revisiting old loves: words

i've been reading and writing

a month or so ago i picked up some books i’d ordered from powell’s. the glass of my smartphone kissed the storefront’s glass to reveal a QR code, which is how a human on the inside matched me with my order, then swiftly set my bag of books outside on a table. bittersweet feelings: i miss going inside bookstores the way i miss going inside restaurants and bars, but take-away certainly does the job.

this is a newsletter update about the written word. reading them, writing them, appreciating them, being eluded by them, deciphering them in dreams, submitting them for publication, having them be rejected, and having them find a home alongside other words. rinse, repeat.

included below: links to some of my writing published this year, writers and publications worth checking out, and all the books that kept me sane in 2020.

—

i de-prioritized my own writing for so many years that it didn’t even occur to me that years (decades?) had passed. editing and ghostwriting projects had been like taking the motorcycle around the block so that the engine still runs: not optimal but better than nothing.

sometime last year i started researching and working on a book project. if you’re highly creative and/or have ADHD you might recognize that “working on a novel” is code for research rabbit holes and mood boards, but also suddenly very interested in writing poetry and flash and cnf.

then came the pandemic. i was underemployed for most of 2020, and all i had was time. i kept busy researching, reading, and writing—my days were amorphous blobs of time with so many tabs, so many google docs, and so many beverages. i also started submitting to publications—my surge capacity a byproduct of pandemic anxiety and my complex relationship to productivity—and nine months later, i’m humbled to see my byline and words in publications i admire.

SUBMISSION STATS FOR 2020

in another lifetime, i was an undergrad intern at a literary journal in central florida. we received submissions via mail in envelopes with handwritten notes—words written on typewriters, or print outs (sometimes even dot matrix) from computer files. we kept logs of our activities with a clipboard and pen and paper kept in the office. i’m very old.

submitting to publication now is a whole different beast—submittable and duotrope incredible easy and accessible tools i use regularly. because i’m me, i still manually keep track of my publications and submissions outside of these tools in two personalized ways: one, i keep a trello board to track all my pieces (genre, drafts, feedback) as though writing is an agile sprint, and two, a spreadsheet that logs submission/publication details (submit date, acceptance/rejection/withdraws/method, stats, links, etc).

according to my publication tracker spreadsheet for 2020:

• current active submissions: 167

• total submissions: 325

• acceptances: 33

• rejections: 154

• withdrawals: 45

PUBLISHED STUFF

it’s kinda a glass half full/empty exercise to look at submission stats and extract a meaningful story out of it: lots of rejection, ghosting, but also a fair amount of acceptances (especially for what started out in earnest only a year ago). a shortlist of the pieces that i’m most proud of published this year:

PROSE

“the caterwauls,” a flash fiction piece that’s not not about quarantine and isolation for HAD; a two humor-ish pieces i delighted in writing—one, “your confirmed registration for pet shop boys’ upcoming webinar: let’s make lots of money,” and two, “the bell in hell” about helsinki’s taco bell grand opening; an essay for empty mirror exploring richard siken’s poetry and ann gale’s paintings; “underline it like you mean it,” a cnf piece about distant relatives and (il)literacy that received a 2020 pushcart prize nomination (!); and “what i didn’t take,” the first draft of which i wrote in grad school at portland state.

POETRY

“sweat from the steam,” in print issue #2 the uk publication fourteen poems; “half blood / dual coasts,” a collaboration contest finalist written with my half brother for sundog lit; two poems about disaster planning + transportation for no contact mag; “summer ghosts”; and forthcoming, the poem i’m the most in love with of anything i’ve written, “first the grasshopper,” which will appear in print issue #12 of GS this spring.

SOME RECOMMENDATIONS

if you’re looking for new writing and pleasing graphic design, i recommend the following indie literary journals/pubs that are putting out terrific work: always crashing, x-ray, triangle house, reality beach, commuter/electric lit, taco bell quarterly, sibling rivalry, no contact, visual editions.

writers and online pieces i’m particularly fond of: this and other hybrid poems; a diet mountain dew poem; all of katherine fallon’s poetry; tuck woodstock’s journalism/essays; kevin latimer’s poetry; all things alexander chee or tommy pico; the stellar essay “for a good time call”; the brief and magical history of fast-food buffets, and probably many, many other things i’ve read/shared online this year. (not included, though forthcoming: a list of noteworthy newsletters.)

BOOKS READ IN 2020

1. flesh and blood - michael cunningham*

2. tinderbox - robert fieseler 

3. west of yesterday, east of summer - paul monette 

4. the heaven of animals - james poissant 

5. my new orleans: ballads to the big easy by her sons, daughters, and lovers

6. bluets - maggie nelson

7. other voices, other rooms - truman capote 

8. gumbo ya-ya: 70th anniversary edition of original and unabridged louisiana folktales 

9. a confederacy of dunces - john kennedy toole

10. the melancholy death of oyster boy & other stories - tim burton 

11. beyond the dark veil: post-mortem and mourning photography - thanatos archive 

12. haunted air - ossian brown 

13. saint monkey - jacinda townsend

14. pachinko - min jin lee* 

15. on photography - susan sontag*

16. mad men carousel - matt zoller seitz

17. a girl is a half-formed thing - eimear mcbride 

18. house of the spirits -  isabel allende*

19. how to do nothing - jenny odell* 

20. mostly dead things - kristen arnett 

21. something bright, then holes - maggie nelson

22. blue earth review #20 

23. leadbelly - tyehimba jess 

24. bird by bird - ann lamott 

25. falling awake - alice oswald 

26. against creativity - ali mould

27. the hours - michael cunningham* 

28. cajun women and mardi gras: reading the rules backward

29. mcsweeney’s no. 57 quarterly

30. so you wanna talk about race - ijeoma oluo

31. pass with care - cooper lee bombardier 

32. daily rituals - mason currey*

33. close range - annie proulx

34. the best american nonrequired reading (2010) - collection 

35. the best american short stories (2013) - collection

36. in the company of my solitude: american writing from the AIDS pandemic - collection

37. the beautiful ones - prince*

38. mcsweeney’s no. 55 quarterly

39. the nib -  issue 5 animals 

40. the nib - issue 6 power

41. war of the foxes - richard siken

42. the poisonwood bible - barbara kingsolver*

43. the best short fictions 2019 collection

44. her body and other parties  - carmen maria machado*

45. two or three things i know for sure - dorothy allison

46. modern nature - derek jarman 

47. southern spirits: four hundred years of drinking in the american south - robert f. moss

48. verge - lidia yuknavitch

49. mcsweeney’s no. 56 quarterly

50. lust & wonder - augusten burroughs 

51. the moviegoer - walker percy

52. shit, actually - lindy west

53. florida review issue no. 41 

54. hollow kingdom - kira jane buxton 

55. gulf coast volume 33

56. gravy no. 76

57. the best small fictions 2019 

58. do you know what it means to miss new orleans? collection -broken levee books

59. the great believers - rebecca makkai*

60. the great house - nicole kraus*

61. the cajuns: americanization of a people - shane k. bernard

62. around the world in 80 trees - jonathan drori

63. book of delights - ross gay

64. blood meridian - cormac mccarthy

YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS?

i’m reading a lot of short stories and collections and novels these days and would love your recommendations. i have a soft-spot for any/all of the following: southern writers/southern stories, historical fiction, narratives weaving multi-generations or spanning large swaths of time, anthologies or collections, or anything you think i’d like given the list above. send your favorites via email or on substack:

hey, thanks for reading. i’m grateful to have a place to share these little triumphs with you, and hope you enjoy at least one thing i’ve linked out above.

to more words,

rhienna