Get ready to take your evening needlework outdoors because it's a summer solstice newsletter, people! Light a bonfire! Drink some mead! Stave off depressing thoughts of each day getting progressively darker by taking one of these recommendations for your reading, watching, and listening pleasure!

What I'm reading

The Creative Act: A Way of Living, Rick Rubin

So Rick Rubin, who I'd never heard of before this book and its accompanying podcast blitz, is a deeply interesting dude. For one thing, he's a record producer responsible for basically every hit you've ever heard of. For another, he floats on a cloud of equanimity that rivals that of a well-fed house cat. The Creative Act, his book about creating that's kind of more about existing, is so crisp it's almost a collection of haikus. It's centered around the not-new (but easily forgotten) idea that creativity is just something passing through us, and our job is simply to be still enough, curious enough, and balanced enough to make that passage easier. Read and be soothed, fellow creatives.

The Stand-In, Lily Chu

Who doesn't love an identity-swap rom-com? MONSTERS, that's who. In this one, our hero, Gracie, is hired as a lookalike for China's biggest movie star, who needs a break while she works in Gracie's hometown of Toronto. Oh, but there's a catch! Her outrageously handsome co-star and strictly platonic friend, Sam, must accompany Gracie to all sham events. They hate each other. And then they don't! We just made a ROMANTIC COMEDY, everybody! The Stand-In is cute and uncomplicated and I'd go ahead and read it if I were you.

What I'm watching

Con Air, Direct TV

Naturally, I watched Con Air on a flight equipped with limited channels and shoddy headphones—optimal conditions for watching what is perhaps Nicolas Cage's seminal work. The plot of Con Air is that John Malkovich, troubled by the close-minded casting of late 90s Hollywood, decides to load a plane with stereotypes and crash it into a series of propane tanks. It's a political statement, and he's willing to fistfight and/or immolate many people to see it done. A helpful Nicolas Cage eventually crashes the plane into most of Las Vegas, which John Cusack decides is better than shooting it down because the lives of innocent gamblers are mere trifles compared to that of the man who brought us Face/Off.

Or at least that's how it looked without any sound.

Either way, I feel confident telling you that Con Air is a gritty and compelling commentary on our decaying capitalist society, and if it didn't win at least three Academy Awards I question the entire exercise of film criticism.

What I'm listening to

How to Train Your Dragon, Cressida Cowell (narrated by David Tennant)

I'm afraid I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying the audiobook of How to Train Your Dragon. Linguists have tried to describe the surge of dopamine that accompanies a Tennant-narrated audiobook for decades, but words fail in all languages. The story is great, the writing is funny, and DT is doing at least ten more versions of the Scottish accent than I even knew existed. Hundreds of thumbs up.

What I'm thinking about

I'm thinking about how, in the process of sifting through old posts for the blogcast, I've found much of my early writing to be mediocre, meandering, or downright obnoxious.

That's exciting.

I've written before about reading my old stuff and wanting to hit it with a newspaper. But that was very old stuff, and I was more icked out by what the early 2000s manifested through me than by the writing itself. It was helpful for therapy. Just not for querying.

This not-as-old old stuff, though? This is where it's at. To productively repulse, it seems the work I'm rereading needs to be fermented, not decomposed. Two or three years ago is perfect. Not so old that I feel like I've completely regenerated; not so recent that I'm still enamored with my own cleverness.

It's exciting to think that I've made enough progress since 2020—only twice as long as it took Edison to invent the lightbulb, mind you—to be able to cringe at where I started.

Also, cringing helps me feel a lot less sorry for myself.

Like all egomaniacs, there have been times that I've wondered why no one has discovered me. When I've sat in my bay window, raindrops streaming down the panes, gazing at back issues of Martha Stewart Living in utter bewilderment. Where is MY multinational print/broadcast/tableware supercorporation, I've wondered. When will I see mounted gamefish and polished copper cookware rain from the sky? Why not me, I have cried, fists raised toward my shamefully ungilded ceiling. Why. Not. ME??

Well, because I can do better.

I mean, that's one reason. Perhaps not ALL that stands between me and a restored 19th-century cottage in Martha's Vineyard is an unsympathetic editor—submitting things might help, too—but it's comforting to have at least one explanation to press my finger on.

Similarly, this week I read this excellent autopsy of a query submission on Jane Friedman's blog. Ever since, I've been thinking of my first book as what she calls a "practice novel." It doesn't need to be published to have been worth the time and effort. It just needs to have inched me a little closer to the authorial middle class, a status I assume includes afternoon tea and novelty sandwiches.

Writing updates

Not a lot is cooking this month, I'm not going to lie to you. My goal is always to write every day, but, well, my kids are home and we're doing summer things. Most of my daily writing now lives in my Notes app, or in a disjointed, raving text exchange with myself that is rigged to explode upon my death.

Oh, but hey, the Lisa Swander Blogcast did get listed on Apple Podcasts this week, which is a HUGE achievement. To earn it, I had to click some boxes in the right order and then wait. Then I had to email tech support, go back to the boxes I forgot to click, and wait again.

It takes nerves of steel to play the podcast game, folks, but clearly the returns are worth it. This week I was informed I can earn up to one quarter of one cent per download—PER DOWNLOAD!!—simply by inserting thirty seconds of ads into my seven-minute podcast. That's nearly triple what I was earning on episode 1.

Don't let anyone take away your dreams, kids.

Also, we're up to like 75 minutes of listening time, if you string all the episodes together on autoplay. So if you've been waiting to have something to get you through a long stretch of vacuuming, bicycle repair, or other mindless yet hand-intensive task, your listening time has come.

Recent blogcasts

A below-the-fold update:

Stealing the Declaration of Independence seemed risky given the air quality in Washington, so now I've decided to steal the basketball prowess of a select group of NBA players. From there the plan gets fuzzier—maybe blackmail, or maybe exploitation for an intergalactic amusement park? I don't know, just spitballing here—but one thing I'm certain of is that no one has ever, ever thought of this before. I'll have the total employ of the element of surprise. And that's why they'll never catch me.

Signed,

Lisa Swander, the legal author of this document, dated 21 June 2023

113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA, 98104-2205