Greetings from the tailwinds of June. Here in the upper panhandle, June is a mercurial creature, subject to fits of bewildering wrath one day and a benign and cheery disposition the next.

I, who crack and rash beneath the sun’s implacable rays, love June.

What I’m Working On:

The June residency was a smashing success. We had guest speakers Walter Kirn and Amanda Fortini deliver lectures on the novel and the essay respectively (hence the nod to Dilllard in the title). I taught the second-year students a workshop on query letters and finding agents, and they are about to receive final editorial remarks on their novels before they send them off into the wide world in search of agents or editors. The first-year students are about to embark upon their first drafts. They carry with them that optimistic spirit of the early pioneers setting off from Independence, Missouri. No one has died of cholera yet.

Yet.

Next up is two weeks of Called Conference in July, where I am teaching a group of 15-18-year olds a workshop on how to pitch novel ideas. I’ve purchased inflatable dice. I will be throwing candy. It should be a lot of fun.

Also, I’ve passed 30,000 words on my newest project, and I don’t hate it! This is a pleasant surprise, because I have hated many a rough draft at this stage.

What I’m Reading:

In a moment of narcissistic indulgence, I went back and reread my June newsletter from last year, because I sensed a trend and wanted to test my suspicions.

And I was right!

June is not a good month of reading for me. I think it’s because of the chaos of summer with children under foot at all times (delightful they are, tidy they are not) coupled with the chaos of a residency week and reading students’ whole novels and giving detailed feedback on them. At night, I collapse into bed, read two pages, and deliver my mind to oblivion.

I managed to listen to a fantastic audiobook: Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan, which I promptly gave to my 11- and 13-year-olds to enjoy. The audio production on this one was really fantastic. Additionally, I read an advance copy of Between Flowers and Bones by Carolyn Leiloglou which was really great. I had agreed to write an endorsement for it mostly because my daughter had read the first book and absolutely loved it. Lastly, I read The Searcher, my second Tana French novel. This one was hard to judge because I was reading it in two-page increments all month long, which is really not how a mystery novel should be read. Also, it didn’t have the same key elements in it that I loved in The Likeness. However, French is a fantastic writer and captures small-town Ireland extremely well.

Writing Tip:

One of the things I talked with the students about this month was the idea of firm ideas, loosely held. This isn’t my phrase, but it applies well to the writing life. In order to write a novel, you have to believe firmly that it’s a great idea and that you can execute it well. But after you’ve written that first draft, you must look critically at every piece of it and discard things that you once firmly believed needed to be in the story before. You must listen carefully to beta reader feedback and agent feedback and editorially feedback. You must know when to kill your darlings and when to fight for them.

I really believe this is what makes a writer successful: the ability to work diligently and fiercely on a project that you may have to shelve (hopefully not for forever, but maybe for forever!). Writing takes grit and determination (firm) as well as humility and flexibility (loose).

This is why I try to draft a new novel when I have a book out on submission with agents and editors. It helps keep me from thinking that that one project is all I have. It reminds me that the writing life is circuitous and unpredictable, and that the more I can hold my own plans loosely, the better off I’ll be.

That’s all for June! If you’ve read this far, thank you, and make sure to tell all your friends and family how much you love the Harbinger and encourage them to subscribe to it, too.

Christine