Hey everyone! Welcome to my weekly writing newsletter! I know it’s been six months since I’ve sent this out, but I have just been so busy plowing through television shows written for teenagers and eating canned tuna for every meal that I haven’t had the time.
Pro tip: Adding a little bit of pepper to the mayo/tuna mixture really elevates the dish, which is especially handy if you’re not even going to bother making it into a sandwich.
Anyway, let’s talk about why we’re all here: writing!
‘Sending emails into the “void” haha….’ Illustration by Josh Quick
Writing exercise to try: daily pages
I’ve gotten really into writing daily pages in the morning. If you haven’t heard of them, daily pages are a freewriting exercise where you have to write continuously for a certain period of time. I decided to do a little twist on this classic by writing “oh my god nothing matters” over and over again in a Google Doc while I’m on the train to work. The results? So far, I’ve seen absolutely no improvement in my writing and zero variation in the daily pages themselves, but I have felt remarkably more depressed since I started! Have you tried writing daily pages? Let me know how it worked for you, and if you also feel a weighty hopelessness at all times! 🙂
What I’ve been up to:
Not a ton of writing, to be honest. I’ve been cruisin’ through that Netflix show The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. It’s okay. I don’t know that I’d recommend it, but it beats staring at the wall (which I’ve also been doing a lot of). There are some writerly themes in the show that you all would enjoy: The characters mention signing their names in the Devil’s book, which totally counts as writing! Gotta get that daily word count up somehow, right???
What I liked on the Internet this week:
– These days I mostly just scroll through Twitter, seeing much but processing little. If that sounds bleak, try thinking of it as a defense mechanism—then it’s kind of empowering!
– I saw a funny meme of a dog somewhere, but I don’t remember where and I don’t know how to find it anymore. I’m sure you all saw it, it was very popular.
What I’ve published:
Ummmmm right now I’ve just been doing a lot of pitching. Putting out feelers. Sending emails into the “void” haha. Nothing has really gone up since my last newsletter six months ago. I am working on a new essay though, so that’s exciting! I haven’t found a home for it yet, but I will say that I’m about 150 words in and I have already completely lost faith in my idea.
GIF of the week!
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Okay did that show up this time? One of these days I’ll get the hang of attaching gifs to emails.
Amazingly, that’s all the personal and professional news I have! Stay tuned for next week’s issue, which will probably hit your inbox sometime next year.
Do you have a friend who’d like this newsletter? Probably not, right? Half the time I don’t even read this thing before I send it out. But I hear it’s good to have a lot of people subscribe to your newsletter because oh my god nothing matters nothing matters nothing matters nothing matters.
Adrienne is a comedian living in Chicago. Her writing has appeared on McSweeney’s, Reductress, CollegeHumor, and other fine sites. Follow her on Twitter: @acteeley.