Facing an ocean of growth with a raft and one oar
Reflections on change, writing lessons gleaned from "When Harry Met Sally," a cute lil poem
It feels like fall, baby 🍂
The other day I went out for a nice neighborhood walk and gloried in the fall-like weather.
I’m a cool-weather girlie at heart. I do not like the heat, so summer is, understandably, hard for me. Now that the highs for the foreseeable forecast are in the 70s rather than, like, the 90s, I’m thriving. I’m working on a fall-set witchy book and it’s fall and I’m feeling witchy. The vibes are immaculate!
In this newsletter, you’ll find:
From the heart: thoughts on mattering, and changing, and embracing the slow evolution of a person
From the vault: “17 and a Senior Now”
From the page: reflections on writing after watching When Harry Met Sally for the first time
I hope y’all enjoy! Do feel free to interact as you see fit :)
From the heart 💗
Sometimes I wonder if anything I do matters.
Okay, I’ll be honest, it’s more than just sometimes. At least weekly, I am struck with the fear that if I disappeared the world would barely experience a ripple, because I haven’t made enough of an impact yet. I am convinced that I need to change the world in meteoric proportions in order for my life to have mattered1.
I’m also often frustrated with how slowly it feels like change comes. I’m not talking about systemic change, which is also incredibly slow and frustrating. I’m talking about individual change on my level.
I feel like I can see the person I want to be, the writer I want to become, the stories I want to tell — but I’m not there yet. I’m separated from her by an ocean of growth I need to achieve, and as much as I’d like to teleport from one side of the ocean to the other, I find that instead I’m given a rowboat and one oar. In other words, change comes slowly, day-by-day if that, and I want to simply snap my fingers and evolve.
To be honest, I don’t just feel this frustration within myself. I feel it with my social media channels, my newsletter, my authorial career. I want to be on the other side already, with 10 books published and thousands of subscribers and a hundred thousand followers. I want to have arrived2.
But that’s not the life we’re given. That’s not the journey we’re on. There is no overnight success — in fact, most of the “overnight successes” we see have actually been working for years if not decades, just a little under the radar so we missed them. It’s rare if not impossible for someone to snap their fingers and achieve everything, especially in creative fields. Because art is finnicky and it cannot be pinned down, there’s no magic formula to making art that moves others. Even if you found a way to write the best book ever, you need a lot of luck and timing for it to hit at the right moment.
All this to say — I frustrate myself with feeling like I’m spinning my wheels, striving for something I’ll never achieve, and I forget two things: that growth takes time; and to be grateful for what I have.
Here’s a truth: I’m doing pretty well. I have communities across the nation and world, people who care about me and listen to what I say. Maybe it’s not hordes of thousands, but there’s at least three people out there who read my words regularly, and fuck. That’s such a gift. Such a privilege. There are people whom I don’t speak to daily who still support me. I am lucky. I have a lot. And I’m going to try to be more intentionally grateful for what I do have. For every person who reads a book of mine and takes the time to give me feedback, whether that’s a CP or an editor. For every person who subscribes to this newsletter and skims my words. For every person who reaches out to me to say something I said resonated with them.
I’m going to chase gratitude, and I’m going to continue chasing personal evolution and growth, and someday, maybe, I’ll get to the other side of the ocean. At the very least, my raft and single oar and I will be further from the shore than we began. And that is worth celebrating.
From the vault 🔏
I remember writing this poem from the floor of my friend’s kitchen. I was overwhelmed with this feeling that everything was changing and I had responsibilities and expectations and the cost of failure was high. And as I sit here now, at 30, having failed in so many of the things I attempted in the years after this poem, I feel like I wish I could go back and hug my younger self and tell her it’s okay to fail. Life will lead you where you need to go in the end.
From the page ✍️
This past week, I watched When Harry Met Sally for the first time. That’s right, at the ripe age of 30, I finally sat down with this romcom classic. I did not have high expectations.
I don’t know why I thought so little of the movie. I just assumed it was about old people when I was young, and as a kid I didn’t have much interest in that. Granted, 31-32 is far from old, but what did I know. That sense of boredom persisted through the years, but this Tuesday I finally knew that I had to watch it. I’m taking a romcom screenwriting class, you see, and it was homework. So I lit a candle, fired off a tweet, and set my expectations low.
And wow. I was hooked within seconds. This movie is entertaining, romantic, funny, and utterly gripping. It’s a combination, I’m sure, of acting, vibes, and writing, but today I want to talk about the writing — specifically, what I can take away from the movie into my own writing.
The thing about it is, Harry and Sally are distinct characters. They have very firm personalities, and it’s immediately clear who’s who — Sally is a bit uptight and likes to do things by the book yet she also believes in love and friendship. Harry, on the other hand, is happy-go-lucky but kind of a cynic. So seeing their evolution over the course of the movie as they grow apart and then toward each other? Brilliant.
For example, the iconic Katz’s Deli scene where Sally fakes an orgasm, loudly, in the middle of the restaurant. Sally from the beginning of the movie would never have done that. She needed to loosen up a bit, get comfortable with Harry, and also be pushed to wanting to prove herself right. It made perfect sense that she did it at the point in time where it took place.
Which brings me to my writing takeaways. Characters should change, while retaining their core. That is, if I write a grumpy character who meets a sunshine character and by the end they’re both rays of sunshine, that doesn’t make sense. The grumpy character should maintain some of that grump, just maybe open up to the sunshine one. Maybe learn to modulate their grumpiness.
And timing is everything. I think that some of the darlings we end up cutting in our revision passses are scenes and lines of dialogue that could make sense at a different point in the story.
Finally, there’s this: characters should feel like real people to you the writer and to the reader. “Elementary, my dear,” I can hear you grumbling, and listen, I know, it is an utterly basic takeaway. But I think sometimes when we’re in the weeds of a story we kinda…get lost. And forget that yes, we are creating characters and there are plot beats and structure is important. But the heart of a story isn’t the craft you use to create it; it’s the characters who breathe life into it.
So I guess I’m saying — study the craft. Study technique. Study traditional structure3. But if your character is truly alive to you, they may take you on a journey that derails said craft and technique and structure. And that, my friends, is where the true alchemy of story magic lies.
Alla prossima 👋
I hope you found something to enjoy from today’s missive! Before I leave you, a smidge of self-promo, because my friend said I have to: if you or someone you love are looking for editorial services, uh, maybe check me out? This is a brand-new venture of mine and I’m deeply stressed about it!!
Next week, I’m bringing you a Q&A with one of my favorite YA authors whose epic series is coming to a close — you may have heard of a little book called Foul Heart Huntsman that’s coming out on the 26th? Stick around for a Q&A with Chloe next Sunday! Tell your friends! Make them subscribe! It’s a party up in here.
Yes, this is something my therapist and I discuss regularly, lol.
I’m not even sure the authors I’m envious of feel as though *they* “have arrived,” so what am I even chasing?
This reminds me of a conversation I’ve been having with some friends about writing structures and traditions and I feel like saying this: if you’re reading a book and something doesn’t feel like it’s following the well-worn Western three-or-four-act structure, allow that it may be intentional. Different cultures tell stories in different ways.
Wow you might as well have titled this “Dear Naomi” because all of this is stuff I needed to hear right now. This resonated with me SO much.