The Good Stuff

For DEER Life?

Hi, Friend.

I’m writing this from my happy place. If you’ve read You Could Make This Place Beautiful, you know where I am: a little cottage in the woods in southern Ohio. I gave myself a weekend writing retreat to try to make some real progress on my next book. I’m wrung out in the very best way.

My biggest joy since I’ve been here, other than being incredibly productive? The Merlin app. I was hearing some unusual bird calls—loud, shrill, almost seagull-like in pitch. I wondered if it might be a hawk or an eagle. Thanks to this very cool app, I know what it was: a red-shouldered hawk.

I also recorded some Carolina wrens, hermit thrushes, blue jays, American robins, and plenty of crows. (As my son said, “That’s really nerdy, Mom…but cool about the hawk.”)

There you have it.

Several white-tailed deer have been coming right up to my deck and feeding on the little spring grasses and new leaves. They don’t seem to mind me even when I take photos. I sweet talk them a little, hoping they’ll understand somehow from my tone of voice that I’m gentle and can be trusted. Maybe it’s working?

It’s For DEAR Life. D-E-A-R. Never mind.

I read a bit on the deck yesterday because it was so warm and sunny. I’m always reading multiple books at once. Picture a bee in a meadow, sundrunk and dusty with pollen, visiting flower after flower after flower. It’s me! Reading! Right now I’m dipping into Christian Wiman’s Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, which I really like so far; my old, tattered copy of William Stafford’s The Answers Are inside the Mountains: Meditations on the Writing Life; and Mark Doty’s The Art of Description from that terrific series of craft books Graywolf publishes. (That whole series is fantastic. All hits, no misses, as far as I can tell.)

I’m also awaiting the arrival of Diane Seuss’s new book of poems, Modern Poetry. I preordered that book so fast! Bianca Stone conducted a fascinating interview with her that’s in the current issue of Poets & Writers, if you can get your hands on a copy.

This “short imagined monologue” in McSweeney’s made me cackle, and then I texted the link to some Gen X friends. It actually fits well with the persona poem prompt and lesson plan I sent out recently. If you need a writing prompt, maybe “a short imagined monologue” is just the thing!

March is Women’s History Month. So much of this conversation between Lyz Lenz and Virginia Sole-Smith resonated with me. And If you haven’t read this NYT interview with Isabella Rossellini yet, take some time for it. Here’s a little taste:

WHEW.

What are you reading and loving right now?

I haven’t been watching much television these days—deadlines, deadlines, deadlines!—but I did finally binge all of Tiny Beautiful Things on Hulu and ugly cried though most of it. Kathryn Hahn is so, so good. And Violet and I are still slowly making our way through The West Wing, which she says she likes even better than The Newsroom. I agree, but both are great.

Recently, I shared lots of my favorite things in Mother magazine. I love seeing it all arranged so nicely in this assemblage.

“Hey! That’s my stuff!”

I’ll be back home this week, back to laundry and dishes and cooking and dog-walking (and *GASP* the dreaded tax prep), but the view of the sky here is a good reminder to look, listen, and breathe. (The taxes will get done. Somehow they always get done.)

Keep an eye out for some annotations, behind-the-scenes posts where I show the early handwritten drafts of published pieces and talk through the process, and craft tips. I have a pep talk or two cooking, too. God knows we need them.

Thanks for being here, all. I hope you have a wondrous week ahead. What are you looking forward to?

Love,
Maggie