Monday, August 1, 2022

July '22 Madhouse Recap: Therapy, Poetry, and a 5-Year Plan

 July ‘22 Madhouse Recap

Hello Friends and Fiends—

Another month has come and gone and with it, summer is almost over. Dennis and I have been working really hard on well…everything. I feel like we’re all starting to get into a routine together, which is great, but things will change once the semester starts and we’ll have to adjust and reframe things yet again. Flexibility is not something I tend to be great with, and the more I learn about my OCD, the more I understand how important structure and communication are to my life. Therapy has been really wonderful and I feel grateful to be paired with a therapist who really gets me and is patient and supportive; she’s been helping me to unravel a lot of trauma, and while the growing pains have been excruciating at times, they’re a necessary battle for me and they’re helping me to grow into a better version of myself, not to mention a more patient and empathic mother and partner. So yeah, between managing all of that and some other postpartum stuff, it’s become more important than ever for me to 1) assess how and with whom I’m spending/giving my time and 2) plan out time that’s just for me. 

Honestly, summer is just a weird time for me in general. I know a lot of people get seasonal depression in the winter, but I get it in the summer. I hate the eternal sun, the heat, the humidity. It makes me miserable and angry, and I’m just desperately looking forward to fall and winter and darkness so I can feel alive and happy again. 

I will say, though, that I had a very productive month and have been taking a lot of risks with some projects here and there. It’s been fun to push myself, and I’ve started asking myself questions about plans for the next 5-10 years of my life. Dennis and I have a lot of goals we want to accomplish together for our family, but when I sit and think about the direction of my career and my writing, I feel like I’ve gotten too comfortable–which sure, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I think I want to try some new things, maybe tackle some of the more challenging projects I’ve put on the back burner or told myself I couldn’t do until I had more experience. I don’t know. I feel like for so long I made so many decisions based on the fact that I wanted to have a child, and now that Evie’s here, I just want to tackle the world with her and make crazy, wild, beautiful things happen, and the way she looks at me makes me feel like I can do anything and everything. 

I just love her so much.



On the writing/teaching front:

  • The cover reveal and preorder of Writing Poetry in the Dark went live and will be available everywhere on October 18th. Writing Poetry in the Dark brings together some of the most successful contemporary genre poets to discuss topics related to creating dark and fantastical poetry. While there are countless books available for the aspiring poet, there is a lack of resources specifically for and on speculative poetry, and with the market thriving, publishers who previously did not put out poetry are now adding it to their catalogs, requesting it for their anthologies, and seeking it for their magazines. Given these factors, it seemed like the perfect time to put together a guide for dark poets that addresses some of the unique challenges they face, such as creating monsters out of white space, writing the hybrid poem, or subverting folklore in the retelling of a classic tale. Included in Writing Poetry in the Dark are recommendations on how to bring fear to the page,    write from the wound, let violence loose, channel the weird, and tackle the dark side of daily life. There are also practical suggestions for exploring different poetic forms and topics ranging from building worlds, writing from different points of view, and exploring gender and sexuality on the page. This book will bring something different to every speculative writer who is interested in exploring poetry with a genre twist, and it is our hope that this book will help poetry itself continue to evolve, grow, and redefine itself in the market for many years to come.
  • My poem “To Hear the Call” was accepted to be in the HWA Poetry Showcase, Volume 9. Even more exciting, it was selected as one of the top three poems in the anthology.  If you haven’t read the showcase before, there are eight volumes (so far) and I highly recommend picking them up.
  • My poem “What the Floorboards Know to Be True” will be a featured poem in Black Spot Books newest anthology Under Her Eye. Submissions are currently open for this one, so please consider sending in some work: “This collection is open to all poets who identify as women (cis and trans) and non-binary femmes. The theme of the second collection is domestic horror. This is a broad spectrum and poets are welcome to interpret the prompt in their own vision, so long as poems support the theme of domestic horror -- the fear that we might not be safe in our own homes. [They] have partnered with The Pixel Project, a global, volunteer-run non-profit for this showcase, and will be donating a portion of proceeds to support ending violence against women.”
  • My interview with Erin Slaughter, author of the poetry collection The Sorrow Festival is live on my blog and available to read. If you haven’t read Erin’s work, I can’t recommend it enough. 

This month, I read:

  • Brute: Poems by Emily Skaja

  • A Tug of Blue by Eleanor Hooker

  • Sacred Summer by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  • notsleepyyet by Alexander P. Garza

  • [deadname] by Halsey Hyer

  • Lore Olympus: Volume Two by Rachel Smythe

  • The Elementals by Michael McDowell

  • Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch (this was a re-read and I still think it’s a great–albeit unconventional–craft book for writers and all artists to read).

  • Girls From the County by Donna Lynch (reread)

  • Nightmare Country, Issue #3 by James Tynion IV

On the media front:

  • Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), The Long Night (2022), Umma (2002)

  • What We Do in the Shadows: I’m loving the latest season so far, and baby Colin Robinson is killing me. I could watch this show forever, I swear. Oh, and please take me to that night market!

  • I finished Stranger Things (2022) Season 4. What a fucking rush. I don’t think it’s possible for me to love this show more than I do. 

  • Ms. Marvel (2022): Dennis and I finished this together last month and I absolutely loved it (even if I did have some narrative questions). The culture was rich, the storyline was so empowering, and I loved how they portrayed family in this one. I wish I would have had stuff like this around when I was growing up, but I’m happy Evie will have it at least. She watched the entire thing with us, too!

  • Umbrella Academy (2022) Season 3: Klaus remains my favorite character of this series, and honestly at this point, I’m kind of just watching it for him. I enjoyed this season, and I actually really liked the cliffhanger ending, but I’m nervous for the next season. I’m really picky about my science fiction intake, and I think this could continue on as a story I really enjoy or it might go down a path that is a little too weird and out there for me. We’ll see. Either way, this particular season was a lot of fun and I continue to love how angry Five is. It makes my Aries self feel seen.

  • Twilight Zone (2019-2020) 

    • “Blue Scorpion” – This was a lot of fun. I like cursed-object horror and I thought this had some interesting things to say. Honestly, when I read through the episode descriptions, this one interested me the least but it probably ended up being one of the ones I liked more.

    • “Blurry Man” - I’m such a sucker for stories about writers (could I be more cliche? No. Do I care? Also no). But the twist for this episode made me so incredibly happy that I practically screeched like a bat.

    • “Meet in the Middle”- Definitely one of my favorites. I loved how this was romantic, thrilling, trippy, and HORRIFYING.

    • “Downtime”--This is the type of content I think of when I think of The Twilight Zone, but I also thought this had some Black Mirror vibes to it too (which makes sense when you think about it because Black Mirror is definitely influenced by Twilight Zone). Anyways, that blank stare from everyone as they stared at the big ball in the sky? Chilling. I watched this one in black and white, so the nostalgia was beautiful here.

    • “The Who of You”- These types of body-switch episodes always freak me out, but I love this kind of horror, so this worked well for me. Plus the twist at the end? So devious and dark and honestly just heartbreaking. 

    • “Ovation”--I liked this one and I thought the twist was good at the end, but it all felt a little too predictable for me. I wish there would have been some discussion about the coin itself–I think that could have added a different spin to a devil’s-deal story. 

    • “Among the Untrodden”--Psychic girls? A boarding school? This one had Stephanie written all over it. 

    • “8”--All I’m going to say about this is that I could watch SF shows and movies about giant squids all day long. 

    • “A Human Face”--I’m torn between loving this one and being bored with it and wanting more. I loved the premise, but it became so straightforward, yet at the same time, that blunt nature is where the horror is so I’m kind of in the middle on this one. Honestly, I kind of just wanted to see more of the creature in his purple slimy creature body, though.

    • “A Small Town” – This is the type of weird, SF that I love so I was all about this one. Plus, how they incorporated grief and community and then juxtaposed that against the greed and power of politicians was fantastic. 

    • “Try, Try”--Ah, this was probably one of my favorites out of both seasons. I love repetition stuff like this, and the way the “nice guy” trope was handled here was just perfect. Absolutely loved it!

    • “You Might Also Like”--This one was not for me. Like I said, with science fiction, I tend to either love it or hate it and I actually fell asleep the first time I watched this (hey, I have a 6-month-old, give me a break!) but then went back in for the rewatch, I still wasn’t taken with it. 

  • I flew through Boo, Bitch. It was like a paranormal version of Mean Girls and I had a lot of fun with it.

  • I watched the first two episodes of Season 2 of American Horror Stories. Honestly, I’ve kind of given up on all things AHS, but with that said, I still give it a chance here and there; the only one I completely quit on was Death Valley. Anyways, I liked the first episode, and I appreciated that it gave us some more insight into Coven, which was a cool crossover. The second one had some Black Mirror vibes to it, and I liked it, too. We’ll see how things continue though...

  • I randomly decided to watch How to Build a Sex Room and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Lots of good discussions about marriage and relationships (and obviously sex), and then the design part of it was gorgeous! Oh, how I wish I were rich…

Podcasts:


The start of this month is going to include a tattoo appointment, school supply shopping, and finalizing some details for the Writing Poetry in the Dark release this October, not to mention I’m teaching my Witch Lit workshop on August 16 (you can still sign up here!), so please send me good vibes, remember to hydrate, read one poem a day, and know that your art is valid and wonderful and the world needs your words now more than ever.

Best,

Stephanie


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