Sometimes you sit down to write and everything that comes out is too close to the truth. There’s a reason I write fiction—I prefer to keep something of myself to myself. It’s not hard to find the meaning in what I write, but I like to pretend that it is, like drawing a thin veil over the top. We can both see what’s beneath, but for decency’s sake we’ll pretend otherwise.
Anyway, here’s a drabble.
I’ve had Greek mythology on my mind lately after devouring Madeleine Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Circe. These stories were part of my childhood, but returning to them as an adult, I find so much more than I could have imagined. As a kid, I swallowed them up. As an adult, I find myself wanting to shove my fingers through the cracks and look deeper. I want to look behind the curtain, under the table, out into the dark depths of the forest.
Both of these books take stories that have existed for centuries and broaden them, exploring the edges and pushing at the boundaries. It’s part understanding cultural context, but it’s also universality—Achilles and Patroclus’ relationship in context, yes, but also the timeless concept of desires that don’t quite align. The role of women in Ancient Greece, of course, but also the weight of expectations.
I think that’s why I’ve always been such a sucker for a good myth, well-told. I’m not Persephone, I’m not Artemis, but these stories ignite my curiosity and encourage my imagination because they are still so easy to identify with, even centuries later. The themes are there, even if the context is different.
Anyway, here’s a drabble.
I’ve had a fear of mirrors since I was a kid and a girl on my bus told me you could summon Bloody Mary by repeating her name three times. She said the ghost would appear and scratch you, and showed me her arms to prove it. She was a purveyor of eerie urban legends—she said the worry dolls my family had given me to help me cope with some difficult life stuff would come to life and make my worries come true, that the houses on our bus ride home were haunted, and so on—and I bought into every one of them. Of course, I’d never say Bloody Mary aloud, but would it count if I thought it? Did they have to be said altogether, or would three times spread out over a lifetime still summon her?
Aside from one brief dabble into Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board, I was always too scared to try any of the creepy sleepover rituals we whispered about. In high school, my friends went walking through a graveyard on Halloween—I crossed the street, saying I’d rather walk home in the dark by myself than through a graveyard.
I’ve eased up a bit since then, but even while writing this, I wondered if Bloody Mary would know that I’d written her name three times in one blog post, that I’m seated in front of a window and that it’s so dark outside I can see my reflection in it. The scratches on that girl’s arms left such an impression on me that I can’t shake the fear decades later.
Anyway, here’s a drabble.
While writing The Compendium of Magical Beasts, I thought a lot about monsters and myths and women. In part because my narrator, like me, is the kind of person who would think about those things, and in part because I feel that to leave out discussions of marginalization, even in a book about creatures that probably don’t exist, was to do folklore and history and science a disservice. The chapter on nymphs is one of my favorites for that reason. I could have written a straightforward explanation of what a nymph is and how they live, but there’s more to it than that—call somebody a ‘nymph’ today, and you’re not saying they’re a forest-dwelling spirit. Same with ‘harpy’ or ‘siren,’ both words that meant female monsters, and now mean female monsters in a different way.
According to myth, there are some three thousand oceanids, with only a handful of them being worthy of names and stories. Of those stories, most involve them giving birth, or nursing, or caretaking; there was only one story to be told, and it was told again and again and again.
Anyway, here’s a drabble.
I’ve been thinking a lot about nostalgia lately. A couple hours ago, I finished playing through Night in the Woods for a second time, and after that, I edited an essay about Kingdom Hearts 3. Both are nostalgic in their own ways, both a little muddled and confused in their emotions, but also both hopeful.
I look back at where I came from and sometimes it stings, sometimes it doesn’t. I keep coming back to this line from a poem—my instructor read this to us in class, and I still hear it in her voice, every time.
We're still growing but the stitches hurt Let us beTrue to one another for the world Easy on the myths now Make it up Sleep well- "Sediments of Santa Monica" by Brenda Hillman
It’s nice, isn’t it? Nice in a painful way.
Nostalgia used to be considered a sickness back in the 17th century—a real sickness, one that doctors would try to treat. The definition has since shifted to mean something more wistful. Less painful, more thoughtful. I think it can be both.
Anyway, here’s a drabble.
This year, I have been trying to be good to myself. A month has gone by and I’ve written just one drabble, which is a sign that it’s working.
But having one this month, is also a sign that it’s working. People talk a lot about filling their creative wells, about taking time away from work to recharge. I’ve been trying to do more of that, spending more time with books I love and less with work. Sometimes anxiety gets the best of me and I don’t succeed, and other times work becomes the fun thing, as it did when I covered Global Game Jam a couple weeks ago.
I’m trying to find balance. Some weeks are better than others—this one, so far, is going well. Last week went poorly. I’m sure I’ll fluctuate through the rest of the year as I experiment with things that work and many of them blow up in my face, but for now I feel good. Peaceful. Cared for.
Anyway, here’s a drabble.
I’ve had some extremely weird rumors spread about me. Not recently, or at least not to my knowledge, but there was a time in middle school, in particular, when people actually came up to me to ask if they were true. Looking back, the rumor that I was a poorly behaved kid with dozens of detentions is not only laughable, but so benign that I can’t believe it bothered me as much as it did.
Which isn’t to say that rumors don’t have power; obviously they do. The stakes were low when I was 12 and the worst thing anybody could think to say about me was that I got a lot of detentions. I’m sure other people have said worse things about me now that I have 30 years of making friends and enemies with people, but I try—try—not to think about them.
The idea picks at me, though, that there’s a narrative about me that I can’t control, that somebody might have more say over the person I know myself to be than I do. Unfortunately, I just have to let it go, shrugging off the annoyance that I don’t get to tell my own story.
Anyway, here’s a drabble.
My family is extremely Norweigian. Not necessarily in the tradition sense—though we are extremely fond of saying uff da, but in the food sense. I’ve never tried it, but my grandparents love lutefisk. We keep pickled herring in the fridge for Christmas. It’s not as bad as it sounds, though trying it once was enough for me.
Lefse, on the other hand, is a beloved favorite. It’s a thin, crepe-like potato pancake we smear with butter and sprinkle with sugar. The dough is sweet and delicate, and practically melts in your mouth.
The problem is that nearly every Swedish bakery in our area has closed up, and lefse is a laborious task. You have to rice potatoes (essentially putting them through a special press that turns them into thin grains), mix in flour, sugar, salt, butter, and cream, and turn that into a dough. Once it’s cool, it needs to be rolled out with a special grooved pin to 1/8th of an inch or less, then tossed onto a 400-degree griddle with a special stick. Cook it too long and it gets bitter, not enough and it’s still doughy.
I know all this because I spent some eight hours making it this weekend. And I do mean painstaking—my shoulders are still aching from all the rolling, my hands are burned from bumping the griddle.
But it was worth it. Not because it tasted good, but because I now appreciate how much work goes into it. Because I’ve started a new tradition where I make it for my family, especially since this first time it was a surprise.
And also because it tasted good. There are more burned spots and not-quite-cooked areas on my lefse, but it’s still delicious.
Anyway, here’s a drabble.
I still have dreams about the island where I grew up. There’s some half-true version of it in my mind, where everything is both bigger and smaller, where everything is the same and entirely different. There are large fields of grass where there should be a highway, and the ocean extends forever instead of butting up against the other landmasses nearby. But the ocean is shallow, and you can walk out and out and out and the water will never go above your waist.
I return there again and again when I sleep, running over these imaginary fields, stepping into a shallow ocean that never ends. Even when the dreams are nightmares—they often are—there’s something comforting about returning to this place that I know so well despite it being entirely unfamiliar.
Anyway, here’s a drabble.
Lucrezia Borgia probably wasn’t a poisoner. It’s a myth that persisted through the ages, likely because the Borgia family had many enemies who benefitted from spreading rumors about them. And despite the common “poison is a woman’s weapon,” refrain, most poisoners are men.
But the myths persist. Lucrezia murdered her family’s way to power thanks to a ring containing foxglove or arsenic, it’s said, despite there being no evidence that such a thing ever happened.
For some reason, I was disappointed to learn that it wasn’t true, that she was just another victim (likely not innocent, but a victim nonetheless) of rumor.
Anyway, here’s a drabble.
