Finding the shape of an essay

The writing project that's keeping me up at night

I got rejected from Tin House’s unagented novel call yesterday – the final active submission in my Submittable – and texted my friend Victoria, haha, this means no more rejections. It’s not that hard to not be rejected, just don’t submit anything. Duh. Bad jokes aside, the rejection felt like a clearing away of old work that I want to rewrite and push to keep going. An essay I’m writing is inching nearer to being finished, and it feels like something I haven’t written before and wouldn’t have written a few years ago. Since January, I’ve been researching Arizona’s indigenous ingredients, interviewing farmers who grow these ingredients without much water, and asking many questions about what sustainability means in Arizona and how I want to write about it. 

In May, facing a clock (I’m having a baby at the end of June) and a mountain of notes, I asked myself, What do I know right now? And what is coming out is an essay, including some of the reporting I’ve done, that is far more personal, emotional, and subjective than I originally anticipated. I’m connecting a general estrangement from the land and growing food to estrangements in my life and the sick roots of white supremacy and racism, and extreme entitlement that white people often ignore in the stories of what is called westward expansion taught in school. Wish me luck finishing this piece, please, it’s quite a wrestling match.  

Three pictures of an old hotel I visited when some family was staying there last week

Reading: The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor. Listening to Sense and Sensibility in the morning as I wake up and make my assortment of drinks. Listening to The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis in the car with my kids. Rereading a favorite essay that doesn’t fail to remind me of the possibilities of writing: Love in the Belly of Beginning by Cassie Mannes Murray. Bookmarked a bunch of interesting articles this week and barely got to them, but you should read…

• Alicia Kennedy on a squash and mushroom tart in Lux Magazine

• Jennifer Wilson on Elena Ferrante’s class fictions in The Nation 

• Kate Kellaway on Jenny Diski’s life and work in The Guardian 

Writing: The aforementioned essay. Pitches.

Cooking: Nothing! Mac and cheese and frozen pizza and eggs. This has been a week of unpacking and finishing up the little bits of a move.