Invest in the Now (Chauna Intro) (01/30/2021)

A recap of the week's writing at Atticus Review. Introduction by Chauna Craig.

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I’m writing again. By that I mean I wake around 4 a.m., start the coffee maker, and spend a couple hours with a manuscript that has now swollen to four hundred pages. Sometimes I’m reading through scenes, sometimes editing or revising, sometimes adding sections and excising others as I figure out what I really want to say. The process is painful in so many ways, and yet I can say in humble gratitude that I’ve rediscovered my deep, foundational joy in engaging with language and self.How did I shift from my old habit of despairing over my lack of writing to doing it every morning? For me, the key was to treat my writing as an investment. Like a lot of people, women especially, I invest time, energy and money into other people’s passions. Just last week, I spent a few hundred dollars on my son’s high school lacrosse uniform—now he needs a black helmet instead of white, shoulder pads that come with a cardiac protector shield, new cleats because he outgrew the pair we bought for that single game he played last spring before club sports shut down. I also invested a couple hours to fill out medical and COVID-19 release forms then drop off those forms at the pediatrician’s office half an hour away, only to make the trip again because I’d forgotten one, and again to pick up the doctor-approved forms to deliver to his school. My son is never going to be a professional lacrosse player. This isn’t time, money, and energy invested in his imagined future, but in his happiness now. I find a way to do these things for him because I love him and recognize how alive he feels when playing lacrosse. Why, then, don’t I do the same for me?Several months into pandemic isolation, I grew furious with myself. All this time alone in my house and I’ve got unfinished manuscripts languishing in files I haven’t opened in months? I recognize the unique stress and exhaustion that hammered all of us this past year, but I also realized I wanted to be living again, and for me that meant writing again. I knew I couldn’t do the same nothing and expect to just start to write. I had to try something radically different.So I paid for a membership in a writing club, I hired a writing coach. Though I used to balk at the idea of spending money on my writing (all I really need is a laptop computer, printer, and library card, right?), I’ve reconsidered what it means to invest. In a financial sense, people sink money into something they value, expecting returns, i.e. profits, on that investment. Ignore the capitalist angle on that metaphor because you can’t put a dollar amount on joy. But I’ll buy hundred-dollar cleats to watch my son scoop a ball and sprint down field, living in the moment, experiencing what his young body can do. I’ll gladly redirect the money I used to spend on restaurants and new work clothes to find the tools I need to feel my fingers flying over a keyboard, remembering all I’m able to conjure, losing myself in my own creation.Maybe my pages will spin into gold, or maybe they’ll shrink back to a forgotten file locked up in my laptop. Maybe my favorite coffee shop will re-open and I’ll feel comfortable sitting there for an hour or two, and I won’t need the virtual writing cafés I rely on now. But whatever happens in the future, I’m investing in the now. I write every day with and without others. I talk to smart and generous people about how to make my writing better, while building a new community for myself, investing again in life. I hope you’re doing the same, whatever that means for you.Thanks for reading. We're glad you're here. Chauna CraigCreative Nonfiction Editor

ATTICUS NEWS

Congratulations to these Atticus Review contributors, who had work selected for Best Microfiction 2021! Jonathan Cardew, Frankie McMillan, and Francine Witte.READ THE SELECTIONS 

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THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FICTIONSIXTEENby Dino Enrique Piacentini"Still, I don’t think the weather explains what is happening to me...This is different. This—this cracking—has never happened before. Not to me."READ ON

POETRYBIOLUMINESCENCE CAN BE OURSby Lynn McGee"When the shark looks up, he sees stars. Taurus goresthe night sky. Ursus ambles toward morning. A squid glidespast, legs trailing in the cold sea, underside lit with radiantbacteria the predators below confuse for constellations..."READ ON

CREATIVE NONFICTIONNIGHT IN A MORMON PSYCHIATRIC UNITby Mary Winsor"But what would that mean, I wonder now, as I count your breaths and watch your heavily lashed eyelids twitch in deep and doped-up dreaming, and what would that sound or feel like to you, a blessing from people whose perfect manners cannot be assailed but whose faith forbids you a place at god’s table?"READ ON

MIXED MEDIAANATOMY OF A SWANby Sarah Rose Nordgren"Designed as a turn-of-the-century women’s magazine and combining poetry, memoir, research, and image, this project deals specifically with the history of feather-fashions and conservation, and more broadly with the cultural relationship between women and birds, and women and nature."READ ON

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