Miscellaneous Wonders #1
I'll take Potpourri for $800, Alex.
Dear Friends,
Someone recently asked me what “Miscellaneous Wonders” meant, and the answer is probably not as interesting as one would hope. Back in the day (we’re talking Windows XP years), I had a folder on my computer that I would shove files that had no other place into (a recipe for gazpacho, a .mov file of a Björk music video, an image of map of Mesopotamia, a list of French New Wave films I should watch…). In essence, it’s just means an assortment of things that interest me, with a silly name.
That being said, I wasn’t fully sure what my newsletter would be when I started it. I was mostly thinking of “literary citizenship”: trying to share what I’ve learned through trial and error in my own writing career—in addition to my own philosophies about creativity, craft, education, the business of writing, etc. The concept of a sundry newsletter suited me, and since, in essence, it was also an assortment of things that interest me, I recycled an old title for a slightly different purpose.
While I’m satisfied with what I’ve used this space for so far, I don’t always want to put the onus on myself to write a full article on a specific topic du jour. Although I will say, I finally set up Analytics for my Substack, and most of the hits come in for my articles on submitting to literary magazines and post-publication awards. I got back into the Enneagram lately (it’s like the Myers-Briggs with less eugenics), and my personality type is the “4w5.” It’s basically the creative weirdo with an overly analytical mind and a compulsive need to withdraw from the world. Ain’t that the truth. So if you have any literary topics you’d like me to write about, please leave a comment because I’m always looking for ideas—and apparently—I’m your person when it comes to over-thinking about creativity.
Also, like, I don’t actually know how much “liking” and commenting on these posts helps my posts move through the Substack algorithm, but I suppose some interaction couldn’t hurt. So feel free to say hi some time if you’re a reader I haven’t met before!
Miscellaneous Books
As my doctoral studies continue, I’ve been looking at post-WWII queer novels. I re-read Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (1956) for the first time in years—right after reading Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) for the actual first time. What I hadn’t really expected was to find so much harmony between these two novels. Both novels invoke Henry James, specifically summoning his spirit to the page via his novel, The Ambassadors (1903). In James’ novel, the protagonist takes on the task of going to Europe to bringing home the son of his widowed fiancée. Highsmith more directly riffs on this plot, as Tom Ripley takes a bounty to complete a similar task (going to Europe to bring home the son of a wealthy businessman). Highsmith even plays with this intertextuality by having Tom ask another character if they’ve read The Ambassadors in the novel itself.
What I find interesting about these three novels is that “Europe” seems to act as a type of metonym for a broader, more liberatory culture. It is where the American most go to escape their Puritan history and indulge in their libertine desires. For Tom Ripley, it is maturing into the type of criminal who can allow himself to commit murder. For David (Baldwin’s protagonist), it is to indulge in these homosexual desires while running away from the identity of the homosexual. It is a false type of liberation, as both Tom and David flee into their own disasters, destroying other people’s lives and leaving death in their wakes.
While Baldwin did not bring James directly into the text as Highsmith did, he did quote him directly in his 1959 essay, “The Discovery of What it Means to be an American”:
“It is a complex fate to be an American,” Henry James observed, and the principal discovery an American writer makes in Europe is just how complex this fate is. America’s history, her aspirations, her peculiar triumphs, her even more peculiar defeats, and her position in the world — yesterday and today — are all so profoundly and stubbornly unique that the very word “America” remains a new, almost completely undefined and extremely controversial proper noun. No one in the world seems to know exactly what it describes, not even we motley millions who call ourselves Americans.
What I love about this era, in literature, is that “American” can be as slippery as “homosexual.” We know there is some public imagination surrounding these terms, but as a type of stabilized identity, they had not quite reached that distinguishment yet…
PS: I also just want to say I had no idea that a brand-new Ripley TV show was launching right around the time I read the novel. I still haven’t seen it, but I’m hoping to be able to binge it some time this month.
Miscellaneous Games
Something I am “not great” about is this thing that I hear is called “relaxing.” It’s not really a secret that I have sleep-related issues, but it also probably doesn’t help that I can be bad about letting go of the unresolved tasks of each day. Most days you can find me trying to force a second or third wind out to get just one more task crossed off the endless to-do list. So what I’ve been trying to do more often is engage in some evening activity that does not feel like “work” at all. Recently, I’ve been trying to make some time to catch up on video games at night.
One that I thought was fabulous was Slay the Princess. It’s one of those games that it’s best to go into knowing as little as possible. It’s essentially a choose-your-own-adventure game in the form of a visual novel. You take on the role of the Hero. There is a Narrator present who tells you that it’s your job to kill said Princess, which you must do in order to save the world. What decisions you make though begin to impact the narrative on a metafictional level, with some delightful twists and turns. While I would not call it a proper “horror game,” it has some nice detours down darker fairy tale paths. The voice actors really sell their roles too.
As someone who wrote a whole novella about a shopping mall world, I also can’t recommend Sorry, We’re Open enough. It mixes Kmart realism with cosmic horror, turning late-stage capitalism and “essential workers” into an eerie pixel RPG. There’s haunted shopping carts, living mannequins, Meow-Wolf-esque + dead mall aesthetics, and all the hellscape of customer service and retail.
As I’m typing I’m realizing that I mostly play horror or horror-adjacent games….
My final recommendation is one called That’s Not My Neighbor, which is short and sweet. In an alternate 1950s, you work as a doorperson, and have to inspect people entering the building (and their documents) to make sure they’re not doppelgängers. Sometimes it’s a very subtle element that provides the tell, and other times the monsters are hilariously overt in their non-humanness (sorry, man with a dozen eyes on his face, I cannot, in good conscience, let you into this building). I’d say this game still needs a little polish, but it’s a fun way to kill an hour or two, and it’s a good title to keep an eye (or ten) on.
Miscellaneous Me
Something else I’ve more-or-less made peace with is I cannot be “JD Scott the Writer” and “JD Scott the Scholar” and all these other Selves full-time with intense dedication and energy. I don’t know how other authors feel about these things, but I felt more compelled to send short-form writing (i.e.: short stories and poems) out to magazines before I had published a book in each genre.
Don’t get me wrong: there is still part of me that has this sense that… how do I put this… once you start to publish your writing, all those empty spaces in the aftermath feel like gaps between your next unpublished book. I realize that my last book was three years ago, and that I’ve really slowed down at both generating and sending out work. At the same time, just because I’m aware doesn’t mean I necessarily care…? I’m still casually sending out some work, but most of my energy right now feels dedicated to accumulating a Smaug horde of lil pieces and just sitting on them until I’m closer to finishing a new long-form project I’m happy with. It’s been soothing to unlearn some habits and just enjoy sitting in work I’ve created for myself. I’m enjoying that “JD Scott the Writer” is someone I’ve been able to just sit on a shelf to focus on other parts of my life that need more attention at the moment.
If anything, most of what I still apply to are fellowships and opportunities that will help me generate new writing, build professional skills, and anything else that will mean I can focus less on the pauper’s life of academia and more on a creative life that I wish was financially viable.
I do have a few small announcements though. I’ve gotten some mileage out of a flash fiction piece (“The Selkie of the City Tells All”) that I published in The Rainbow Issue of Fairy Tale Review last year. You can read it through Project MUSE here. It was accepted for one of those “Best of…” types of annual anthologies, although after some brief vetting, I don’t think the news has fully gone live, so I can’t say which one yet. The Rainbow Issue also received a finalist status in the “LGBTQ+ Anthology” category of the 2024 Lambda Literary Awards, so on some level I can say I’m officially a Lammy finalist for the first time.
To be honest, I’ve never been a huge ‘podcast person,’ just because I generally do not find there’s many occasions where I enjoy listening to them. However, in the past year+ I found out I love to listen to podcasts (and audiobooks) while doing chores that allow me to multi-task, such as doing the dishes or folding the laundry. As some of my short fiction has moved purely into genre realms, I’ve also been trying to tune into more voices in those spaces, since I tend to still feel like this misfit who came up through many disparate writing communities & thus writes in these liminal spaces slightly on the outskirts of spaces that other writers fit into.
One of these podcasts I’ve had some fun listening to is Writing Excuses: it’s short, sweet, and it gives a lot of valuable insight into the publishing side of craft. What I mean by this is that literary agents and publishing house editors have a very different view of how to shape a book compared to, say, your MFA cohort or your professors. Writing Excuses generously has scholarships for some of their writing retreats they host throughout the year, and I’m over the moon to announce that I’ve been awarded one of them! So, perhaps I will see some of you on the Mexican Riviera in the fall.
I’m in the midst of transitioning from my academic year’s teaching contract over to some freelance work for the summer months. I will be teaching a class about writing through the Uncanny and Fabulistic (it’s a remixed version of a class I taught a couple of summers ago), and I’m incredibly excited to facilitate it. The info isn’t live yet, but I’m looking forward to sharing those details soon…
And for now, that’s a small update from my corner of the Internet Writer Cinematic Universe.
Until next time!
Miscellaneously Yours,
JD