It's December! Let's keep this under 1000 words!

We've all got things to do.

Good morning, friends!

I’m coming to you a little late this month. It’s been… quite a week. I’m currently sitting at the dining table of my house, where the ambient temperature is a cozy fifty-two degrees, and a pine-and-balsam candle is feebly fighting to both purify and slightly warm the air around it. Excavators are hard at work in my front yard, a jackhammer in the basement is jarring the table from time to time, and I’m sipping a mug of Constant Comment as I write this.

We’re getting the sewer line at our new house (just purchased in September, if you may recall!) replaced, and though I wouldn’t call the events leading up to this major home repair a “nightmare,” they’re certainly approaching that description. A night gelding, perhaps. Last Tuesday sewage began bubbling up from the standing shower drain in our basement, and though my handy husband did his part with layman’s investigation and Drano, the problem worsened. By Thursday the central drain in the unfinished portion of our basement had begun to emit sewage as well, and we had to call an emergency plumber. We crossed our fingers and hoped it would be a simple pipe blockage that could be suctioned out with easy speed.

Gentle reader, it was not. It turns out that in the era of WWII, when this house was built, pipe metal was hard to come by, and many sewer lines were constructed of a dubious material called orangeburg, which has a tendency to collapse in on itself after, oh, say, 75 years of wear and tear. Our two sedate months in this house came to an abrupt halt, and the plumbing/sewer authority/sanitation bill will laugh at us in our actual nightmares.

Thank goodness for homeowners’ insurance, am I right?

Anyway. There’s the update you didn’t ask for. (I’m off social media for December, so I had to share this somewhere!) Everything is as fine as it can be under the circumstances, and we’re fortunate to be able to stay with my parents while our plumbing is turned off. I sincerely hope my next monthly update will bear better tidings!

On that note: in early November, I took an informal poll on Twitter about newsletter frequency. Responses varied, as responses tend to do, but the general consensus seemed to be that most people who subscribe to a Substack or other newsletter are willing to receive emails more than once a month (2 or 3 per month seemed to be the sweet spot; every week is a bit much for some) but prefer that they be on the shorter side.

My previous habit had been to write one big sum-up newsletter at the beginning of each month, which sometimes got quite lengthy, but I think a new enterprise of (for now) two shorter pieces each month may be a better option.

Personally, I subscribe to more newsletters than I can easily count (it’s probably somewhere between 20-30) and I make a rule for myself that if it’s been in my inbox for more than a month and I haven’t read it, I have to delete it. And I won’t be offended if you do the same to mine! But if I keep it short and sweet (thus the title goal of fewer than 1000 words, perhaps you’ll be more likely to read it when it pops up. And if I can make you laugh, you’re even more likely to stick around.

By the way, Twitter hasn’t imploded yet (or at least, not that I’ve heard) but I’m taking a social media break for the month of December as I observe Advent, so this is definitely a good time to work on boosting my newsletter game. And to use my turn signal.

One of the best gems from a recent pediatrician visit involved my son’s doctor telling me, in all seriousness, “of course, sometimes a good way to deal with tantrums is to try to avoid whatever is causing the behavior in the first place.” We love you, Dr. A, but we want you to know that sometimes two-year-olds are not rational creatures.

Okay! So I wrote a bit more in November than I did in October… and I got a lot of rejections, too. This was hard. I don’t like it when people tell me my writing isn’t a good fit for them. But I’m getting better at not taking it personally (i.e. not throwing myself on my bed in an agony of sobs and tears in the style of a Disney princess… or Elsie Dinsmore…) “Not a good fit for us” doesn’t necessarily mean “not a good fit for anyone, anywhere” and so onward we go.

(But I’d still like my Submittable account to inform me of a positive response soon. I NEED A WIN, SUBMITTABLE.)

From November….

Dear Fellow Narnians, Destroying Shrines to the White Witch Will Erase Our History in Jane Austen’s Wastebasket

I Took a Loss On Medium Last Month on… well, Medium! (ironically, this post and the Narnia one pushed me into the black for November. So, yay!) But it may signal the end of an era, and reinforce my decision to improve my Substack game.

I hope your December is merry and bright, and that I’ll see your inboxes again very soon! (That sounded weird…) Until the next time, I’ll leave you with a quick confession. It’s a good time of year to unburden one’s soul, isn’t it?

P.S. From the archives…

There Should Be a Secret, Sympathetic Smile for Stressed-Out Moms in I Should Write This Stuff Down (from 2021)

Your Relatives at Zoom Thanksgiving If They Were Jane Austen Characters in Jane Austen’s Wastebasket (from 2020)

P.P.S. I made it! 972 words!
(I’m very tempted to sign this one as Hector P. Valenti, Star of Stage and Screen)