What are we waiting for?

Let's GET GOING

Ladies, Gentlemen, and Good People who straddle these ideals taking the best from each:

I did a thing and I was renewed.

Last Tuesday was the first Tuesday of the first month of a new year, so to celebrate I was the featured reader at a simply spectacular monthly reading series in Queens that also features a unique open mic in which the room creates a poem called a Cento.

After this poem’s ninety-minute creation, I got to read an entire short story from my collection. Afterward, the audience showered me with compliments and well-wishes and desire to read more of my work. I sold most of the books I brought and had people compare me to Flannery O’Connor, Edgar Allen Poe, Baudelaire, Alfred Hitchcock, and many, many other creators that influenced me growing up. I loved the night so much I wrote a whole article about the experience. (I’ll let you know if it gets picked up.)

What’s important though is that it rejuvenated me.

It made me feel young again.

The mere fact that WE HAVE THIS WORD means that humans from olden days (because guess what, this word was first used in the mid 1700s) had the need to feel young again, to reconnect with their childhood selves. (OED's earliest evidence for rejuvenate is from 1742, in a translation by John Kelly, writer. Here’s the Merriam-Webster etymology.)

When I came home, finally alive, buzzing with good feeling and excitement, both of my kids were thrilled for me. They also told me that they felt I deserved this win and should feel like this all the time.

I was so happy to see myself on this chalkboard!

My son (here’s his website if you’re curious) then had a thoughtful moment that I swear could go into the canon of epiphanies that I wish I’d had as a young adult.

It’s weird to think that my 22-year-old self is already part of my 60-year-old self.

I am my own backstory right now.

He was having a realization that all young people should have as they age - that their lives RIGHT NOW matter - but also his epiphany is useful for those of us closer to the higher end of his spectrum than the low end.

All of our memories and successes are our backstory. The part of our life that is IN THE PRESENT MOMENT is the part in which we are the active hero of the story.

In other words, if I were to write a screenplay in which you are the hero (dear reader), you would be reading this blog in your current surroundings and at some point the viewer would get to see the entirety of your life as a series of events leading you to this exact moment.

Isn’t that bananas? Even more bananas is that this very moment MIGHT be the epiphany that changes everything for you. It could be the EXACT MOMENT that you think the singular, exquisite thought that propels you to the next, even more amazing phase of your life.

Have that thought, lovely human. Have it and live it.

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WRITING NEWS

I have a new micro story coming out in Flash Phantoms! Accepted yesterday, it will come out after editorial process on February 28th, 2025! Warning: this whole website is grisly and my story is horror (but it’s only 100 words so maybe you can handle it.)

Also: in addition to the above-mentioned amazing reading I did in Queens (at which I earned more in one night than I ever have earned from my writing in 24 hours) I have another reading coming up and you’re all invited. It’s at the Lithuanian American Alliance — a brownstone on 30th Street near Penn Station. The reading is Saturday January 25th at 6:00pm and I’m sharing the stage with my writer-twin Paul Jaskunas.

You’ll understand that nomenclature if you show up.

Here’s the Facebook event page if you want to check it out.

Other writing news? Ever since the Queens reading - or maybe ever since the New Year? — I’ve been sending out a lot of things. I’ll let you know if any of these things get picked up.

In late March, I’ll also be at the AWP writing conference in Los Angeles (all the love for Los Angeles in its hour of need) and at the inaugural Adriatic Writers Conference in Croatia this May. I think there might still be a space left for another novelist at this tiny but glamorous writing conference if you want to join!

Inspiring things besides readings and a publication this week? I went to KGB for Fantastic Fiction readings and met some great people (photos here), I watched THE CLOCK which is this amazing 24 hour art installation at MoMA for FOUR SOLID HOURS, and went to see Eureka Day on Broadway which was TBH a little too much like revisiting my actual experience as a mom in NYC’s public school system—but Bill Irwin plays the principal of the California private school and he knocked it out of the ballpark. I love that guy. Also saw The Brutalist…a film about an architect - long and worthwhile. Did I say long? It has a fifteen minute intermission—which you need. Later, I’m going to see Left on Tenth on Broadway which I’d wanted to see when it came out, but was nervous about…for obvious reasons. Nice to see myself able to at least face fiction these days!

It’s good to be in the City when it’s freezing. Even “doing nothing” feels like doing a lot!

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RANDOM FINAL THOUGHT

Actual laurels. (Photo by Alex Diaz on Unsplash)

I taught my son the phrase rest on your laurels which I feel that most “successful” people do a lot longer than I do. I tend to win a prize or do an event and move right on to working on the next thing. Successful authors write a book and then spend ten years (or the rest of their lives) impressing people with that one thing they have done… here’s a list of 130 well known authors who, for example, only wrote one novel.

If you follow the video link above (“rest on your laurels”) you will learn to your surprise, as I did, that it was thought of as POSITIVE to rest on your laurels. It meant you had achieved enough and could just be done—become a professor and stop writing after winning the Nobel… becoming a laureate meant it was fine for you to quit working so hard!

When did that change? Should it have? Will we ever go back to being happy with a single success?

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