I got to spend last weekend with the brilliant, beautiful, indomitable sun herself, my rural queen bestie, M.C. Baumstark, and my cup was absolutely filled. I’ve known M now for thirteen years, and we have seen each other through our respective tumultuous journeys from being bright-eyed and naive college weirdos to becoming functioning and strong as fuck adult weirdos. Our friendship truly thrives for a million reasons, but one of those is because we are the exact same kind of weirdo. Though we have lived in different cities for the majority of our relationship, we can always pick right back up where we left off when we do get to spend time together, and last weekend was no different. We crafted, we ate only charcuterie snacks and White Claw, we watched hours of music videos, and we talked and talked and talked. It was everything I miss and appreciate about this incredible human.

We also finally got to have a writing day, something we haven’t done since college — potato chips, strong coffee, instrumental electronic music, and two girls clacking away at their laptops. It was so what I needed. I was able to lock in and write for several solid hours, punctuated only by occasional chitchat, and banged out around 2500 words of my draft, as well as some modifications to my outline. It was invigorating, not because it was generative word-count-wise, but because it was a reminder that I am still able to find that focus and stamina, that I am still capable, if given the opportunity, to spend an entire day writing. And sitting across from my best friend while I’m doing it? What a gift.

Recommended Reading

“The Big One” by Kyle Seibel in HAD

If you’re a man and a storyteller, you’ve gotta convince me that you’re worth it. There have been too many men over too many years who have told mediocre stories with mediocre men as the characters at the center and become gajillionaires anyway. So sorry, boys, but to be good, you’ve gotta be good. And Kyle Seibel, thankfully, has earned my complete respect. Because Kyle writes about men and from the perspective of men in a way makes them complete, sympathetic, heart-breaking (and heart-broken) human beings. While characters who identify as men are (still! In the year of our lord 2025!) so often written as pure action, wielders of power, or stoic, plot-moving shells, Seibel’s men feel and express the full spectrum and nuance of emotions. The perfect example of this is Kyle’s GOD DAMN BRILLIANT story “The World’s Biggest Moron Stops Laughing”, which is a top-5, dare I say top-3, best short-story I’ve ever read. I fucking love it so much and I’m not going to synopsize it for you, just go read it, please.

We gotten lots of new Seibel over the last few weeks (HELLO! His book “Hey You Assholes” came out on Clash Books and for the love of all that is unholy, go buy it), including this banger in HAD, “The Big One”.

There’s so much to love here. First, this story isn’t a totally out-there, goes-where-you-don’t-expect-it wild ride. In fact, the trajectory is fairly predictable. But what makes it unique is the nuance that is drawn out, the way readers are allowed to see both sides of the mask of Jared — Jared the husband, the father, the corporate drone with the superhero birthday card, and Jared the midlife-crisis, biker bar, cigarette smoker. The tension recognizably escalates within Jared, built up by so many small blows, a few of which are mentioned and a million more which can be assumed to have stacked up in his past. His breaking point, what we are led to believe is out-of-character behavior for him, comes in sudden but escalating phases, his badness being turned on like a switch — the cigarettes, the exit, the bar, the biker girl. A lot is left unsaid, particularly what Jared’s encounter with the girl entails, but enough tension has been built that we can assume it is reckless, relieving, and likely regrettable, but inevitable regardless.

BUT THEN, the last section, the stuttering conversation with his mom, imbues everything with new meaning. Again, nothing is explicitly stated, and Kyle respects the reader enough to trust us to fill in the blanks, but what is revealed here gives all of Jared’s actions a different flavor of legitimacy. He’s not just a dude grappling with aging and his impending mortality, but a man grieving. There’s also a lovely callback to the peaches from the beginning, the symbolism of which we are also left to fill in if we so chose. The last line seems like a turn, a shift of focus, but is so fucking effective: “Jared thinks of her black mouth, the cigarettes, the bug spray, the world of women waiting to eat him.” Um, can I get “the world of women waiting to eat him” tattooed on me? Damn.

Go buy “Hey You Assholes” from Clash Books here. I think Kyle’s still sending out stickers and personalized messages with orders, so go get some love from this badass alt-lit king.

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What I’m Consuming

Y Tu Mamá También

I’ve wanted to watch this movie forever. I finally decided to put it on in the background while I was doing homework this week (I do this often with foreign language films) but ended up doing no homework and just watching it. There’s been so much said about the salaciousness of this movie — the realistic, honest sex, the shameless nudity, the queerness, etc. — but to focus entirely on that misses the brilliant storytelling, not to mention acting, of this film. Of course it’s sexy, but it’s also absolutely devastating. Similar to Seibel’s story, a revelation at the very end (I WANT TO TELL YOU SO BAD BUT I WON’T) casts everything in an entirely new light and makes the events of the story so much more impactful.

Cocoa Coffees/Rosé and La Croix

Beverages get me through the day. Beverages til I die. Every afternoon at school around 2pm, I make myself my little treat of a Keurig-brewed coffee mixed with a packet of cocoa mix. It’s lunch-dessert, it’s an afternoon snack, it’s my reward for getting this far in the school day, and it’s my little boost to get through the last few hours. Then when I get home, I’ve been enjoying a half-glass of rosé (Bota Box, baby) topped off with pamplemousse La Croix. Who needs water when you have caffeine and alcohol, am I right? (Joking…sort of.)

Writing Prompt

Sometimes I like a really specific, directed prompt where I’m given a scene, a situation, a specified task, and I just have to fill in the blanks. And sometimes I like a prompt that is a wide open door, and I’m just barely nudged over the threshold. A single-word or phrase prompt can be intimidating with possibility and lack of direction, but those same qualities are what make such a prompt so rich and exciting.

I’ll meet you in the middle — pick one (or more?) of the track titles from “Mayhem” by Lady Gaga (because I’m obsessed) and there’s your prompt. Just use that word or phrase in whatever way immediately inspires you, whether it sparks a character, a situation, a piece of dialogue, a theme, whatever. This is the door, Gaga is opening it for you, and she’s kicking your ass right through it with a stiletto boot.

• Disease

• Abracadabra

• Garden of Eden

• Perfect Celebrity

• Vanish into You

• Killah

• Zombieboy

• LoveDrug

• How Bad Do U Want Me

• Don’t Call Tonight

• Shadow of a Man

• The Beast

• Blade of Grass

• Die with a Smile

Writing Update

I mentioned above my super-productive writing day with M, of which I’ve been trying to maintain momentum (if I can’t maintain word count) this week. I’ve also been trying to remember the Notes app trick and jotting down lines in my phone instead of mindlessly scrolling when I’ve got just a few minutes to fill between classes or in line or for the microwave. Anyway, here’s an excerpt from a scene that takes place on the University of Montana campus in a building that houses not just the campus pool (which I need to go back and tie into this scene somehow) but the ceramics studio as well.

Exiting through the back of the bookstore, I crossed a parking lot, walked through the lawn of yet another dorm, and ended up at the doors of a large grey building. I pulled the heavy door open and went inside. From the entrance led a long, industrial corridor, and the sharp, earthy scent of clay and kiln smoke. Lockers, once painted red but nearly entirely scraped away to reveal the metal underneath, lined one wall, while a long window lined the other side. I walked up to it and pressed my fingertips to the glass. Inside, a half dozen people were bent over spinning pottery wheels, their legs spread wide to brace themselves around the machine. Soupy gray hands delicately worked the lumps of clay before them, coaxing their elusive final forms out of the earth. I rubbed my fingertips against my thumbs, trying to remember what that specific texture felt like, the cool slip of clay on my hands, or the sticky dusty residue it left as it dried on my forearms. I watched a woman with a long, black ponytail grip a wire tool in her fists and deftly slide it underneath the bottom of her piece, her splattered forearms rippling and the knobs of her shoulders solid as she separated the clay from the wheel. It was a maneuver that had to be done quickly and smoothly — any hesitation would slice through your clay, collapse your creation back into its primordial form. You had to be confident, trust the steadiness of your hands, allow no space for deliberation, no room for going back. The woman picked up the final piece, a long shallow womb of a bowl, and set it carefully on the table behind her. She reached up to the top of her head and pulled her ponytail taut, leaving a gray streak of clay through her hair.

I could have done this, I thought. I could have gone here. I could have been that woman, streaks of clay caked in my hair, my arms strong and knuckles cracked from a lifetime of kneading and molding clay. I could have thrown pottery, purposefully teased gorgeous, intentional art out of lumps of clay, spotting potential and bringing it forth. I could have memorized glazes, tested firing temperatures, analyzed and emulated and shamelessly copied other artists, testing the limits of how many ways there could possibly be to make a bowl.

That’s what I would have made — bowls. Not cups, not vases, not pots. Bowls. Womblike, rounded, made to carry what your hands cannot, brittle in concept but strong in build. I would have made stacks of bowls, all sizes and shapes and colors and glazes, filled my apartment with all their iterations. I wouldn’t have a dead baby, the clinking sherds of a broken marriage. I would have never crossed paths with Ryan, made a baby that would make me soft and then destroy me with its death. My life of bowls would have been nothing like my real life. Maybe in my life of bowls, I’d have children, children that stayed alive. I’d feed them rich, organic meals out of my bowls, and share potluck dishes with my many friends, the village helping me to raise these bowl children. Or maybe in my life of bowls, I’d be single and wild and free, remain forever young until I became wise and sage and in true, gentle love with myself. In this life, I’d need no one, want for nothing except the feeling of clay on my hands as I pressed it into the specific, satisfying dip of a bowl. I’d be solitary and happy, having found my purpose in this one thing.

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Thanks for sticking with me another week. Hang in there.

xoxo

brit