in a cabin and then the robots can take over. I also think the robots don’t realize we can defeat them by spraying them with a hose or pouring gallons of milk on their heads. That would do it, right? I don’t know if this is an actual scenario I believe, or if I’m coming up with a novel right now.

All I know is, not that long ago, I dreamed of these two characters. They were no one I knew, but I knew they belonged in a book. I wrote it up, 24,000 words, the most words I’d ever written on anything. The book was a mess and not done, but it’s what made me think I could do this for real. It was 2010, maybe. Not that long ago, but before I had a phone in my pocket. Back when I might go days without turning my computer on. How did my brain change so fast? Now I’m online for so many of my waking hours. And how do I change it back, so I dream of books again?

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The Map to Inspiration is an online class, yes, but it’s all about how to get offline if that’s what you want. The online part is less than half an hour each week, and then you can be offline the rest of the time. It’s all about figuring out exactly what it is you want to do, and what’s blocking you from getting it done. It starts January 16, 2024. More info here.

Thoughts and Links

• I bought a wool sweater from Goodwill for $3. I mostly got it because I was cold at the time. Like, in the store, I was cold. It’s a very warm sweater, but was a men’s size XL crewneck, and frankly was pretty unflattering. Like a giant cozy blanket, but also, dumpy. I cardiganized it as per the instructions in Mend! — sliced it up the front, sewed on bias binding and snaps, and now it’s cooler. Who knew? It felt so rebellious to cut a sweater clear up the middle.

• I made the triple ginger chocolate cookies, and made the candied ginger from Alton Brown’s recipe, and I think the candied ginger alone is my favorite sweet I’ve made all season. I saved the ginger water from boiling the ginger and have been making ginger lime mocktails with it. The cookies were amazing but are definitely ones you need to announce. They look like chocolate cookies but are molasses. You need to warn people.

• If you ever want a critique from me, I do them through the Manuscript Academy.

• This is your reminder that the full movie of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is available on YouTube, and it’s perfect.

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Books I read recently and loved

Disclosure: book links in this newsletter are affiliate links to Bookshop.org, a site which supports independent bookshops.

• I’m in love with The Bees of Notre Dame by Meghan P. Browne and illustrated by . I love a book that is a history and a story and a dreamy gorgeous piece of art.

• The Tree and the River by Aaron Becker is so fascinating and a little tiny bit distressing — it made me feel like we’re all just tiny parts of a larger landscape. I also keep thinking about how it compares to (adult novel) North Woods. Both are about one place and how it changes over time via the people who live there.

• I love serious deep dives into what makes things funny, which is why I ate Comedy Book by Jesse David Fox right up.

• It’s the second year in a row that Just Like Magic by Sarah Hogle has put me in a jolly holiday mood. I recommend it if you like your holiday rom coms with a side of complete ridiculousness.

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I know there is a thing where relaxing is something you do for fun. Or no wait — maybe it’s that fun is something you do that’s not productive.

When you’re a writer, though, everything is potentially productive. Every walk, every corner, every time I wash the dishes, I might think of a story. This morning I saw a cat stretch up and fiddle with the back handle on a Kia hatchback. I stood and watched, wondering if the cat would actually manage to get it open. Or if that was even what it was trying to do.

(There is always a “Mom of Bold Action” thought process after a moment like this. “Mr. Muffins Who Wanted to Open the Car? Is that a story?”)

But just because any moment could lead me to think of a story idea doesn’t mean I have to expect it to. If I go for a walk, swim in the ocean, and read a book without coming up with a creative solution, that doesn’t mean I failed. I went for a walk. I swam in the ocean. I read a book.

Honestly? I’m kind of mad at all these tech moguls who created these platforms that normalized oversharing of ordinary moments of daily activity through the lens of influencing and productivity. Like, suddenly we’re not just having yogurt for breakfast, but it has to be a post about, I don’t know, protein and fuel for our day and how this moment of quiet contemplation with my little artisanal ceramic bowl sets me up for a day of checking everything off my list.

I haven’t been on social media much lately, so I’m not even sure this is an accurate representation of what people are still talking about. I don’t have yogurt for breakfast and I am in fact extremely devoted to my breakfast, but I’m not going to tell you about it because, frankly, it’s not interesting. It’s breakfast. (I do love an artisanal ceramic bowl, however.)

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And here I am telling you about my trip to the amusement park, which is maybe the same thing. The internet has thrown off my ability to know what is and is not an interesting thing to talk about.

I know that rest and relaxation are important. I have become more aware of how it feels to be at my computer. Sometimes I realize I’m making a face that would also be the correct face to make if someone pooped on the floor behind me. When I realize I’m making that face, I say, “Ok!” out loud and get up from my desk chair as fast as I can. I sit on the couch in my writing shed and read something. I write in my notebook. I also always feel like sitting there is the wrong thing to do. Like it’s not productive enough.

Which is a lie. Most days, the most productive thing I can do is take a break. I have a sticker stuck to the pen cup on my desk that has a devil cat stick figure thing yelling, “TAKE BREAKS!” One mental adjustment I made to that recently is to read it as “TAKE ANALOG BREAKS!” For me, the internet can get to be just too much. It’s all a bumper car ramming into the back of me.

We’ve been told it’s unproductive to sit back and stare at clouds. We’re told we should monetize our naps, make our daydreaming into a side hustle, always be posting about our mid-morning yawn. But what if that’s all wrong? What if the secret is that we keep that to ourselves? (E.B. Goodale) calls it “secret projects” and I’ve been thinking of that for months. What if you didn’t tell anyone anything you’re doing? What if you made all or most of your day secret projects? What if you went on a roller coaster and didn’t tell anyone about it?

My neighbor just told me she turned her phone off for five days. “I really needed to do it,” she said. I am doing my best to not pay attention to my phone, but this is inspiring to me. Why not turn it off for five days? Do I really need it? Probably not. (I currently have no plan to actually do this, but thinking about thinking about it is a first step.)

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The Short Story Project began this week with an informational post, and begins in earnest on Tuesday. Each week for four weeks, I’ll post 5-7 short stories. Your job is to read one or more of them, and then write a picture book draft that is inspired by or in response to the story you read. I have found this to be an incredible way to crack open a vein of ideas in my head that I did not previously have access to, and also a great way to get back to a place of play and experimentation that I often miss when I am approaching picture book writing like I need this story to get a book deal and be a best seller and go viral. (See, above, re: relaxing, taking time, finding a hidden stream of productivity by stepping away from any thoughts of being productive.)

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(I am already successful by so many measures, but by many others, not so much.)

If I’m going to “act as if,” then, I’ll protect my writing time, and make sure the writing gets done. And I’ll daydream.

I need to wander the pathways of my thoughts, without interruption from anyone else’s thoughts. I need to sit in boredom until an answer comes to me. I need to ask “what if?” and then “what would happen next?” and then “but how can I make it rabbits cooking pies?”

I do enjoy: podcasts, online essays, guided meditations via an app, Voxer messages, text messages, movie trailers on YouTube. But I recognize that all of those things get in the way of my daydreaming.

Sometimes I don’t need to daydream. Maybe I have enough to work on or I have already followed a thread of ideas, and I just want to listen to a podcast. Or sometimes, truly, my intuition tells me that there will be information in that podcast that will lead to an idea. But sometimes I want to listen to a podcast because I’m a little bit afraid of where my thoughts would lead. They might tell me to scrap everything I’ve written so far and take the book in a different direction. They might say, “Hey, did you want another idea for novel? No? Too bad, here you go!” and then I know I have to write all of that down. They might give me an idea so huge, so wondrous, that I have no choice but to make it happen, and that’s scary to me. So instead I might put earbuds in, slip my phone into my pocket, and then as soon as the idea comes, the outside messages are throwing dodgeballs at my face to get me to think about something other than the inspiration.

What I need (and I say this not from a place of should and shame but from knowing that this, truly, is what I need): I need to leave my phone behind when I go for a walk, I need to put it in another room when I’m making dinner, when I’m folding laundry, when I’m driving. I need to sit in the silence and see what happens.1

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The other day I cut out fabric pieces for a pair of pants I’m making, and I listened to a podcast while I did it. Sure, fine. Except the little voice in my head kept saying, “You know, this would be a great time to let your mind wander.” But I had already pressed play, and felt like I had to see it through to the end. (It’s like — if we eat dinner in front of the television, then dinner takes as long as the television show lasts, but if we eat at the table, dinner takes as long as the human conversation lasts, which sometimes is shorter than the TV show, but it’s at least human-paced.) I’ll never know what idea I might have missed by listening to something. (Maybe nothing, but I’ll never know.)

I will step away from screens if I feel myself getting tired. I will read a book, even if that’s not a “productive” thing to do. I will go for a walk without my phone. I will stare, and think, and trust that the inspiration will come.

I’m doing The Artist’s Way for the second time right now, and in the chapter I just read, Julia Cameron talks about how our acts of creativity are divine magic flowing through us. We open ourselves up to the flow, and we give a gift back to the universe when we listen to the inspiration and act on it. I am extremely good at blocking this flow by staring at my computer monitor instead of staring out the window. Computers are great, but not all day. Not for everything. My brain, though, my creativity, my intuition, the flow of inspiration, that is great for everything, and so I’ll walk with nothing in my pocket and hold my arms open (probably literally) and catch all the ideas that come.

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I have so much empathy for this house maker.

I remember, before I had ever written a novel,1 I read a book by Nathan Branford called How to Write a Novel, in which he says when you finish your first draft, you should celebrate, because, even if your novel as it stands is pretty bad, the fact that you wrote a draft all the way from first page to last page is huge.2

And while I am not great at celebrating book writing milestones, I do agree that you should be proud of writing all the way through a draft. Also proud of revising. Maybe even proud of abandoning a book (or a house), if you can tell it’s not working and might never work, as long as you keep working on something else.

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Writing is work! Finished books often seem effortlessly written, but they all take so much work.3 Novels take years. Some picture books take years! (They almost always take years from first draft to publication, but some of mine have taken years from first draft to final draft.)

Being a writer is holding your hope and vision in one hand, and the truth of the hard work in the other. It’s putting in the work even while you feel the hope and vision float away, dejected. It’s letting the hope come back, slowly, even though you know it might be mad at you when you start typing again.

Because, at some point, like a magic trick, the hope and vision and work will all align, they’ll coalesce, and you’ll realize that the words you’ve written are the hopeful vision of a book you originally imagined, and the momentum granted by that magical moment should not be underestimated, and never taken for granted. That momentum can roll you along to the end of the draft. The knowledge of that moment is often what keeps me writing, even if I haven’t experienced that moment in whatever book I’m currently working on.

Someone who has ideas but never acts on them is a dreamer, and yes, the world needs dreamers. But someone who has ideas and works through the difficulty of making them real is an artist. It’s hard, but you can do it. It’s not like the trick is to craft yourself wings and fly. The trick is to sit down and write the words. You can do that, yes? You can sit and write. The trick is to know that many before you have done it, so why not you?

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It’s another thing about social media — it asks that we distill our thoughts into one sentence. A hot take. So many of my thoughts are messy. Now that I’m not thinking in tweets and Instagram captions anymore, my brain is so happy to romp and play in the fields of unstructured nuance.

Although I realize this might be annoying to you, watching this long video. Alas.

So I’ll tell you that I did not have a Barbie when I was little. My friend Katherine had Barbies and they seemed fine. We made food for them in tiny pink plastic bowls. The food was Fun Dip powder mixed with water. We called it granuella. That sounded like something Barbie would eat.

Katherine had many cool accessories for her Barbies, besides the tiny bowls. She had a pink plastic toilet that flushed, and I thought it was the coolest thing. I was deeply impressed by this toilet.

It probably says something about me that, when handed a Barbie, I was most interested in feeding her and insuring her healthy digestion. Hey, Barbie, I made you a flax smoothie.

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Also I don’t know why we had all this extra Fun Dip hanging around.

I did not have Barbies but I did have the Sunshine Family. Steve, Stella, and Baby1 Sunshine were a flat-footed family who had craft store. My dog ate half of Steve’s leg. Katherine and I said he lost it in “the war.” I got a replacement Steve and so war-ravaged Steve became the evil twin.

I did not have to worry about the Sunshine Family’s meals or digestion. They probably ate fiber all day long. Too much fiber, even. They could have used some granuella occasionally, as a treat.

We’re all different. (Like the Peter Spier book I mention in the video says.) You’re supposed to want different things than other people, because we’re all different from each other. Listen to your inner voice. Don’t worry so much about making sure everyone thinks you’re nice. Be nice to you! Put yourself first. It’s not selfish, it’s living.

You have my permission to follow the actions of that little voice inside you, even if it makes you do something that everyone else thinks is weird. Make your own yogurt, paint a mural in your living room, learn how to do a headstand, take more naps.1 Whatever it is, if your first thought is, “YES!” then do it. And if your first thought is “oh, NO THANK YOU” then say no.

Another example: I’m going through one of those phases where I can’t figure out what book I want to read. I have piles and piles of books, and none of them is quite the right one. This week I started three different books, books that were all highly recommended, and I tried to read them, but it became clear, when I noticed how I felt, that none of them were the book I wanted to be reading right now. So I’m not going to! You don’t have to stick with a book that isn’t right for you (even if you know you might like it at some other point in your life). You don’t have to stick with a book because someone took the time to write it, or because someone else you trust liked it a lot. “This is not right for me right now” is more than enough of a reason not to do something.

I have gotten so much better at trusting myself, and still often I will be halfway into something and realize that it’s not what I want to do at all. Or I’ll have to try something, because I can’t tell yet whether I’ll actually like it. You’re not some magical sage who lives high on a hill and knows all the answers. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty (actually or metaphorically) to know the answer. Try the thing! Play around! And, when you can, get quiet2 and listen. So many of the best decisions I made came from following the answers I got when I really took the time to hear the wisdom that was already deep inside me.

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I never really thought much about noise. I tend to be fairly noise-tolerant. I work in a shed in my backyard, which is sometimes quiet and sometimes surrounded by power equipment from my neighbors on all four sides. Screaming kids, barking dogs, none of it really bothers me.

And maybe it’s that there’s so much noise these days, or that the electronic noisemakers everyone carries with them are so jarring, or that I’ve spent so much time working to disentangle my brain from the internet, but the sound of other people getting phone notifications is the one sound that consistently bugs me. (Or maybe I’m a genius now?)

I tend to think of phone notifications, whether they’re audible or not, as invasive noise. Whenever I download an app, the first thing I do is make sure notifications are turned off. The only apps that notify me (silently) are texts and Voxer, and I toy with turning those off too, although mostly what I do is keep my phone very far away from my body.

Maybe also I need to turn off the songs my dishwasher and washing machine sing to let me know they’re through, although there is an elaborate mom joke I do occasionally where I make up a song on the spot to the tune of the singing appliance, and I am only able to correctly time it every few months, but it’s a bit of improv I greatly enjoy, so for now the dishwasher song stays.

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In this video I say I am “working, but restfully,” which in retrospect seems like a strange take. I recorded this early in the week of our vacation, and I still wasn’t sure if I’d write. What I mostly did was take notes on flora and fauna for a novel I’m working on. So my restful working was a list of birds and trees. I also did morning pages.

And now that I have survived (as if it was a matter of survival) not checking my email inbox for 7 days, I’m going to remember that it was fine. There were no emergencies. I don’t need to have that tab open on my computer. I don’t need to open the app. I can let it be. It’ll wait. It was nice not to be bossed around by emails demanding things, especially when the things they often are demanding are, like, hey there’s a sale at the candle place I bought something from once three years ago.

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From the video: this is the SARK book I got at the swap shop, and this is the poster everyone had up in their dorm room in 1990.

And, most importantly, here is a raven at 6 am.

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“Attention residue” is the phrase I couldn’t remember when I was doing this video. Via Cal Newport, of course.

I would like to acknowledge also this thing that I do where I not only get sucked into various messages and emails and essays and newsletters, but somehow I use even the slightest recommendation from someone as an excuse to buy something. I don’t know if it’s that I want stuff or I want the right stuff or if I want that dopamine hit from shopping. Getting off Instagram saved me a lot of money for sure because I wasn’t doing this anymore, but I’m noticing that somehow I still find the link with the cute mug or candle or perfect t-shirt in whatever email I’m reading, and if I don’t catch myself, I buy it, because it’s so cool, whatever it is. The thing that has saved me with this is that I made a page in Notion called “Things to Buy” and I throw the link in there. Somehow the act of saving the link is soothing for me. Maybe part of my desire to buy the thing is that I worry if I don’t, I’ll forget where I saw that link for those gorgeous notebooks or amazing herbal tea. As soon as I save the link, I have no desire to buy it anymore.

Also the video thumbnail above is of the actual drawbridge I got stuck on. Turns out there are lots of photos in Canva of the bridge I drive over every day. It’s a nice bridge.

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Here is the something else from The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control which has been blowing my mind: Schafler quotes a study from the 1970s about the stages of making a change. The study focused on people who quit smoking successfully, and found that there are five stages of making a change and having it stick: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance.1 That first step, precontemplation, is before you are even thinking about making a change. It’s like the change is floating around in the air, waiting for you to start contemplating it. And the thing is, precontemplation is still one of the stages. So, right now, when you’re not even sure what changes you’re going to make in the future — you’re already at step one. And then, when you start thinking about specifics, but not doing anything about it, you’ve made your way to step two already. And sure, there is a lot of time and work in action and maintenance, but you need all of the steps.

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Let’s say you’re going to write a book. The first step of that will be that there are book ideas that exist, in the astral plane or whatever, and you’re going about your business and not thinking about them. Really the thing you need to do in this stage is be open and ready for…something. And then you start to get inklings of this book idea, and you start to think, “Hey, I could write a book. I think this idea could work.” Then you prepare. You see where you could carve out 45 minutes every morning before everyone else wakes up. You buy a new notebook, a subscription to Freedom, a Scrivener license, whatever it is you need. And then! Then you start writing. And it’s messy and hard work, but you keep doing it, until you really realize you can do it, and soon getting up 45 minutes earlier isn’t only something you can do, it’s something you want to do, and something you crave.

Mostly I just really like this idea that, right now, we’re all already at step one.

The morning I recorded this video, I made the error of eating breakfast at my desk, thinking I’d give my home-for-the-summer kids some space in the house, and I could get some work done. Instead I: read a bunch of essays, read a bunch of emails, clicked on a video linked in an essay and very much regretted watching it, clicked on a video linked in an email and it was fine but not necessary to me, read about a book that might be a good birthday present for someone, and spent half an hour looking into a creative business coaching course that I don’t need. Then I realized it was 11:00, and I hadn’t done any actual work.

So much of my life (SO MUCH) I have looked outward, looked to what other people are doing, didn’t even consider what I actually wanted to do.

The internet and social media have provided a really easy way to keep up my habit of looking to others to tell me what to do. I don’t even have social media on my phone anymore, and I still find all sorts of reasons to pick up my phone and check for messages.

I want to hear my inner voice first. I want to get comfortable with not knowing the answer immediately, with waiting until I hear what my gut is telling me, and then checking on the voices of other people only when I know what’s right for me.1

So much of internet culture teaches us that we don’t know what to do, that we can’t trust ourselves, that we should look to the hive mind for the answer. And sometimes the internet does have the answer! It’s great that we don’t need to know everything. But it’s one thing to seek advice on a good dry cleaner in your neighborhood, and another to ask the internet what you should find pleasure in. There is a huge difference between knowing the best lasagna recipe and knowing what kind of hobby you enjoy. There is a difference between knowing the average lifespan of a honeybee and knowing what music you like. You know you — better than anyone else does.

I walk the line between wanting messages from my insides and deeply wanting to connect with people and hear their recommendations. But it feels like a fine line, some days, and soon I’m down that path where I’m not listening to my insides anymore, and watching videos I don’t even want to watch, and not writing.

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As always, I’m going to tell you to do what feels right for you. Maybe you like that the internet has so many opinions on what you should do. Maybe what your inner voice is telling you is to research what some other people are doing, for your answers. But my inner voice is telling me that when I constantly check to see if anyone has sent me a message, it makes me believe that the messages from my gut are less important than the ones coming from outside.

I believe that if I followed my inner voice most of the time, I’d be doing ok. I don’t think it would steer me wrong.

And so why do I still put so much emphasis on what other people think I should do? I truly don’t know! I’m easily influenced, I guess? I’m continuing to do things without my phone, analog things, things away from the messages from other people, for big chunks of the day. Listening to my inner voice is the way for me to get good creative work done.

The best way I can manage this without throwing my phone into a lake is by waiting as long as possible each morning before I check email/texts/Substack. I do my morning pages, I exercise, I meditate. Honestly I often don’t manage to get very far — often I check after morning pages. I don’t know why. I don’t really want to, except I always wonder if maybe some wondrous message came in overnight. But the messages won’t disappear if I wait another hour or two to check them.

How about you? When do you check your messages? Do you feel like it blocks you from your intuition, or is your email inbox is completely separate from your internal inbox?

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As I researched her more, I kept feeling like, “should I have heard of her?” or “have I heard of her?” I mean, she did photos for a book written by Margaret Wise Brown! She wrote children’s books! She’s clearly a legend!

It’s certainly possible that all of you will feel compelled to comment and tell me that you’ve known about Ylla for decades.

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It’s such an internet-age thing, right, this feeling that we should know everything? I mean, it’s all right there, on the internet for us to find. That’s so exhausting.

Instead I’ll accept that the things I’m meant to know about will come to me when they’re supposed to, and I won’t feel bad for not knowing about something.

Needless to say, I am now an Ylla fan. You can read about her life here and here, and see some of her photos at the Holden Luntz Gallery (or by googling).

I’m inspired by all of the art she put into the world, during the short time she was making art. I want to write, I want to create stories and essays and make people laugh and cry. I want to do other things too, sure, but I will tell you all here, since you’re my friends, that I am really driven to leave books behind. I have so many books to write! Something I know is that the way to write them is to write them (and not to stare at a social media feed). And while I’ll give myself space to give books and ideas the time they need, it’s also really important to me to actually write them, and to finish them. I do still get in my way. I distract myself. But reading about Ylla has lit a fire. Who knows how long we’ll all be here? I want to make good art in the time I have on the planet.

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If you know, you know, sure. But let’s embrace the fact that there are things we don’t know. There are things I’ll never know. I don’t know much of anything about video games. I’ve never watched Game of Thrones or Friday Night Lights or The Bachelor. I've never read a Babysitter's Club book. Some of these I might never know more about, and some of these I will.

I don’t have time to know everything. You probably don’t either. It’s ok to narrow down your inputs, to only really know what you want and need to know. I’m more worried about writing everything I can, not about knowing everything.

And if you really need to know something, there is this whole internet thing, and you can figure it out.

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Ideally, in summer I’m outside eating a salad and reading a book, in fall I’m buying notebooks and organizing my projects for the nine months ahead, in winter I’m wrapped in a blanket after braving the cold, and in spring I’m standing cautiously on the front walk while inhaling the scent of dirt that is no longer under snow.

I have summered in a way that is an outdoor version of autumning/wintering, where I make plans and charts and graphs. I have summered where I charted what part of the house each kid would clean each week, who would learn to cook dinner on which days, and when we would bicycle to the library. I have summered where I signed my children up for every possible day camp, which meant I spent most of my day driving. For one summer, we picked a different activity out of a jar each day. That was fun, but was still forcing a sort of cold-weather productivity on our summers.

I think there is a way to experience summer without having to white knuckle your way through, teeth gritted.

A longstanding parental dictum here is that we tell our kids to “make/build/create” on a day off. They are free to interpret that as they want to. If they spend the day creating an elaborate video for TikTok, well, all right. If they build a birdhouse out of cardboard that collapses at the end of the day, sure. But make something.

Summer is a great time to pick one huge thing you want to make/build/create. Make one thousand dollars. Run farther than you could at the beginning of the summer. Learn to play a particular song. Learn to drive. Ride a bike with no hands. Write a story. Paint a painting.

There is this tendency as a parent and as a person in 2023 to want to control productivity. I want to tell my kids what their goals should be, or, upon hearing their goals, create a calendar showing them how to reach that goal in six weeks.1 I have in the past decreed that I will draft a book over the summer, with my daily word count plugged into Pacemaker so I can hit all my marks.2

But if I approach summer both as “what do I want to make/build/create” and with the idea that I’m going to create with grace and ease, well then, we can make something and have a good time doing it.

We are not people who go on big trips or who “summer” anywhere, although I’ll admit the great privilege I have (and which I talk about in the video) that I live somewhere that is a summertime destination. I do sometimes cringe a bit as my kids are heading back to school, since they don’t have a “we trekked through the Alps” summer story.3 I will also admit that all of this is possible by the fact that, as a writer who works at home, my schedule is flexible. I can go to the farmer’s market on Wednesday mornings. I can vacuum on Thursday at 1 pm.

I’m sure this will change, but here are some of the things I’m making/building/creating this summer:

• Finish a draft of a middle grade. Revise a different middle grade.

• Perfect a multigrain sourdough boule.

• Learn more about sewing clothes intuitively.4

• I got a paddle board last fall. I’m looking forward to getting better at that.

Plus! All of our regularly-scheduled summer people activities. Smitten Kitchen recently had a post about good picnic food5 Her tomato, olive, and couscous salad is one that I’ve made ahead to have in the fridge, as is this pasta salad with roasted carrots. And the NY Times had a newsletter about make-ahead salads that all look good.6 I made this roasted zucchini one and it was great. This chive potato salad looks yummy too. Now is a great time to re-link to my favorite granola recipe, a summer people favorite with yogurt and fresh blueberries.

How do you approach summer (or any of the seasons, for that matter)? Maybe you live somewhere without much seasonal change. Or maybe your summer is full of rituals and long-standing family events — I definitely want to hear about that. I almost said: “are you all about chore charts, or about lying on your back in the grass and looking at clouds?” but that would make it pretty clear which team I am on, and if your summer runs via chore charts, that’s actually awesome.

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Like anything, anything, all of this stuff, it’s about doing what works for you and not doing something just because you think you should or everyone else is doing it and for the love of pete not just for the Instagram photo. Do it for you. Take it slow. Be with your people, if your people are there. Make a pie. Cut up strawberries and eat them on the lawn. Smell flowers. Watch water. Lie on the grass and look at clouds.

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But I couldn’t stop.

When it came down to it, and the real reason no one wanted it, was because it was me seeking attention. Look, I got you the special cheese, did you notice me?

Oof.

The internet arrived and provided many, many new ways to please people. To get attention. Many new ways for me to put my own needs twenty-fourth in order to cater to the supposed needs of everyone else, really in a bid to be noticed. The internet, in fact, told me it was a good business practice. You just have to stay relevant / be noticed / get those eyeballs.

Listen. No one wants it. No one wants the special cheese. They would much rather I buy the cheese because I want it (look, I’ve gone this far with this cheese metaphor, and I’ll take it as far as I need to), and then I’m happy to share it with them, because I like it, and they might like it too.

Or maybe I won’t share my cheese at all.

Whether people know it or not, what they really want is to be pleased by you being you. They want other people to be so jubilant in their own selves that the joy radiates outward like an earthquake of wonder. That’s inspiring. When people are putting themselves last so they can guess what at the needs of the people around them? Eh. I was going to say it’s embarrassing, but it’s more that I’m embarrassed by how much time I wasted trying to guess what everyone else wanted, when I could have made everyone happy by being myself.

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And before you say “oh yes, but what about being a parent, hmm, what about that?” uh, yeah, I know. But now that I have many teenagers (four of them) I can tell you that what they want more than anything is for me to be my own self so they are also free to be their own selves. I can support them without subjugating myself. And anyone who says you need to shove your own needs in the garbage in order to fully support them has some stuff to work through. Don’t listen to that. You can make a regular dinner and take care of your own needs. Otherwise you’re Bree Van de Kamp and her osso buco.

Sometimes I know I use people-pleasing as an excuse not to do whatever hard work I need to do. I can’t do deep work, because I need to buy shorts for one of my kids. I can’t meditate because if I don’t post twice a day on Twitter, people will forget I have a book coming out. I can’t go for a longer walk today because I need to respond to every comment.

The most radical thing I can do, most days, is decide what I truly want and need to do, and then do it.

You can trust yourself. You can do what’s right for you, even if no one else around you is doing that thing. You are allowed to eat what you want to eat and move how you want to move and sleep how you want to sleep. Wear what you want to wear. Read what you want to read.

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And also: let other people live their lives how they want to. Isn’t it amazing, when you see someone do something and you think, “Wow, I would not have decided to spend my last dollars on a cruise” or “they’re going to self publish that book that’s full of typos, gosh” or “she’s going to regret those shoes.” People make choices all the time that you wouldn’t make. WHO CARES. They are making the choices that may or may not be right for them, and it’s none of your business. And that means also that you can wear whatever shoes you want to or write your book how you want to. As long as you’re not hurting anyone else. Listen to your gut, listen to your body, trust yourself, and only drink warm lemon water if you want to.

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Unless you want to shoot people or stab them in the eye. Don’t do that.

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