The Hovel--April Newsletter!

 

Hello all, and welcome back to the Hovel. Month three, and I think this thing just might be a sustainable practice for me.

It’s the last day of March, and once again I’m writing the this all in a single sitting. In school, I was always one of the students hurriedly doing my homework in the class before it was due, so I already knew this about myself. I thought, perhaps, after several years of dealing with adult deadlines and long-form projects, I might have aged out of this trait. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Maybe it’s time that I accept this fact about myself and lean into it. Sometimes it's easier to accept and entertain a whim than fight against it. Instead of trying to sprinkle in bits of writing throughout April, I’ll plan time for it at the end of the month.

March was a busy one. I alluded to that in my last newsletter, and now that I’m on the other side, I’m still impressed with how much this month contained.

IN THE LIFE


(a little bit of art seen at a strange secondhand shop in New Orleans. I wish I could remember the name of the shop, but it was something I'd stumbled on during my walk back to the AirBNB.)

March is almost always a full month. When I was tabling art more often, it was a month of traveling. Now that I’ve largely stepped back from that, it seems to find other ways to fill up. This month started with birthdays and ended with a baby shower and grandparents. I went to a barcade, I said hello to wolves at the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife center. For my own birthday, I sang karaoke until my voice was hoarse. I had a very good time, and I’m looking forward to resuming my hermit lifestyle.

Despite not tabling much this year, I managed to travel this month. It was my first ever writers conference—though the event itself is less interesting than the city it was held in. New Orleans is after my own heart. It’s the kind of place where the ghosts are not banished into the corners, but on display, gathered in the streets where they dance nightly with tourists and residents alike. Secrets are not tucked into the cracks but littered in glittering plastic beads over balconies and strung through the trees. New Orleans does not feel like a place you might stumble through a portal and into another world, but like the mirror world itself. It drips with history and life, with pain and delight in equal measure. Stories are indelible to its essence. I left feeling inspired, and it’s poured over into the things I’m working on.

 (I love the textural vibrancy of the homes in New Orleans. I want to draw them. They look haunted, but not in a longing way.)

 My month’s penultimate event was my nephew-to-be’s baby shower. I don’t plan on having children of my own, but I find that I enjoy having them in my life. Kids bring a perspective that’s so unique, so strange. I think any creative person would benefit from a conversation with a five-year-old or giving a piggyback ride to a nine-year-old. I didn’t have niblings at all until recently, when my brother married into two children. I gained a niece and a nephew overnight, and I adore them both. They add wonder and fun into little things—they make life a game. Instead of simply decorating the room for the party, I blew the biggest balloon possible, and we all kept it from touching the ground. Instead of eating our snacks in a boring order, we played tic tac toe with crackers and cheese. I’m looking forward to meeting the baby, and to watching them grow into a person I can have strange conversations with and impress with my balloon blowing skills.

Today, on the very last day of the month, I’m staring at the other side of that coin. I drove three hours south to visit my grandparents. I’m staying for a few days, and I feel lucky to do so. They’re both 89 this year, and every visit feels important—though admitting that I don’t know how many more I’ll get feels grim. They’re both still active, still moving, but I can see the ways they’ve slowed down. Dinner, where it used to be grand, home-cooked meals around a dining room table, is takeout. Breakfast as a kid was pancakes poured into the shape of turtles. Tomorrow, it will be coffee and fruit. I don’t remember quite what the last meal my grandparents made for was. I think it might have been waffles a few years ago. I didn’t know it’d be the last, then. I know now to savor everything, every moment.

Right now, I feel full of inspiration and melancholy alike. It's a kind of emotional exhaustion, and in turn, a kind of restlessness. I’m ready to settle back into a schedule and be a recluse again, if only to add those motes of insight back into my art. March felt like a year in and of itself. I’m glad to have lived it, and I’m glad to put it behind me.

PROGRESS AND GOALS

My only goal for March was to survive it, and I did(yay). I made progress on HEARTACHE, I got a postcard printed, and I did a drawing just for Patrons. Overall, I’m pleased enough with that. It never feels like I've accomplished what I wanted to, which is maybe why I keep pushing, keep trying. Someday, maybe I'll feel satisfied.

For HEARTACHE, I’m at the chapters that are both the most interesting parts of the book, and the parts that require the most re-writing. I’m writing and drawing a lot of these pages at the same time, and it’s slower going. I’m still hoping to have the layouts stage finished by the end of April. I think it’s doable. At least, I know that I’ll be very close to the end of the book by the time the month is over.

As always, I want to give my best to Patreon, and with a clearer schedule I’ll have more time for that. My goal is to take some time to sketch this month, to stray away from properly finished art for looser studies and explorations. I don’t do enough of that. I will, of course, do a postcard as well as my sketches, but it will likely be the only polished art from me in April.


I've also been picking at non-graphic novel. I've always loved writing, and I'm really enjoying trying my hand at a longer form of prose. It's difficult. It might be the most difficult thing I've ever made, but hopefully it will also be very rewarding. I'll call my novel 'Purgatory', for now, and until it's a more concrete thing, that's what it will remain. I've written 17,000 words, and with the goal of 100,000 It's feeling more and more like a real child every day.



BUTTON JAR

March was long and busy, and there were things outside of media that inspired me. But here are a few pieces that became a part of the button jar:

READING:

-Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid. Ava Reid is one of those authors that weaves poetry into every line of a book. This book was so gorgeously told I wanted to savor the prose and live between the lines.

-a Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers. Anyone who’s read Becky Chambers knows that she is a master of cozy story telling. She writes books that make me weep for how the characters treat each other with grace and kindness. I cried several times while reading this, and not ever because it was sad.

WATCHING:

-Persona—the 1960s thriller directed by Ingmar Bergman captures something so intrinsic about internalized homophobia, that devastating fear of erotic fixation so many of us deal with. It forces you to sit through long, uncomfortable moments and observe a descent into psychological chaos. I couldn’t turn away from it. It captured a piece of myself I didn’t understand, and showed it to me, told me to love it.

LISTENING:

Largely, I’ve been listening to podcasts where writer talk about writing. This is my hyper-fixation lately. I want to become the best storyteller I can. I want to make books people want to read over and over again, and I’m learning how to do that.

-No Write Way by VE Schwab—in which Victoria Schwab interviews other writers about their craft and process.

-Turning to Story—Lyssa Mia Smith and Anna Mercier talk about their experiences in the publishing industry and honing their writing and storytelling skills.

OUTRO

As always, thank you all for being here, for taking the time to read my words and to go on this journey with me. I decided a long time ago that my life would not be shaped by a normal job, and that I was going to pursue the things that I love doing. It’s taken a long time to get here, and month over month I’m grateful to have the platform I have. I’m looking forward to another month of doing what I love.

Lovingly,

Kelsi