This is Not About My New Pug (A Love Letter)

It's really about eves, anticipation, and finishing things. Like novels.

Dec 22, 2024

It helps me enormously if you drop a heart on this newsletter, forward it to a friend, or share it on social media. Or subscribe to get me in your inbox! And I adore comments! I love hearing from you, so you can hit reply and email me any time. Writing these newsletters is part of how I make a living as a writer, so I welcome paid subscriptions, too. And also read on for info on the Artist’s Way class for paid subscribers starting in January.

Hi lovies,

Let’s get the pug out of the room, haha that was a play on words.

Meet Chip. He’s a five-year-old rescue pug that we brought home on Friday. He was found wandering the streets of a nearby town. When police did a welfare check at the address on his chip, they found his owner dead. And figured out he’d probably been dead two weeks. Chip is remarkably well-adjusted for what he’s been through. (He’s been at the home of a wonderful foster mother for a month.) And we are so happy to have him here. I’ve wanted another pug (we’ve had three) for a long time.

Best Christmas present ever.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, I will confess that I’ve been totally distracted the last couple of days since we got Chip. (It’s not my favorite name, we thought about changing it to Goose, but A. he’s just not a Goose, and B. everyone thought it would be easier on him if we left his name the same.) My productivity has suffered. So this newsletter is shorter than usual. Except for the links. There’s tons of them this time.

On eves, anticipation, and finishing things

I love eves. I love the nights before big holidays, when it's all anticipation, all prepping and excitement. I’m pretty sure I love Christmas Eve as much, if not more, than Christmas day. (We are confirmed open-presents-on-Christmas-day people.) But I also love Thanksgiving eve, when the preparing and cooking begins. I love birthday eves, and Fourth of July eves. Any kind of eves. Except New Year’s Eve. It’s always highly over-rated. But that’s because it’s really a thing in itself, not a precursor to the actual day.

As you might guess, I love starting things. I love it when an idea sparks. I love it when new ideas are flowing. I love January (one of the few people on the planet who does) when you've cleared out all the Christmas decorations and everything feels fresh and new.

I love the anticipation, the not knowing.

What I apparently don’t love as much is finishing. Because I don’t do very often. I have piles of unfinished craft projects in the house. And files full of unfinished novels and stories on my computer.

Finishing is fraught.

Because once you are done, you have to do something with it. Like publish the novel. Submit the story. Take a picture of the cute project you made in a class and put it on Instagram. Send the manuscript to your critique group or book coach. Put your precious babies out in the world to be judged.

What I look like when I’ve shared something. Except I have hair.

But I have decided to change this. I’m not willing to give up my love of eves and anticipation, but I’m going to close that loop and add to it a love of finishing. I’m not exactly sure how to do this, but I do know one thing: the only way out is through. So that’s what I’ll be working on.

My word of the year for 2025 is finish.

Love, light, and good writing,

Charlotte

P.S. If you have any good thoughts on mastering finishing, please drop a comment or respond to this email.

Class Announcement!

I have several people who have requested I run an Artist’s Way class this year and so I’m going to. Ask and ye shall receive! (Seriously, that’s kind of how the world works.) Here are the details: I’m going to run the class through this Substack, with a weekly post on Wednesdays and a Friday afternoon Zoom in which we will discuss the weekly lesson, ask questions, chat, drink and chat. Kidding about the drinking. Kind of.

To be included in this class, all you have to do is become a paid member of this Substack. You can enjoy the Artist’s Way materials for as little as $8 a month. (Though it is cheaper to join as an annual subscriber and Founding Members get a zoom session with me to discuss their work.)

That’s it! Watch for the class on Wednesdays (as a post right here )starting January 8 and we’ll meet in Fridays. (I will record the session if the Zoom gods allow it.)

Paid members also get PDFs of my monthly prompt shares and more cool things I’m working on.

Books

12 Dates of Christmas by Jenny Bayliss. I’ve had this book on my radar for quite awhile, seeing as how it is the first novel written by Bayliss, one of my favorite authors for all the cozy Christmas feels. This one does not disappoint! And, since I’ve read most of her other books, I can also see where she got a little clunky setting things up at the start. I still love it, though. Update: Almost done. Yeah, I’m dragging a little bit but things have been in an uproar around here.

I have these that I got from the Book of the Month club up next and I’m hoping I have more time to read between Christmas and New Year’s. (But could somebody have them fix it so the holidays are never on a Wednesday again? It dorks everything up.)

The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, Ally Carter. The Queen of the Cozy Mystery meets Mr.Big-Time Thriller Guy and they hate each other’s guts. Of course. When both attend a Christmas house party at what turns out to be the estate of the most powerful author in the world. And then the weather turns. And there’s a body found.

A Home for the Holidays, Taylor Hahn. When a wedding singer’s mother dies, she must reckon with how little she knew about her mother’s past, while trying to figure out her own future.

Watching

Hot Frosty. I know, I know, but check out the wonderfulness of this over-the-top plot: a young widow brings a snowman to live and he helps her rediscover the joy of Christmas before he melts away. Or does he? I don’t know yet, because it’s on deck for tonight’s viewing. I shall report next week. Update: Plot holes big enough to drive a Mac truck through, but also endlessly entertaining.

Christmas Island. A pilot who hates Christmas, an air traffic controller who loves it, a family whose business success has made them wealthy but jaded and arrogant and an island with lots of ~~fake~~ snow in Nova Scotia. What’s not to like? (Well, one of the Rotten Tomatoes reviewers said the female lead had the personality of a saltine, but whatever.) Oh, and they build a Christmas tree out of lobster traps and there’s a cool lighthouse.

A Merry Scottish Christmas. So far this one is a meh. We’ve only watched half of it, but stopped because I was falling asleep. A sister and brother are called to a Scottish castle by their mother at Christmas. They think they are going to a BnB in the castle, but, spoiler alert, their Mom actually owns it.

Resources

It’s that time of year when we I obsess about reviewing the year past and planning the one to come. Here are a couple of templates I’ve found that I like (and I’ve looked at a lot of them). I usually end up using a combination.

Year compass

Ness labs

Sahlil Bloom

Tad Hargrave, Marketing for Hippies. This one just came into my inbox and it’s a good one! You don’t even have to opt in, but you should, his stuff is great if you’re in business and have a slant towards the woo.

And for something a little different:

Some juice (a five-day challenge) to establish a writing habit before we get to the new year, from Julia Duffy.

Substacks I forgot to mention

A couple days ago, I did a post on all the great Substacks out there (for gifting) and I forgot to mention a couple! I know as soon as I post this I’m going to remember more, so stay tuned just in case.

Cecilia Gunther, The Kitchens Garden. I’ve been reading Celi since we were both bloggers back in the day. Waaaay back. She has a regular blog on WordPress that is about her kitchen farm in Illinois, and she now has a newsletter on Substack where she does all kinds of interesting things. Becoming a paid subscriber contributes to the upkeep of the animals on the farm, fondly called the farmy by her regular readers.

Gayla Gray, So Novelicious. Gayla loves books and reading and talks about them on her Substack. Always a font of information about it all.

Workshops in England and France

Information, including dates and cost, for our 2025 England workshops is now listed on our website. And heads up! Due to distractions beyond our control, we’ve moved the deadline for the early-bird discount to December 1. (Commit today with a promise to send the deposit and you’ve got it.) We’ve had several writers indicate strong interest in joining and a couple of sign-ups already, so we recommend registering soon.

I’ve just updated our France page as well!

And if you want a taste of the adventure that awaits, you can read my posts about this year here, and here, here, here, and here.

Other places to connect with me:

My website (badly in need of an upgrade)

Our workshop website

My original blog (now for archive purposes only, no longer updated, but damn there are a lot of articles on it)

Thank you for reading. This sounds trite, but it is not. I truly love all my readers and appreciate that you take the time to read my newsletters. Thank you, thank you, thank you. See you soon.