Rock, paper, teeth

It took two weeks to make the studio mine, to repossess it from the ghosts of the writers who came before me, their names scrawled up and down the door frame.

I rearranged the furniture and the lamps, swept the sand, stuck sunflower yellow Post-Its to the windows after a Mr. Cardinal tapped a few times. Best possible use of a precious resource.

But Mr. Cardinal keeps coming, he's not crashing into the window, he's perching, on the window, or if the window is open, on the screen, no, in the screen, his little feet cling to the screen, and he looks in. Hi.

He's curious. He has a song of his own. Perhaps he's looking for a ghostwriter. Someone who knows the color red. I'm here, Mr. I'm taking notes, I got you.

Every single time he flies off, his speed, the rush of air, are a revelation.

Today it's sixty degrees, tonight it drops, tomorrow it'll snow, and then the state warms up again, we'll hit eighty next weekend. And then I will go home.

I came with notions of perfection and control, but they've gone the way of grapes, smooshed, crushed, stomped by the feet of local women. Writing is as messy as trampling grapes, or messier still.

At the halfway mark I set new intentions, or tried to, fighting the net of anxiety, flailing in it, trying to bite my way out of it. I reread the cards friends had sent, reminding me to "live in the small hours when the work becomes too big," that "things go at their own pace, fires need their oxygen," encouraging me to find time to be "a pottering cat." (Thank you, friends!)

I am writing this letter to psyche myself up for the coming week, the final week. Will it be a week of all-nighters? Will I hold my breath while thrashing my arms and legs, or will I relax into the chair and let the chair fulfill its vocation: to hold me?

This week I wrote something new, it flowed out of me, six drafts in two days, and I read it last night after dinner, in front of the fireplace, I had forgotten fire gives heat, too, just not light and crackle. And with this new energy I return to the novella.

A few days ago the piano tuner came through VCCA to do his thing. He stepped lightly, smiling, a poster child for...what? Fun? Exuberance? Love what you do and never work a day in your life?

I said hi to him, thinking he was a newly arrived fellow. He asked me if I had a piano in my studio.

"I'm a writer," I said. "A piano makes a great surface," he said. As if he knew I'd already covered two desks and the daybed and an entire wall and the rug, too.

ABOUT

Divinity School • a letter every Sunday at sunset • if you’re always looking, after some time you’ll have seen

I make Divinity School from scratch without AI. The writing and the photos here are all my work, always. Thank you for reading, please share near and far, and upgrade to a paid subscription if you can swing it! Paid subscriptions support my writing practice – up next, "More is more: revision as a generative act," a workshop with Danielle Lazarin at Writing Co-Lab.

NEWSY STUFF

I'm writing at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) February 9 through March 10. It is a privilege and a joy to be here! Thank you, VCCA staff and all the Fellows, for your company at dinner, and your inspiring work.

JUNCO AND WOLF, a story inspired by my year studying in Moscow, is forthcoming in Issue No. 33 of A Public Space. Stay tuned for a pub date and order link.

Free but required RSVP is live for the April 1 (new date) launch party for SEARCH WORK: A Collective Inquiry into the Job Hunt, edited by Rachel Meade Smith (OR Books, 2026), available for pre-order now. My essay is in the book so YES I WILL sign your copy. You can buy the book at the event.