Back at the Big Thompson
Every year, when the first gusts of fall blow down from the mountains, we come stay in this cabin on the river. We drink champagne in the morning and hike in the afternoon (I know some people would reverse that order of operations, but it works for us). We grill sausages and CSA veggies and eat sumptuous dinners and play board games late into the night. In the mornings, I wake to the white-cap noise of minor rapids, the Big Thompson flowing from its headwaters in Forest Canyon, one of the most rugged sections of Rocky Mountain National Park. I’m sitting on the back deck right now, basking like a skink in the midmorning sun, listening to the water and the distant trill of the crows.
Last year when we were here, I was working on my review of Brutalities. I combed through the whole book, pulling out every quote I thought might be useful, copying lines into my literary notebook and trying to crack the code. I drafted a review and studied its architecture, its weak links and flimsy transitions, and then I reconstructed each sentence to discover what I was actually trying to say. While my husband fished in Lake Estes and the flat sky drizzled, I sat in the car with my books, puzzling over words.
I hadn’t yet published anything with Full Stop. I'd read their feature on “The Insidious Faux-Feminism of Barbie,” which was so thoughtful and clear it made me want to write for them, and a few weeks after our Estes trip, they accepted my review. A few months later, Full Stop included me on their seasonal critics email, inviting me to pick forthcoming titles and submit regular reviews. I even got to interview Margo Steines!
Last year, sitting here, simultaneously invigorated and peeved by the challenge of criticism, I had no idea any of that would happen. The water of the Big Thompson is startlingly clear but even if I can see the riverbed I cannot see the future.
The year before last, we went on a hike in Rocky Mountain that became a scene in my memoir. The manuscript is nearly finished—I'm starting to draft a query letter, research agents, move to the next stage of attempting to carry a book into the world. Maybe next September I’ll stand on this deck, swirling De Stefani Prosecco in a glass, marveling that this time last year, I hadn’t even met my agent yet! Maybe it’s not wishful thinking, at least not if I put in the work. On New Year's Eve this past year, we stood in the backyard of our house in Boulder, lit sparklers and flute glasses in hand, and I said, “I'm going to query one hundred agents this year!” It hasn't happened yet. But at the time, the manuscript wasn't finished yet. And now, it's close.
In an essay on her substack I think of often, Carmen Maria Machado has written about “how easy it is to let the desire to be published (and by extension obsessed over by name-brand agents, editors, and publishing houses) completely outstrip the act of writing a good book.”
I want to be published. I want my writing to reach the people to whom it will matter—all the other “religious trauma girlies,” those damaged by purity culture, those caught in loops of self-criticism and self-diminishment that they don’t recognize as habits/internalized beliefs formed by toxic doctrine. I want my work to reach readers who will, in my story, hear an invitation to encountering the Divine in ways that are no longer limited by the harms and dictates of institutional religion. An invitation to freedom from the salvation arc. An invitation to reject the framework of total depravity.
It’s weird to say, but I hope my story can help ransom people from the story that they need to be ransomed.
But none of that will happen if I don't write the best book I possibly can: if I let my eagerness for the next step eclipse my dedication and focus on this one.
“I can’t tell you how many books I pick up,” Machado writes, “and think, Man, I wish the author had been able to spend another year or two or five with this project.”
The scope of the book is complete. The story as I have framed it ends in early 2023. I know that my personal relationship to questions of faith and religion and spirituality and the Divine will continue to evolve and change. But those developments do not belong in this book.
However, I still have work to do: tightening the arc, finessing the language, sanding and polishing the story mechanics of cause and effect. Hopefully it’s not too much work, but the work also contains its own reward.
I loved writing my review of Brutalities. I love what publishing that review at Full Stop has allowed me to do as a critic. But the best part wasn’t the day the review went live. The best part was hunching over the book, turning the sentences like a combination lock, listening for my argument to click. So I keep working. And I keep hiking, and board gaming, and reading, and reviewing, and plunging my feet in the creek. And I wonder what will be different when we return next year.
