Dear Friends,
I just finished reviewing copyedits for my second book, a short story collection called How to Make Your Mother Cry—that and revising the back cover copy. I find these post-writing a book, pre-publication tasks taxing. My friend Leslie C. Youngblood, author of two middle-grade novels, recently reminded me that there was a time when our words were just our words—who knew if they would be published. And this, the tedious work of reviewing copyedits, is just part of that long road to publication. Our conversation reminded me to be grateful for the process, which I hope helps get the book out to its readers.
As usual, I buried the lede. I finished my second book! It will be out in April 2024 from West Virginia University Press. More info next month when I have more info…:)
I haven’t written a newsletter in over a year. It was an eventful year. I moved—we moved—two words that contain so much change and work. In April, I drove to Virginia for a three-week artist residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). While in Virginia, I wrote an essay about my dad. While at VCCA, a black snake slithered across my path and paused when I opened a door. We both halted in our tracks and looked at one another. It was a moment of being in relationship with another animal, another being. I didn’t know what it meant, but it was powerful. The image made its way into a piece of writing.
In June, my dad, after a long illness, died. And yet again, everything changed. In July, we made a pilgrimage to see our family’s guru in Lowell, MA. While there, we drove just over an hour to visit my friend Holly in southern Maine. Even a couple of hours with her and Matt was restorative. We drove to the beach and breathed in the salt spray. I picked up a soft, pink and purple and white slipper shell and brought it home. It’s on my desk now. We admired the studio Holly built on their property and the flowers in her garden. We met her lovely dog Lilly, who took a shine to Raj. We gazed at the pottery in her studio and left with a midnight blue vase, which is now on my desk, filled with brown-eyed Susans, pink geraniums, a yellow gerbera daisy, and purple-blue periwinkle hydrangea from my mother’s garden.
At the end of the month, my mom and Raj and I flew to California for my cousin’s wedding. Raj and I spent an afternoon looking at art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and gazing at the living wall and the Diego Rivera mural. We walked across the Golden Gate Bridge. I hadn’t even known you could do that. We drove into the Marin Headlands and walked around dodging the biking tourists in Sausalito. I bought a navy wide-brimmed hat to protect my face from the sun.
Now it’s August and we are home. It’s starting to hit that my dad isn’t here in the way he was and what that means. I didn’t think I had gotten what I needed to get done while at the artist residency in Virginia. I didn’t make huge headway on the next book. But I wrote an essay. It’s called “Serpentine.” I read this essay at my dad’s service. I am grateful I had written something I could read and share with our community. It was a moment when I was struck again, as Anne Lamott says in Bird by Bird, by how much writing can give us, how it can help us be alive to the world, paying attention and taking notes.
That’s my goal for August. To keep taking notes. To keep paying attention. What’s one of your goals or thoughts for August? I would love to hear from you. This is a dispatch from my world. Please send me one of yours.
Warmly,
Sejal
This dispatch was originally sent out on August 16, 2023. You can read previous issues and subscribe here.