Searching For Shelter (A Love Letter)
“We’re all just walking each other home.” ~ Ram Dass
Hello Lovelies,
Last week I was making chicken salad for the three-year-old’s birthday celebration and listening to music. I believe I’d asked Alexa for a yacht rock playlist. Bob Seger came on signing Against the Wind. And this lyric jumped out at me: searching for shelter again and again.
Because, isn’t that what we’re all doing?
And I started thinking about where I find shelter. I thought how I find it in my family, and in my friends. In my cozy home and living in my beloved Pacific Northwest. In the fir trees and the mountain one hour away to the east and the ocean just an hour away to the west. In the rain that keeps this region so green. In cooking and eating and wine (but not too much), and in stitching and knitting.
But the absolute most important and consistent place I find shelter is in my writing. In journaling. In writing down glimmers. In trying really hard to be present in the world so that I can observe it and remember it and write it down later. And especially in my fiction. I adore my family and friends and I’m full of gratitude for all of them. But people come and go in your life, living arrangements change, one day the wine doesn’t taste as good and the knitting bores you.
But there’s always the writing.
When I’m working on a novel, I’m immersed in a different world, one of my own making. But there’s more to it than that. Because even though a novel is fictional, it’s also only worthwhile if it’s also true. And by that I mean that the characters have to experience things that change them and show them truths. It has to be emotionally true. And determining and unearthing those truths and then putting them onto the page is a huge shelter for me.
It strikes me that maybe this is a healthier way to think about your writing. As a place you find shelter. As a place that tends to your needs. (Creativity is one, for sure, for most of us, since we aren’t living in war zones or scraping to find money for food.) As something that does for you as much as you do for it. I have thought so many times in my life that I honestly don’t know how people who don’t write make it through. In tough times or times of high emotion (even good emotion) my journal is the place where all that gets dumped. And ultimately, from there, it winds up in my fiction.
The page is always there, readily available for me. Ready to be my shelter. Ready, as Ram Dass said, to walk me back home. I hope your writing does that for you this week as well.
Love, light, and good writing,
Charlotte
P.S. Where do you find shelter? Or if that’s too personal, let’s hear about how the writing is going. If it’s going well, you’ll inspire us. If it’s not so good, perhaps we can inspire you.
Books
The Search, by Michelle Huneven. I found this book on my shelf in my desperate effort to pull myself out of my reading slump. It has rested on the shelf, untouched, for at least a couple years. I know this because I have the hard-back edition and a paperback has been released. The novel is the story of a Unitarian Universalist congregation’s search for a new minister, mostly about the search committee. I grew up attending a UU church and my family has a long history with it in ways I will not bore you with so this book interested me. Huneven is a really good writer and I’m enjoying this so far. Fingers crossed it will not be a DNF.
Watching
Resident Alien. Yes, it’s as weird as it sounds. We’re late to the party on this one, as usual. Season three just started and we’ve only watched the first episode of season one. I’d never heard of it, but we were clicking around Netflix looking for something to watch. (Still not finished watching Einstein and the Bomb, which is good but slow and depressing, and All the Light We Cannot See which is intense. I have to be in the mood for intense.) Anyway, this alien dude fails in his mission to annihilate earth and crashes his space ship instead in a remote area of snowy Colorado. He kills the doctor who lives nearby and then assumes his identity. Yeah, I know. It’s weird, as I said. But also weirdly compelling. A huge part of that is the acting by Alan Tudyk.
Articles and Resources
My friend, writer, graphic designer, and multi-talented human, Gini Chin, is now offering book trailers. They are so good. If you click over to her page, you’ll see the one for my upcoming release, The Matchmaker’s Temptation (and other samples, too).
My most wonderful client Heather Walrath shared this pitch fest with me. It starts this week, so check it out!
A clear-eyed look at the current state of the publishing and movie industries. Spoiler alert: it’s as bad as you suspected. And also, sorry, middle grade fiction writers. The market is not trending in your direction.
Books do furnish a room by Hanif Kureishi. If you're not reading his Substack, you might want to give it a try. He’s the well-known Brit novelist and screenwriter (My Beautiful Laundrette, The Buddha of Suburbia, and others) who took a near-fatal fall in 2023. He’s been writing dispatches from his new wheelchair-bound state of being ever since.
And, of course, I have to include this:
Events
There’s still room in our creative writing workshops in France and Italy next year. But—France is filling up fast! See more here. And let me just add: future you is going to be sooooo happy that you committed to a week in Céret, France, or Perugia, Italy to further your writing career and your world travels! Reply to this email if you want to learn more.
Have a great week, guys, and I’ll see you back here next Sunday. Paid subscribers get a mid-week extra on Wednesdays, too.
