newsletter #3 - jammers & writers
aka gluttons for punishment
quick note: hey, sorry if you got an email from me last week offering a discount on subscribing to this newsletter? That must be an automatic substack setting and I’m gonna try to turn it off. I have the paid option on just in case you find a lot of value in this newsletter and want to kick a couple bucks my way, but it’s by no means an expectation. Life is hard and I like to support other artists when I can, but I don’t like sending you ads! Sorry again, and please feel free to reach out and/or unsubscribe if anything I’m writing here is causing you discomfort.
much love,
m
Have I mentioned that roller derby is a rough sport? And people who play derby are kinda…proud that it’s a rough sport?
My team has a weekly two-hour scrimmage in the summer. Since our venue is a giant metal building, we don’t get a lot of ventilation in there when it’s 80+ degrees in the summer. We just turn on the industrial-sized fans, drape cooling towels around our necks on the bench, wheel open the big doors meant to fit an airplane, and pray for a cross breeze. It’s pretty miserable!
The gameplay itself is……….rough. Elbowing other skaters is illegal (a surprise to many who grew up watching old school derby), but you’re allowed to slam a hip or shoulder into opponents at speed. We’re often peppered in bruises and Velcro burns by the time we gear down—one of my post-practice rituals is giving my spouse a tour of my new wounds when I get home, admiring the yellow-purple lumps and deep red scrapes along my arms and shoulders and, sometimes, my face (I’m short and I haven’t gotten around to putting my visor back on my helmet since before COVID, so I get hit in the face. A lot).
Sometimes it’s wild to me how proudly we show off the bruises and scrapes and bleeding lips that come with roller derby. We put ourselves through hell in a metal box at extreme temperatures for hours at a time, scrambling to fetch each other band aids and ice packs and struggling to catch our breath on the bench. The position I play in roller derby is called the jammer. All positions in derby are hard for different reasons. Jamming is hard because there’s only one jammer on the track for each team at a time, and they’re the only person who can score points for their team, and brand new spectators who don’t know the rules of roller derby are often told to just watch the jammer.
Jamming is, at its core, fighting your way through four other skaters whose goal is to not let you get past them. It’s failure after failure after failure for a brief moment of success before you have to dive back in and fail again. It can feel beyond demoralizing. Sometimes you roll back to the bench completely gassed, having used all your energy without putting a single point on the board. Your teammates will pat you on the back and tell you you fought hard and it was a tough wall, then in a few minutes you’re expected to get back up and try again.
Other times, you’ll put up 16 points and your bench is screaming for you every time you pass them and you feel completely untouchable full of power. And that feeling is addicting.
My novel that got me into Reese’s Book Club, LEAVE IT ON THE TRACK, is about roller derby—and mental health, and community, and family, and other things. It’s about continuing to get up and try, even when your body is screaming at you to give up and you’ve done nothing but hit walls and you’re exhausted and in tears and feel like you can’t possibly pick up your skates anymore.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how jamming feels a lot like trying to get published. You’re throwing yourself at the wall, over and over, pushing and working and sweating and sometimes crying a little because it’s so fucking hard and you’re tired, and it seems like other people are soaring through the pack and scoring points without even trying. But when you get that little payoff, that one taste of success, it all feels worth it for the next five to ten seconds until you have to do it all over again. It feels like there’s not a lot of time to celebrate how hard you worked to get here, because once you conquer one mountain, you’re immediately looking at the next one.
I think I’m gonna try to slow my brain down for the rest of the summer. Try not to spend so much time worrying about what’s coming next, and remind myself that, seven years ago, I was dreaming about being in the position I’m in now. Ya know?
“how’s the novel going?”
Oh, you know, I’m an anxious Capricorn sun/Cancer rising so I’m having a lot of feelings. But it feels a little less scary now, knowing that I have a killer agent in my corner. Some people say that this part of a book’s journey—after you have an agent but before you have a deal—is harder than querying, because the power is out of your hands and into your agent’s. I’m really not feeling that way. I’m relieved to give the power to a person who really knows her shit about this industry. We’ve reached the point of the road trip where I’m exhausted and my back hurts and my eyes are getting blurry from driving, so we’ve switched places at the rest stop and I get to snooze in the passenger seat for a couple hundred miles while someone else drives. It’s kind of nice.
I’m drafting something new to try to distract myself. I always hit a point in a new draft, usually somewhere around 25k words, where things start really clicking and I start having fun figuring out how the pieces of this new story fit together. I’m not quite at that point yet, but I think I’ll get there soon.
clove moments
Please enjoy the top 6 Clove moments from July, including a bonus June Clove moment because we got our wedding pictures back and Clove is perfect.
on repeat
This is a really weird choice for my on repeat this month, isn’t it? I promise there’s a reason for it. I’ll explain it eventually.
what I read & loved this month
Y’all. Y’all. I need someone to talk to me about IF TOMORROW DOESN’T COME by Jen St. Jude.
**Major content warnings for suicide and impending apocalyptic panic.**
Most of my author author friends have basically been like I have this on my TBR and I’ve heard it’s amazing but I’m not emotionally ready and honestly….valid. I was NOT emotionally ready. I was s-o-b-b-i-n-g for the entire last 80 pages. Jen is so talented at drawing out those conflicting, aching, awful feelings of emptiness and loneliness you feel when you’re deeply depressed and suicidal. Their absolute mastery of emotional craft is just incredible. This is one of those books that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to read a second time because it was so beautiful and sad and hopeful in a way that left me totally empty and raw. Just a perfect, stunning book. Go read it, when you’re ready.
**End of triggering content!**
Also, the week after I finished this book, Jen happened to be in Portland for an event so we hung out (along with the wonderful Jenna Miller) at a women’s sports bar and talked about books and this wild industry we’re all in and it turns out networking as an author is pretty fun?? Who knew!!!
now YOU tell ME
until August, my beautiful friends! xoxo