The Dreaded Drafting Slump, Bookseller Con, and the Naked Spa

Issue 2: February 2024

Welcome back to the The Writer’s Studio!

So I have pink hair now. Sort of. It’s just a toner and will wash out over time, but now I like it so much I kind of want to do it again? And more saturated? I’ve dyed or bleached my hair constantly since I was 16, but I’ve never had a non-natural hair color. But I wonder: is this finding my cool stride late in life, or is it a sad spasm of mid-life crisis? It was my birthday this month, after all, and I’m now solidly in my forties.

Having grown up in Evangelicalism, there’s a lot I’m only exploring later in life with the self-imposed boundaries removed. It wasn’t necessarily bad to color your hair, but it wasn’t what good girls did. And I tried very hard to be good. A lot of “pick-me” energy in my teens and twenties led to more perfectionism, less risk. For now, I’m enjoying my Jem and the Holograms moment.

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February was BUSY. Two trips and a birthday. Plus I’m chipping away at my 2024 Bingo and I colored in “Take a Class” (acrylic painting) and “Do an Escape Room” (with friends for my birthday. We lost, but it was so fun!)

I road-tripped up to my old stomping grounds near Seattle with my Bend besties to go to the naked spa. People seemed intrigued by this in my last newsletter, so I thought I would expand on it.

When I turned thirty, I decided to do something daring and life-affirming, so I invited all my friends to the local Korean women’s spa for the day. I’d never gone before, but it felt like at thirty, it was time to start learning to be comfortable in my own skin. In the pool area—with three heated pools of different temperatures, a cold plunge pool, and both a dry and steam sauna—nude is mandatory. (But you wear these communist-era cotton hats to cover your head. “The great equalizer,” my friend Ashley and I call it.) Mandatory robes are provided for the rest of the spa, including a lounge, heated reading room, Korean café, and infrared sauna rooms with various elements like salt, sand, and charcoal. You can get services like nails or massage or facials, but you can also just get a day pass and hang out.

I go at least once a year, even trekking 7 hours back to Seattle now that I live in Bend, and I’ve learned a lot of life lessons from the naked spa. Here are two:

1. Everybody has a body. It’s not that big of a deal. However, our entire culture is constantly telling us it is. Why? So we buy stuff. Shame fuels the beauty economy. At the spa, I am more in my body and also more detached from my body as a marker of my value. I’m like a mother bathing her child, playing both roles, nurturing myself and being nurtured. It’s magical.

2. Hydrothermal rotations are-life-changing. You work your way up the pools from least hot to hottest, then roast yourself in the sauna, then plunge in 60F water (not that cold, if you’re familiar with cold-plunging, but pretty freaking cold compared to any water you would consider bathing or swimming in). It drains your lymph nodes, reduces inflammation, increases circulation and healing, supports immune function, and on and on.

But you also just feel like a total badass for getting in that damn cold water. It’s horrible for about 20 seconds, but then it feels amazing. I can stay in that water for 5 or more minutes while my overheated body cools down. It’s like a lot of things in life that seem too hard when you’re just dipping your toes in: it’s only through doing that you learn that you can. And that it’s really good for you! Last week I did an ice bath plunge after infrared sauna and the temp was around 45F. TOTALLY different experience. Painful. Like an ice cream headache in your whole body. It’s like your bones hurt. And it takes several minutes to dissipate, if you can stand it that long. I could only stay in for three and I kept my arms out.

Comparatively, the spa is gentle. And that’s what I love about it. An entire day just resting and soaking and being warm and cozy with no pressure to look good or perform for anyone. I eat dolsot bibimbap (a rice bowl with veggies and a fried egg served in a hot stone bowl), read, nap, infrared sauna, hot tub and plunge on repeat, and leave feeling rested and amazing. If I had the money, I would start one here in Bend.

I also had the pleasure to join my boss Cassie and attend the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute in Cincinnati, which is their largest national conference each year. I learned about so many books, met so many lovely authors and booksellers, and gleaned a lot about Indie bookselling.

There was an entire ballroom called The Galley Room, dedicated to free advance reader copies (and some published copies) of books the publishers wanted the booksellers to have. An entire ROOM of free books. And on top of that, there were free books at every author signing and keynote address. I’m not kidding, I shipped home four boxes of books. And I used restraint. The above are just the SIGNED ones I snagged from the two biggest author events. I met every one of those authors! Darcie Little Badger! Stuart Turton! Casey McQuiston! adrienne marie brown! And the debut authors have some off-the-hook novels coming out I can’t wait to read and hand-sell.

Obligatory pet pic of Mario trying to help me pack. Look at those little back paws straight up in the air! Even an upstanding gentleman is allowed to be undignified at times.

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I’m working on the first draft of my contemporary Young Adult dark fantasy about four girls attending a private Christian school who discover witchcraft. That’s all I’ll say for now, but it’s exciting to be working on something contemporary for a change, with characters who talk like they are living here and now and cultural references and problems I’m intimately familiar with. It’s even set in the Pacific Northwest. And it helps that I briefly attended a private Christian high school and went on to teach at one off-and-on for fourteen years.

The goal was to have a first draft by 4/1, but I’m pushing it out a bit as the story is eluding me somewhat. I’m shooting for May or June now. I just have to keep in mind my most powerful mantra: Big things get done through many small actions. I just need to keep showing up and chipping away at it, even if my daily word count is less than my initial, admittedly ambitious, goal.

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I had coffee with one of my dearest friends, who is also a fantastic writer. She’s especially good at short form fiction, and we were chatting about how frequently she and other short fiction writers we know have started a novel but gotten stuck around 25,000 words. And to be honest, even though I’ve finished several novels, it happens to me too, pretty much every time.

Now, being a planner would help with this. And usually I’m a little obsessive about story structuring methods (probably because I feel so lost without one!), but this novel is just not unfolding itself to me the way I would like. I think because it’s my most character-driven project ever, and with four main characters, I’ve been focused on their internal development through the story, not so much the plot points.

All this to say, I’ve gotten a little stuck. I’ve given myself permission to stop going after word count and just pause and think for a while. I hate this part. I get so afraid I won’t know how to go forward. That my ideas are too obvious or derivative or boring. That I don’t have an ideas! But I’m trying to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving, even if it’s inches at a time and I have to get cross-country.

Here’s what’s helping me lately:

1. Victoria Schwab’s very cool video discussing The Story Corpse. (Yes, that is the correct spelling. She’s referring to a dead body. I mean, would you expect any different?!) She takes months to “flesh out” (are you getting the metaphor now?) her stories with every possible plot point she can figure out ahead of time. It’s very inspiring. And while I’m not planning to go into the level of detail she does, it’s helpful to create a document with the major 10-12 plot points I already know and another document with everything I think could happen in between them. It’s not a complete plan by any means, but it’s making me think.

2. Getting past first thoughts. It feels good to get to a solution or to find a path to walk when you’re lost in the forest. However, I’m trying to give myself space to keep going. Maybe I’ll take that path. I know where it is. But maybe it leads to a bog and there’s this very interesting path just down here that is sloping upward toward that viewpoint I can just glimpse on the horizon. Or this other path lined with gumdrops leading toward that wisp of smoke I see over the treeline.
   
   The point being, I’m trying to come up with multiple ideas for the places I’m stuck so I can better see how each one might influence the rest of the story. It’s also good for overcoming the need to come up with one right and perfect answer. (IT’S A TRAP! she shouts, as you lift your foot to step onto what you think is the straight-and-narrow-one-true-path.) There will eventually be a best path for your story, but you don’t find it by writing scared. You find it by writing weird and letting yourself be wrong in the planning/drafting process. I am preaching to my own little terrified brain right now.

3. Character arc mapping. I have a big cast in this one and four MCs. Since this is a character-driven story, I think it will help to map the internal and external journeys of each of my characters. What is the lie they are believing and how will they learn the truth? Then how will they abandon the lie? What do they think they need, and what do they actually need? How do the other characters challenge them or bring things out in them? I already know these things. Now I need to think about the circumstances and plot points that could push them along in their journey. And once I’ve got a sense of that for each character, where do their arcs overlap in particular scenes and whose POV will it be in?

Hopefully by next month I’ll have some good news to report, but for now I’m in that dreaded 25K slump. But I’m not going to let it beat me.

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This little section is for whatever is lighting my brain on fire right now with inspiration or joy.

1. The Glucose Goddess: Not a dietician or a fitness influencer, Jessie is a biochemist who studies the effect of glucose on the body and helps people understand how to self-regulate their glucose levels. Glucose spiking can lead to inflammation and disease over time. As a person with autoimmune disease, inflammation is my enemy, so I’m trying it out. Her little hacks aren’t hard. A tablespoon of vinegar in my water at lunch and dinner. A short 10 minute walk within 90 minutes of a meal. Saving sweets for dessert instead of snacks. Snacking on fresh veggies while I prepare dinner. We’ll see how it goes, but her data is pretty compelling.

   

2. Canvas by Number paint sets: Matt bought me this Alphonse Mucha paint by number for Christmas and I loved doing it. I want to get the Mucha Zodiac one next.

3. Listening to:

   -Covenhoven (playing a house show in Bend this summer)

   -Grace Potter, who I’m going to see live on Monday night.

   -Marc Scibilia, whose single More to This went viral earlier this month. Gorgeous stuff.

   -And always, always Joseph

   

4. The incredible stained glass art of @cady_the_creator (insta).

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I’m always good for a fantasy or mystery rec, but I do read the occasional non-fiction title. There’s a book coming out this month that I just have to recommend. I plan to buy it for at least a few people in my life.

I was lucky to read an early copy of this. Sarah McCammon grew up in an Evangelical church as a private Christian school kid and has since gone on to be a political correspondent for NPR. This book is both memoir and reporting, with interviews with many of the prominent voices in the Exvangelical movement.

THE EXVANGELICALS takes a deep look at how the Evangelical movement rose to prominence and why it’s losing so many of its adult children who were raised Evangelical in the 80s and 90s. It looks at right wing politics, including Trump, anti-LGBTQ, anti-science, and abortion. It also explores the roots of all this in Evangelical ideologies of the 80s and 90s, like the purity movement, intellectual siloing and Evangelical parenting methods. It’s so well-written and it’s the first book of its kind to take on this issue directly and comprehensively. Really highly recommend.

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Didn’t I promise a short, pithy next edition last newsletter? Alas, I may not be capable?? Forgive me. But also, I hope you found something helpful or interesting here. These sections will probably be my usual stand-bys moving forward, but I won’t always take two trips in a month. So there may be brevity in my future!

Perhaps.

One hopes.

Here is an adorable picture of my cats for your troubles.

Smag, Luna, and Mario

Thanks for sticking with me. And if you enjoyed this, would you consider please sharing it with someone?

Until next time,

J.M.R.