This month I started swimming laps at our community pool with my daughters every day. The pool opened up for a more regular schedule this summer, and I'm slowly remembering what it's like to do activities outside of my house.
My daughters love swimming. They're good at it. I don't care about it, really. I mean, it's fine. It's fine. I know there are articles and books (and more articles, and more books) about people finding themselves in the ethereal buoyancy and meditative beauty of the water, and that's not me. I like it okay, but I don't really care about getting good at it. I'm doing it to do something with my kids (and to cross train? I guess?).
I don't even do rotary breathing, which I never really learned to do properly, and can only do for half a lap. I use a front snorkel, which I love. It's great if you are bad at rotary breathing and don't care to get better, have any neck issues, or just want to swim with your face in the water the whole time, contemplating the tiles at the bottom of the pool, and listening to your own Darth Vader breaths.
My point about all this, though, is this: the first time we swam laps, I was breathing hard and exhausted after 50 meters. It had been a while. The second day, I was able to swim longer without getting tired. I remembered how to do what I was doing. I got faster. I swam better.
And this isn't even something I care about, or necessarily want to get better at. But I am getting better, despite myself, just by showing up every day.
Writing is my job, and it's something I care about very much, and still sometimes I stand in my own way and avoid it because I know it's going to be hard. But if I can get better at swimming, which pretty much means nothing to me, just by showing up, I can sure as heck show up for my writing. With writing we imagine huge things for ourselves. The culture and industry around it are built up in such a way that I start writing and a tiny voice in my brain says, "Maybe...bestseller? How about...big award? Could this be...movie deal?" But I need to celebrate sitting down and doing the laps of writing, getting the writing done, every day. Those big things do exist, but the only way to get there is to do the daily lap swimming of writing, the words on the page, and more words, and then: another lap. More words.Â
BookPeople next week!
NEXT TUESDAY, August 17, I'll be talking with Lindsay Leslie through BookPeople about our picture books about books. We're talking about process and inspiration, among other things. Have you signed up yet? (If you can't make it, I have another virtual event the following week -- pub day! -- with my local indie Print: A Bookstore.)
Even if you don't sign up to listen to us talk, make sure you check out the adorable stop motion video book trailer Lindsay made for So You Want to Build a Library!
Thoughts and Links
I'm sending weekly newsletter emails in August instead of my usual monthly ones, and so A) I apologize for more frequently blasting into your inbox, but it's a necessity of reminding people there's a book coming out this month, and B) the emails will be shorter than usual, since, like, I haven't always finished reading a book that week, so I won't always have books I loved at the bottom of the email (I'm currently reading The Letters of Shirley Jackson, and loving it). No, wait, I will not apologize for emailing you more often, because it's important to be able to unapologetically promote my work. So: my next book is coming out August 24, and it has received a starred review from Kirkus. If you know you're going to buy it, can I talk you into preordering? Preorders really help books by boosting those first-week sales, and showing publishers that authors are worth betting on. If you can't buy any books right now, or aren't sure, you could get it from your local library, or at least tell someone else about it if you think they'll like it. At the very least, I hope I show you the cover enough times that if you see it somewhere, you'll spontaneously yell, "HEY THERE'S JULIE'S BOOK!" and start telling everyone near you to buy it.
(What's that? You forgot what the cover looks like? HERE YOU GO:)
Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen linked to this genius idea for "reverse taring" -- how to use your kitchen scale to weigh ingredients without disengaging your stand mixer bowl. PERHAPS this is an esoteric tip for 2.5% of you, but I found it useful!
My favorite recipe of the past year might be Sheet-Pan Baked Feta With Broccolini, Tomatoes and Lemon. I use broccoli (who has time for broccolini?). I double it. Or triple it. AND I will now confess that sometimes, like this week, I mistakenly leave it in too long and it all burns a little and that is still delicious. (Cookie + Kate has a similar thing that makes the whole thing into a dip, which I'm excited to try.)
I started this newsletter on Tuesday from my attic office, and I'm typing it now on Friday morning from my writing shed. More to come next week (I hope!) and in coming months on how it is to work in this totally separate-from-my-house space. I did an Ikea run this week and still have to move all my books to my new bookshelves, but I have high hopes for lots of deep work out here.Â
