Spring Newsletter

Upcoming Revision Workshop, upcoming travels, upcoming writing

Happy Spring! This year I am very lucky to be able to see the cherry blossoms at home in Seattle, and also in Seoul, Korea, where I will be traveling later this week.

Aspiring Novelists—Sign up for my Revision Workshop at Hugo House!

Longtime readers of this newsletter know that I labored on my first novel for many, many, years and went through several rounds of huge revisions. Revision is such a hard thing to contemplate with a novel—it was so much work just to get a draft done, the thought of making any changes can feel like a Herculean effort. In the process of doing these things for my novel, I learned a thing or two. Now, I’m really excited to help my fellow novelists figure out their own novel futures in The Revision Workshop: The Novel. This 16-week (!) class, which will be mostly in-person at Hugo House, will give us all the time and space we novelists need to talk through what we’re trying to do with our novels and then figure out what we need to change to get there.

Learn more and sign up here.

New Writing in Business Insider

I have a new article out in Business Insider today about my adventures in dog-sitting. Yes, this year I have become a Rover sitter, which has mostly been an excellent experience:

Unsurprisingly, the dogs have brought me more than just extra cash, they’ve brought me so much joy. I’m a sucker for a wagging tail when I come in the door. Their mischievousness makes me laugh. The black lab who managed to get my butter dish off the counter when I wasn’t home and lick the whole thing clean. The german shepherd mix with insanely long legs who liked to carry shoes from place to place–never chewing them, just leaving them around. The English Bulldog who simply refused to take walks, preferring instead to stand on my front sidewalk like a small, determined keg while I uselessly tugged on her leash.

Though this article captures a little of the joy, I’m hoping to write more in the future about the revolving door of dog personalities I’ve gotten to experience in the last few months. I know eventually I’ll want to settle down with what will almost certainly be a chocolate lab, but in the meantime I’m kind of in my dog-slut era.

Book Recommendations?

Okay, I’ll admit it, one of the reasons this newsletter got delayed from January, and then February, and then March, was because I didn’t have a great book to recommend. It’s not that I wasn’t reading, it was just that most of the books I read were…fine. I don’t know whether my lack of enthusiasm is about the books themselves or where I am emotionally right now. But rather than recommend a book I don’t feel passionately about, I’m going to leave this space blank. Tell me about a book you loved recently!