honeyed light beneath the door
on gratitude in 2020
Hello friends 🍵🦃
When I decided on Thursday as my day to send the newsletter I wasn’t at all thinking ahead to Thanksgiving. It’s been six months since I started hot yuzu tea in earnest, wrapping up finals and closing out a very specific life chapter in my grad school dormitory. I didn’t know where I’d end up later in the year. I didn’t know what job I’d manage to get, or whether the novella I was working on would be part of my collection (it will be, which I’m very excited about). I didn’t know how to approach my longer project, but I was already working on it then, tentatively, anxiously. I hadn’t seen my family in-person since January, having expected to see them at graduation—which, of course, turned virtual. We didn’t know the pandemic would last this long, or everything else that would happen.
Feels like a lifetime ago is extremely cliched, and accurate.
I thought to myself on Thursday, well, no one will miss the newsletter today since it’s Thanksgiving. But not everyone reading this is US-based, so that’s not a great point. And I know from being a subscriber to other newsletters myself that regularity is a comfort. Truthfully I was just tired this week and happy, on Thursday and Friday, to have a break: to eat a lot, read, and spend time with my family. (And, yes, play lots of Hades.) But I did want to reach out and say hello to all of you. I hope you’re holding up okay as well roll into December.
Gratitude on Thanksgiving isn’t a tradition for me. I usually look back on the year and the things I appreciate as part of extreme New Year journaling. But in the bizarre landscape of 2020, I wanted to share some things that I am deeply grateful for every day. I don’t have any deep reasons for why. Sometimes I’d like to do things in my newsletter without having to justify it. I don’t like that I always feel guilty sharing good news, or the good in my life—so here’s me trying to get over that.
Rediscovering poetry 🎶
I can’t stress how momentous this is for me. Some days I think it’s the best thing I got this year, which is wild, in a year where I graduated from a master’s program and got a collection book deal in ink. Yet my recovery of poetry feels like a small miracle. I spent the last four years feeling like I’d lost the part of me that identified as a poet. Isabel Yap writes fiction and poetry is the first line of my standard bio, yet I hadn’t written a poem in ages. I was too embarrassed. The lines weren’t there when I reached for them. Sure, the phrases had some music, but they choked on their own self-consciousness. The self-consciousness reduced my motivation to try. I justified this by thinking, well, poetry is not the form that externally rewards me for writing. That was a mistake, since external rewards were never the reason I wrote poetry; but it was how I dealt with my loss. I missed it, terribly, and it hurt that I couldn’t find my way back.
What happened? I did something guaranteed to produce results: I turned poetry into literal homework. In my last semester, I applied for three poetry workshops at Harvard (you can apply for up to four classes, but can only be accepted into one), and was given a slot in the Advanced class. My teacher, Josh Bell, encouraged us to submit at least one poem a week. We wouldn’t get critiqued each time, but we could generate as much as we wanted to.
For all my tension and hang-ups, stepping into that workshop on day one felt comfortable, familiar. When we started talking about poems, all my annoying hang-ups about the form went away. As an undergraduate, I was much more focused on poetry than fiction. There were many reasons for this, including how the college I first enrolled in—Ateneo, in Manila—had a robust poetry tradition, some of the best local poets in its faculty, and an active literary folio, which I immediately joined. Deliberations, where we used formalist critique to determine whether or not submitted poems got published in the folio, was a great source of joy to me. (I ended up leading this exercise in second year, for the English-language department of the folio.) This Harvard classroom felt like delibs all over again. My classmates were insightful critics—and amazing poets. They tried different things with their work each week. Language jumped out at me again, audacious and fretful and strange.
Between the weekly homework, which I clung to like a life raft to force me; and our thoughtful, three-hour workshops, which were somehow rejuvenating despite being at the end of very long Mondays for me—I came to feel like poetry was within my grasp again. That feeling has persisted. Some of my self-consciousness, my fear of uttering, has dissipated. I haven’t written nearly as much since graduating, but the little spark of confidence is there: that I can try. I’ll fail a lot, but once in a while I’ll like the result too. The potential is what matters.
Rediscovering fandom 😍
Last fall, I found myself opening up to fandom again. Oddly enough, I think it was kickstarted by reading Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. I loved it aggressively, partly because it reminded me of my favorite shipping fics: that sort of deeply felt, delicately characterized relationship, the beating heart of the whole story. (Also a healthy dose of dramatic irony, in the sense that I kept wondering, okay, how closely is she going to hew to canon? Part of the delight is the subversion: Thetis, Iphigenia, Briseis…how she retells and recreates, in turn.) When it ended, I thought noooooo I need more! So where else did I turn but AO3, holy grail for canon hangovers.
My second-year fall semester was also more chill than all of first year had been. I had successfully broken out from FOMO’s clutches, which meant I sometimes had a free evening. I decided to fill these…by watching anime. I am notoriously bad at keeping up with shows, and the last few years I’d never liked anything enough to make that investment, or give up my precious off hours. I didn’t realize what a gap that left in me, until I watched a bunch of shounen anime and thought shit, I missed this!
This: the specific feeling and joy that fandom gives me, that I rarely find elsewhere. I felt that old impulse rise again: to carve out some of this story, to extend it my own way. While visiting home for Thanksgiving in 2019, I started and finished a fanfic, the first one in two years. It was for a relatively obscure fandom and didn’t get many readers to start, but I loved getting that up online. The few comments I did get were very grateful. (Of course, when you’re in an obscure fandom, and writing non-main characters, this tends to be true.)
I won’t say it’s like a dam broke, because that’s not it. I still operate on the same rules of fic-writing I always have: if there’s a story I think needs telling, I try to tell it. I will say, though, that I’ve written a lot of words this year, and about 60% of them have been for fanfic. And I love that. I love that these stories are out there already, that I’m contributing to ships and fandoms I love to pieces, even if I’m extremely late to the party in some cases. I like that as anxious as I am about having a Book With My Own Name come out next year, there’s AO3 and the occasional keyboardsmash comment (my favorite was when someone said ‘OMG I’M LITERALLY CRYING IN THE CLUB’) to remind me that what really matters is when I connect very specifically with a reader who gets it.
I’m noodling on a fanfic at the moment. I don’t allow myself to work on it until I get my Serious Project Writing done—not that fanfic isn’t serious, I’m the last person who’d every say that, but I need to make progress on this story for various reasons, including momentum. Fanfic is my reward. Another bright spark, like poetry (except with decidedly more readers—sorry, poetry, but it’s true).
The good health of family and friends 😷
In a year with so much loss, I can’t understate how grateful I am that my friends and family are healthy. That the people I love, in three different continents, have taken the pandemic seriously; that everyone’s wearing a mask and social distancing and understands that this is real. That those who’ve gotten sick have recovered. That we know to weigh the risks. That, through Zoom calls and phone calls and WhatsApp check-ins, we’ve managed to be there for each other.
I know what a privilege it is to write this sentence. I’m grateful that I’m an introvert and living a lockdown existence (by choice—it’s how my family stays safe) doesn’t bother me most days. I am grateful for the technology, and for the thoughtfulness of others, that reminds me I’m not alone.
Writing, and the work that allows me to do it ✍️
I’m always grateful to have writing in my life, but this year it feels extra-precious. Whenever I’m undergoing a life change there’s a scared, suspicious part of me that thinks: is this the point at which I lose it?
I’m never going to stop writing, but I know there are periods of my life when various factors might make it very difficult to find the time and energy. Leaving grad school this year, dealing with a volatile job market, felt like I was maybe approaching one of those times. It took several months, but I did manage to land a job, in the role I want, that I hope to improve on for my tech career.
Throughout that, and until now, I’ve been able to keep writing. It involved a significant change in habits and the serendipity of finding a great writing group. I’m disciplined, but I recognize my writing routine is possible only because I can work remotely, and my company offers flexible working hours. For these things, despite challenges, I am deeply grateful.
The enthusiastic support of others 😭
I started talking to Small Beer Press about a collection in early 2018. In the process of pulling it together I moved cities, went to grad school, got an internship, etc; in other words: lots going on. The offer got formalized this past February, right before all the pandemic closures. Because of all this life stuff, the momentousness of actually having a book out with Small Beer Press in 2021 (!!!!) felt a bit foggy, unreal, for a time. To think of how the world has changed since we announced the book boggles the mind.
Something that hasn’t changed, though, is the kind support of my publisher. I constantly have a lot of anxieties about this book—very typical for a debut author, I imagine. Some days they’re so severe my brain is convinced they’ve already come true. But one after another, good things have come to pass. I was stressed about the cover, then got a perfectly suited one that sells itself. I was sure I couldn’t find a title I liked, then we landed on Never Have I Ever. The first pass of the TOC led me into confused spirals—then we talked, and now I think we have the right stories, in the right order.
And now arcs are making it out into the world, and some folks are reading it.
So, in addition to days of anxiety, there are days of dazed disbelief: wow, I somehow live in a universe where one of my favorite authors is publishing my book, and a whole bunch of other authors I love are reading it and willing to say nice things about it.
It is hard for me to say that I like my own book a lot. It’s hard for me to say I hope it does well, because: jinx! But I’d like to believe in the others who believe in me, even when my brain makes that difficult. Every now and then I receive an expression of support that is so kind and meaningful I spend the rest of the day dissolving. Regardless of what happens ultimately, I am grateful for what the process of putting this book out there has already given me, and I’m grateful I get to share it with many more people, in just three (! oh god) months.
A recipe for you 🍁🍪
As part of my family’s Thanksgiving feast, I baked Magic Cookie Bars. This is a stupidly easy bake that I’ve done for basically any potluck since I learned it five years ago, because it always tastes so good. Here’s the recipe I follow:
Ingredients
a bag of chocolate chips (I like semi-sweet, but any work, really)
a can of condensed milk
graham crackers (in a Honey Maid box I’ll use 2/3 wrapped packs)
1/2 cup butter (melted)
unsweetened coconut flakes
chopped nuts (I always make this with pecan, but walnuts or a mix work well too)
Process
Preheat oven to 350 F.
Prep a 9 x 13 inch baking pan with cooking spray or melted butter.
Crush the graham crackers and mix it with the butter to form a crust. Spread on the bottom of the pan.
Pour condensed milk evenly over the graham cracker crust. Pour the bag of chocolate chips, chopped nuts, and unsweetened coconut flakes on top. Press everything down with a fork.
Pop it into the oven. Let bake ~25 minutes or until the top is slightly browned. (The baking time has quite a bit of variance, depending on the oven.)
Let cool, then cut into squares.
Source: Allrecipes
It’s easy-peasy and the leftovers taste great too.
News and things
The FutureTalk panel is this Sunday, November 29! I’ll be speaking on the theme of Future Currents: Philippines and Singapore with fellow authors Vida Cruz, Victor Ocampo, and Eliza Victoria. It’ll be 8pm Manila time (that’s 4am PT/7am ET, for Stateside folks). Learn more and find the YouTube link here. Hope to see some of you there!
The title of this post comes from Ocean Vuong’s poem, Tell Me Something Good. The poem is utterly brutal so it doesn’t match my newsletter content, but this sort of free-association is a big way I come up with titles (more on this in a future post).
Thanks as always for reading (extra thanks, since this is my gratitude post)! If you liked this post, feel free to share it with others, or sign up if you haven’t yet. I hope you find things to be grateful for this week.
This is wonderful! I also rediscovered my love of fanfic this year (for very small and obscure fandoms, haha) & found it helped me remember what I love about writing as a whole. That poetry workshop sounds fantastic - you've made me want to go & have a bash at writing some poetry for the first time in months. :) Have a good weekend!