Creating a body of work

How to take a lofty goal and (try to!) make it practical ...

What I’m working on:

Seeing each project as part of a larger whole.

When I was working in the D.C. area in my mid-20s and very depressed, I read Marina Keegan’s beloved and posthumous collection of essays and short stories, The Opposite of Loneliness. If you’re unfamiliar, Keegan was a Yale student who died in a car accident just five days after graduating. I didn’t know her, but as a fellow writer, I still think about her and this collection often, and not just because the prose is clear and beautiful.

With this collection, Keegan taught me that it’s never too early for writers to think about leaving behind a body of work. At the time, I caught on to the story of her death at just age 22 in an unhealthy way, wondering why I’d survived my own car accident a year after Keegan died in hers when I felt I had nothing to offer the world. (If you ever have thoughts like this, please go to therapy, friends!)

But since then, I’ve been inspired (in a much healthier way) by Keegan’s body of work as I think about how I want to shape my own. I want to explore ideas and experiment with medium (newsletter vs. podcast vs. fiction, for example), but I also want some purpose, some sense of intention that ties everything I create into a larger whole that will make sense years after I’m gone and could still resonate with someone in a completely different political and social landscape.

I don’t think it’s wise — or even possible — to live in a complete bubble, but when I’m tempted to be reactionary, this goal is a reminder that I’m aiming for timeless.

Sustainable connection.

I don’t know how to be on social media in a healthy way. Twitter was the last place that really meant something to me, where I encountered new ideas and made amazing friends and created genuine connections that wouldn’t have existed without that platform.

But I’ve finally admitted to myself that Twitter is also bad for my brain and my creativity. It’s hard to let your imagination roam when your mind is churning with opinions you disagree with and political and global events that are beyond your control and the everyday agonies of people struggling around the world.

I’ve been trying to reach for my phone to text a friend or a sibling instead of scrolling my timeline, to donate to a humanitarian organization instead of tweeting about the war, to reach out to my community in the ways that I can. It’s not enough, it’s never enough, but at least it’s something.

What’s inspiring me:

When old stories are new again.

I convinced my person to watch The Lodge with me recently, and while it wasn’t his jam, it was definitely mine. It’s a quietly disturbing horror flick that takes place in a winter cabin retreat far from the rest of civilization.

I appreciated the unexpected twists in the setup and the eerie dread of the isolated setting, but mostly I think I loved that you could read the whole thing as a very dark fairytale (something that’s true of more horror movies than you’d think). It felt like a combination fresh take on the wicked stepmother and the princess shut out of her kingdom, with a wink at the fact that “Hansel and Gretel” could be read in an entirely different way.

I love tropes, and I love new takes on tropes, so in a very different vein, I’d also like to recommend Emily Henry’s newest romantic comedy: Book Lovers. Consider this a sneak peek at my upcoming summer reading guide (subscribers will receive Part 1 of 2 in their inbox on 6/1). Book Lovers is a delightful reclamation of the “hard, determined city woman who acts as a foil to the sweet country girl the guy is actually in love with” trope. In this version of the story, the career woman who loves a fast-paced life in New York is the one who gets to visit a small town and find herself.

Music.

These recommendations are mine, but you may borrow them. I sent a creativity emergency text to a writer friend whose musical taste is much (much) more varied than mine, requesting “something dark and atmospheric, and maybe something that sounds like being in the woods in the middle of summer when time stops.” I’ve since been listening to Not to Disappear by Daughter and Valtari by Sigur Rós on repeat.