Goldenseal
On all the things in my bag, finishing a book and being a writer
The Ides of March really had me down bad…
Plus, Mercury is in retrograde (and it shows), Venus is in retrograde (and it SHOWS) and there was a lunar eclipse. So like, in addition to everything that is happening on Earth, there has been a lot going on astrologically, and if I can blame any of my feelings on the planets, I WILL!
On Sunday I finished a book in bed, did some chores, took a walk, mailed a birthday card (happy birthday, dad!) and bought the flowers myself (iykyk). So I’m finally feeling a bit more like a human being again.
To that end, on Monday night I re-entered society through a screening event for the new Shondaland show on Netflix — The Residence, a whodunit murder mystery set at the White House.
The screening was hosted at the Netflix Tudum Theater conveniently less than ten minutes from my apartment. They served wine, beer and an array of passed apps including:
a margarita flatbread topped with pesto and burrata
sweet potato tots topped with salsa and what tasted like the jalapeno sauce from trader joe’s
a short rib empanada
and my favorite — a bite sized chicken pot pie (i honestly don’t know how they did this but it was actually the platonic ideal of the perfect bite of pot pie)
The show itself was so much fun, I cannot wait to curl up on the couch and binge it as soon as it drops on Thursday.
After the screening of the first episode, there was a Q&A where I learned half the episodes were directed by women and the other half were directed by non-white men.
Can I get a hallelujah?
I’m still carrying around my silver, slouchy leather Coach bag (the one that helped saved that girl in the bathroom at the movies), and because it’s been a few weeks of carrying it consistently, there’s a lot in it right now… So forgive me but, I’m gonna do a what’s in my bag…
Things in my currently most frequently used purse—
the sunglass case for my fave kate spade sunglasses
pocket-sized yellow moleskin (kind of a grab bag of notes to myself — at the beginning of the month i wrote down a list of “little luxuries” which included “inhaling the scent of loose leaf vanilla, earl grey as i open and close the canister”)
boots brand honey & lemon flavored lozenges (you never know when a tickle in your throat will arrive at the movies)
la roche-posay cicaplast mains (my favorite hand lotion)
a parking garage ticket from century city mall (don’t get me started on how infuriating it is to have to pay for parking any time i see a movie)
a black claw clip
solaras suncare barrier defense hyaluronic essence (a lil facial spritz can really turn your whole day around)
a pink flowered cardholder (also coach)
a lil tin of vaseline lip therapy (i’ve had this tin for years now…)
wintergreen ice breakers mints
trader joe’s lavender hand sanitizer spray
elf lip oil in “rose envy”
clinique face powder
glossier generation g sheer matte lipstick in “fuzz” (a recent marshals find)
51 cents (don’t know how that got there because i don’t remember the last time i paid in cash!)
a list for a target run (i have gone to target several times since i’ve written this list and have still neglected to get more bubble bath)
a pen from the stratosphere casino in vegas (my mom and i stayed there when we drove out here for my move - i have a pen in all of my purses)
two tampons (just in case!)
a single vicks vapo-cool severe lozenge (no telling how old this is)
a ripped ticket from the new beverly cinema
a tea bag of twinings cleanse matcha with green tea, lemon and fennel (just in case!)
a clinique lipstick in “love pop”
a kosas lipstick in “turned on”
a second ripped ticket from the new bev
a black scrunchie
I took everything out to make this list and put everything right back in except the parking garage ticket and the three lipsticks.
What I’m Reading
Author Ann Patchett owns a bookstore in Nashville called Parnassus Books. On Fridays, she recommends a backlist title on the store’s Instagram. Ann is so precious (with her perfect apple cheeks!) and hearing her talk about a book she loves is so so soothing. Last week, she recommended a book that Donna Tartt told her was one of her favorites so I have of course added it to my TBR list even though it is a thousand pages long…
Also, with everything going on I have neglected to write about this but we REALLY need to talk about the fact that Nicholas Sparks and M. Night Shyamalan are collaborating on a book/movie.
I cannot even begin to fathom how these two men got in touch with each other. I’m assuming M. Night initiated it because how else could this happen? But I’m at a loss as to the WHY. Is it because M. Night has daughters and they finally made him watch The Notebook? What do these men have to talk about? And how did they have so much to talk about that they were like yes, we must absolutely create a story together?! Am I going to have to read a Nicholas Sparks book for the first time since like… 2012 (dear john is so good, fyi)?? I guess! Because on top of everything else, it’s set on the Cape.
The book is called Remain, which is absolutely a title for an M. Night Shyamalan movie. And I mean, it’s going to be a fun movie to watch (jake gyllenhaal is already attached)! Except unlike the majority of M. Night’s movies, I’m assuming given the book’s setting, it won’t be shot in Pennsylvania, which is kind of against M. Night’s code, just saying.
Anyway, Trap is now streaming on Netflix. You should watch it.
Goldenseal by Maria Hummel - Two former best friends face each other for the first time in forty years after a falling out caused one of them to run away. They meet in the hotel they lived in as girls and through their night long conversation, we learn the truth of why their friendship ended.
I loved Hummel’s writing–
It was early afternoon, but she had been awake for twelve hours, having left the other coast and traveled back in time.
This—
this insistence upon drawing happiness from the self’s well. The self ran dry all the time. Or it spat up mud.
My well is absolutely spitting up mud rn.
Also, this—
She felt damp all over and covered with a grainy residue that could have been smoke, but felt older and dirtier, like the soot of the ancient city in which she had been born.
In the early pages of the book, we spend time learning how the two women came to be friends at camp and what childhood was like for one of them, but we skip over the juicy middle! We know only what they tell us. It had me wishing this was dual timeline so I could experience their messy young adulthood for myself.
The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - I’m 80 pages into this and loving it! Set in 50s Hollywood, it’s told from the point of view of the two women vying for the role of Salome, with interstitials from people who knew them looking back on “what happened,” (unclear what this is yet!) and there are also chapters from Salome so we get to see the actual story the movie is trying to tell.
Reel by Kennedy Ryan - I decided the other day that I needed a big mental cleanse, and what is more cleansing than romance? This was a “blind date with a book” I picked up two years ago at the Ripped Bodice’s booth at the LA Times Festival of Books (i have books older than two years old that i have not read).
The blind date label said:
Up and coming Broadway actress catches the eye of bigshot Hollywood director. He’ll make her a star. But will she break his heart in the process?
One of my favorite genres is “romance between two people that work together who try to put the work first even though that never works” especially when it pertains to cinema and the arts so, this is gonna hit!
The opening pages already have me with—
I could faint.
I rack my brain for a play where a character faints, and all I can come up with is Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and that’s such a bad example.
The book that’s one of Donna Tartt’s Favorites:
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - As a huge fan of the Christopher Nolan movie The Prestige, when Ann Patchett said this is about two magicians battling it out for supremacy in England, I immediately thought yes, I’m in. She also said there are fairies and a rolicking underworld and dances… Although I’m not really a fantasy reader (neither is ann), if two of our greatest living writers are recommending a book, you kinda gotta read it.
What I’m Writing
If I were severed, one of the things wellness would tell my innie is, “your outie is a good writer.” (they would also share that their outie is a great plus-one, fyi)
It’s one of those immutable facts that I’ve held onto through years of external confirmation, and it cannot be ripped away from me. That’s not to say everything I have written or will write is good because that is absolutely not true……. but at my core, writing is one of the few things I do well (the others being… talking, listening, laughing… ???). And because I read widely, I also know that Novel 2 is good. It’s not perfect, it definitely needs more editing, but at its base, it’s an entertaining story that keeps you turning the pages and I think makes you feel things. What sucks is, neither of these things actually matter when it comes to publishing.
I got two more rejections over the weekend and it was just the icing on a shitstorm of a week and I had this existential dread of — well, what am I going to do with my life if this doesn’t work out?
Another thing I learned from The Residence Q&A was something Uza Abduba’s mom used to say to her — “I’ve never heard of nothing coming from hard work.” And man, did I need to hear that. I work…. very hard, and honestly, I’m tired. But I persist.
When I told my mom about the rejections she said:
And I did. It’s really all I can do.
I know I’ve said this before, but writing doesn’t always happen on the page. Sometimes you’re driving to a date and you figure out how two of your characters met before we see them meet on the page. Or you’re in bed and a character you haven’t written yet says something to your main character and you have to grab your phone to jot it down before you lose it to sleep. Or you’re about to jump into a meeting and you realize your characters have to have a conflict that brings them together, and you spend most of the meeting preoccupied with figuring out what it is.
It’s nice that even when I feel too overwhelmed to be writing, my subconscious is like don’t worry girl, I’ve got you.
A sampling of pens that weren’t mine but I loved the way they wrote so I had to take note—
There was a time in my life where I only wrote with free pens from hotels and banks. That time has passed. Now I need a smooth ass writing utensil, and I will be making a trip to Staples soon to purchase the Paper Mate Write Bros 1.0.
That’s all from me this week! Stay Tuned.