Weekend Roundup, 13 April 2025

BUT MY EMAILS

We’re still trying to write books. That’s the thing I’m clinging to as the world goes to pieces around us. All the creative creatures I know have doubled down on their determination to make good art, even as new roadblocks and barriers spring up every day. The going gets tough and the tough get tougher.

Here’s how I’m shoring up my sanity this week:

Working alone

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for any length of time you’ve heard me gripe about email. Meetings are a close second on the list of things that eat into a writer’s time. On one of my group threads, my friend

Nora Kittie Geiss

called out the demoralizing proliferation of “little meetings” which are less than an hour but clutter up your schedule so it’s impossible to find larger chunks of time in which to really focus on what requires an uninterrupted flow state. Post-pandemic we still seem to be suffering from the collective delusion that everything must be a Zoom instead of a phone call, a phone call instead of an email. Add multiple participants across multiple time zones and it quickly starts to feel like all you do is schedule meetings, attend meetings, and schedule more meetings.

After a month on the conference circuit, I am officially burnt out. I’m so overstimulated and overexposed to the world that my first instinct is to hiss like an angry cat at any notification threatening to gobble up another “little” chunk of my time. So I did what I do when I get like this and told all the important people in my work orbit that I needed a week away from meetings and emails. It’s not a vacation—not at all—but I’m taking the next nine days to work without interruption on everything that the impositions of the digital age have, well, interrupted. Finally crossing some outstanding tasks off my list will, hopefully, give me enough of a reprieve to return to collaborative conversations with more grace. If you’re able to put some boundaries around the work that’s really important to you, it can change your attitude toward everything else.

Infectious enthusiasm

One of the last meetings I took before “going dark” was the PR/marketing kickoff call with my Hot Wax team at Simon & Schuster. Anybody’s who’s been around the block in this business will tell you that there’s usually a lot of naysaying involved in this part of the process—a lot of reasons this isn’t feasible or that won’t work or that thing isn’t worth the investment. It pays to manage your own expectations, not least because occasionally you’re pleasantly surprised. I got none of the naysaying from the folks at S&S; instead it was very much a room of “Yes, and”—everyone taking and tweaking and running with one another’s ideas, talking about what might be possible instead of what definitely isn’t. The excitement for this book is palpable. These people care about this book (almost) as much as I do, and that’s a dream come true. Moreover, the proof is in the pudding: we’ve got a new deck of digital assets to keep the campaign looking fresh from now until September. (You can find links to pre-order the book here. Pre-orders are vitally important to the success of a book, but especially now, when the tariff situation is causing a lot of production headaches for publishers. So thank you in advance!)

Creative spring cleaning

A few days ago I finished the notebook I’ve been using since April of 2024. Oddly enough, I manage to fit almost exactly a year’s worth of notes, lists, jottings, and so on in each composition book. Starting a new one always feels like a nudge from the universe to a “spring cleaning” of my creative practices, to reconsider how I’m working and why I’m working and if those two things are in alignment. And I’m thinking I might want to change the way I’m approaching the next novel, so the timing couldn’t be better. Is your artistic life due for an audit? More on that soon.

In the meantime, safeguard your sanity and your sacred hours any way you can.