A few of my initial brief thoughts on this moment in time, and making art, are right below. But if you don't want to read them and you just want book news/events and writing opportunities, scroll down!
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In the summer of 2017, about one year into parenthood and Trump, with the ACA in constant threat of being repealed, I kind of lost my shit.
My C-section had moved me into the “pre-existing condition” bucket along with many of my loved ones, and I worried nonstop about whether I was "doing enough" to save healthcare. That summer my eyelids started twitching at my desk (it's from sleep deprivation plus caffeine in case it's ever happened to you!). I posted nonstop about abortion and healthcare to the point I got in trouble at work. Whoops! Turns out you can #resist too hard.
But all that anger sparked creativity: I started writing THE SINGER SISTERS and wrote a lot of my messy first draft, really, really intensely. And over time, the explosive anger reduced down to a steady simmer, and the book project emerged as the outlet, the escape, the dream that pushed me through the rough years that followed. So if the characters in THE SINGER SISTERS seem pissed off at an unjust world at times, well, that energy arrives right from those early pages, and the first summer of Trump.
And if (as I know it has for at least a few readers) the book has felt like a comfort in tough times, well, it served that purpose for its creator, too.
Even though I'm glad I wrote the novel, I would never willingly go back to that fevered state, that sense of helplessness in the face of government toying with our lives. Yet it seems we are going back. And it's going to be worse. I have no answers for what the future will look like. I am pathetically bad at predictions. THE SINGER SISTERS tackles the subject of abortion, as this recently-published excerpt shows, and the structure of the book assumes some measure of forward progress on bodily autonomy. But as we understand too well, progress can be reversed.
This time, as many others have noted, I feel less furious and more... bruised. I couldn't watch the election returns once things started looking iffy. I felt sick. I checked the results in the middle of the night and have been walking around wounded ever since, staying away from the headlines.
But maybe it's good that we're not glued to the bad news, not following every new and sick horror the way we did last time. Maybe we understand now that we have to preserve ourselves for the moments when we're really needed. When we are going to have to take risks and stand up in ways we can't quite fathom yet. And to prepare ourselves, we need to not lose our minds preemptively. We need art.
My son's kindergarten teacher describes the kids as feeling "tender" sometimes. It's a good word. In my tender state, I need a blanket of song, words, images. So like the good atheist Jew I am, I went to a church this weekend and took refuge by immersing myself in one of my favorite pieces of art, the Forty-Part-Motet by Janet Cardiff. I have been listening to a lot of Leonard Cohen, and slowly reading The Summer Book, about life (and obliquely, loss) on a remote Scandinavian Island.
I am regrouping for the next round, murky though it is. I'm texting friends a lot. And I'm sending this to you. I hope you don't mind my taking the space.
Feel free to email back with your own status report. I want to know how you're doing!
With warmth and solidarity,
