fallow

I had a new newsletter all queued up to publish this morning. I worked hard on it, kept revisiting the sentences, cutting and clarifying, listening for the musicality. It had some virtues! But last night I just thought: Nope. I don’t want to write like that anymore. My newsletter writing — and thereby my thinking — has been, well, the dreaded “thoughtful,” perhaps clever at best. But would I sign up for my newsletter? I wouldn’t. (Someone described my book as having “sentences infused with tenderness.” This person meant it as a compliment, but I just thought: gag, I think that’s true?)

I put out an enormous amount of work this year. An essay in this book. An essay in that book. A whole short documentary film that premiered in this exhibition (though no one else seems very interested in it). Speaking gigs and fellowships. I have a book in the works, but my vocation as mother with three kids still at home means I’m only planning to really write it in a season when I can get time off teaching. That might be soon, but it might be later. And meanwhile, what is that newsletter doing? Stock and flow, maybe. But I’m just going to stop for a while. In anticipation of my last milestone birthday, I wrote that I want to make art, not arguments. I have a whole beautiful studio and ideas forming in my head. Time to let most things lie fallow and start over.