Hello, hello! After taking last week off from newsletter-ing because of a few teeny-tiny events like the election, my 27th birthday, and our move to Raleigh, I’m back with plenty of updates to share with y’all (I’m Southern now—it’s gonna be a whole thing).
So without further ado, here’s this week’s installment of And Everything Else about the move, my upcoming classes, novel progress, and more:
#1. I’m officially a North Carolinian!
It still doesn’t quite feel real, but after living in New York my entire life, minus a few years of college in Boston and abroad in Prague, I’m officially a resident of a different state. Whaaaat?
We left last Saturday, and while there were a few moving-related bumps (when are they not?), everything has been great so far. Raleigh is such a beautiful, clean city, especially compared to NYC (there’s no trash! Nothing smells weird!). Kurt and I have spent the last 9 days exploring our neighborhood—which, if you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know has mostly consisted of eating (outside) at a million restaurants. I am So. Full.
Our new apartment has way more space than our Brooklyn home did, so we’ve been having a ton of fun furnishing it (and trying to forget how much everything costs, as you do). We got a few great pieces from Furnish This in Raleigh, including our coffee table/wine rack combo (see below)—they ship nationally, so check them out if your home needs some sprucin’.
#2. I’ll be talking to college students tomorrow about women’s media—and an available to talk to your class, too!
One of my favorite parts of my job is the occasional opportunity to talk to students about my career and the media industry—over the years, I’ve spoken several times to college and grad students at Emerson (my alma mater) and NYU, plus dozens of high schoolers. It’s so much fun to share stories and advice with ~the youth~, whether it’s about how I got my jobs, what it’s like to interview A-list celebs, the future of digital media, or whatever else.
So I’m excited that tomorrow evening, I’ll be speaking to grad students at Emerson taking a “Publishing for and by Women” course taught by Susanne Althoff. We’ll chat about my career at female-focused pubs like HelloGiggles and Bustle, plus the women’s media world overall.
If you’re interested in having me speak at your college or high school, shoot me an email—I’d love to set it up!
#3. I did a Q&A for my upcoming “Writing for the Internet” class
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ll be teaching an eight-week “Writing for the Internet” course with Redbud Writing Project starting in January! It’ll be held via Zoom, and will cover everything from personal essays to celeb profiles to reviews. You can sign up here!
Last week, I did a brief Q&A for Redbud’s newsletter about what I’m most looking forward to discussing in the class, as well as my favorite books, my social media addictions, and more—check it out here!
#4. I’m back to working on my novel after a looong break
After taking nearly two weeks off because of life being crazy, I started writing again last night. It’s never easy to return to a work-in-progress after time off, since you lose not only your flow, but often, a lot of your motivation for working on it in the first place.
But reading Jami Attenberg’s Craft Talk newsletter on “How to Get Back to Work” gave me the push I needed. She gives some great tips on getting back into the groove, including my favorite, below:
Remind yourself of what the project is and why you wanted to write it. Write it down. “Just the sheer act of defining my project,” Attenberg said, “helps me to reclaim it for myself.”
For me, that reminder looks like: This is a coming-of-age novel about a high school sophomore who’s always craving something more—cooler friends, a fuller social life, a better personality. I wanted to write it because I felt it was an authentic, relatable story I hadn’t read before, and because I thought it’d be a book I’d want to read both as a teen and as an adult.
Writing is not easy work, but it matters. So we power through.
That’s all for today, folks. I leave you all with this photo of Ellie watching the sunrise on her new balcony, taken by her very happy mom:
Love,
Rachel