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These Days—

Oh, hey, hello. Welcome to my love letter, where I talk about creative life, writing life, and life in general. 

Hello! Happy 2021!

Have all our problems vanished along with 2020? Ah, it seems they have not. The memes have deceived us.

Still, despite the darkness, I'm hopeful for better things to come. And I'm hoping you are safe and healthy in this new year. ❤

The Future of this Newsletter? 

So, yes, I do recognize the melodrama of naming the first newsletter of 2021 "lost souls", but I have been doing a lot of soul searching (ha) over the past few months. And some of that reflection has to do with this newsletter, so let's start with that.

As you might have noticed, this monthly letter has not been, uhhh, exactly monthly lately, which is partly due to 2020 angst, and partly due to the increase in my writing load.

The former is terrible, but the latter is great! I'm working on my 2022 books, Jennifer Chan is Not Alone and Mihi Ever Afterboth of which I'm so excited about. On top of that, I've got secret projects that I'm working on, which I can't wait to officially announce. 

I'm so lucky to be doing all this, but unfortunately, it's meant that I haven't had as much time for this newsletter. And as much as I love writing these, they can take up a lot of time, so I've had to prioritize paid work. 

My initial solution was the obvious one: cut back. Essentially, this letter became seasonal in 2020, and until a couple days ago, I planned on keeping that schedule going forward.  

But...when I sat down to announce that, I felt a real sense of loss. When I say I love writing these, I really mean it. 

It's a way for me to step back from the myopia of working on a single book and view creativity with a wider lens. It's also a way to connect in a way that feels far deeper and less anxiety-inducing than social media. And I missed that in 2020. 

So here's where I've landed: 

  1. I'll be recommitting to monthly letters this year, but I might have to miss a few months, so I'm letting you know in advance. (Literally nobody has been unkind about this in 2020. It's just a totally irrational fear of mine!)
  2. There will be months where I don't have time to write full essays, but I still want to send out something useful or interesting, so on those months, I'll be sending book recommendations, doing giveaways, and, hopefully, answering some of your questions. 


So, I'm asking for your creative help! Please respond to this email (and future emails!) with questions you might have about my writing process, my books, and/or my thoughts on creative life. When my workload gets heavy, I will answer some of those in a casual Q&A email. 

Does that sound okay? Do you have thoughts or requests for what you'd like to see? Let me know. 

Lost Souls, and such 

I’ve been thinking about the nature of art and soul, lately—partially because I’ve been thinking a lot about the movie Soul, thanks to one of those secret projects*, and partially because I’ve been thinking about what I want my relationship with writing to look like in 2021.
 
I have a lot of thoughts about Pixar’s Soul, as per usual, but the thing I keep coming back to is how beautifully they conceptualized the difference—and the fine line--between being “in the zone” and being “lost.”
 
In the movie, when people get truly involved in their art, they leave the physical world and enter the soul realm, a place where creation really is magical, a place beyond our human understanding. 

But, as the movie also points out, when people become too wrapped up in their art, they no longer experience it as radiant joy and transcendence. They become obsessed, and their souls become lost--they are no longer able to see anything else around them, and they cannot return to the real world. 

This concept  is so gorgeously conveyed, not to mention complimented by such  stunning visuals, that I felt like it must be true. Pixar had defined, de facto, the relationship between art and soul.

Only, the more I thought about it, the less it rang true in my own life. Which…started to concern me.

A more well-adjusted person may have brushed this off, like, oh, well, this animated movie certainly won’t shake my sense of self.

But I, of course, went, oh my god, am I doing writing wrong???

This isn’t the first time I’ve run up against the question. “The zone” that Pixar depicts seems to be based on the idea of “flow.”

To put it (over)simply, "flow" was defined in its modern form by a psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and it refers to a state of hyperfocus, where everything else fades away and time seems to speed by. 

Which sounds highly appealing, like you can just auto-art your way into a masterpiece.

Of course, I know it's not that simple, and I’ve experienced it a few times, usually while drawing. (For what it’s worth, I’ve also experienced the negative "lost soul" side of it before, too, in other aspects of my life.)

But I’ve never felt flow while writing.

For years now, I’ve aspired to that state, as if that would make me a true arteest, as if there was an exclusive level of Real Writer that was, always, just out of reach.

And Soul plays into this idea, presenting a kind of creativity exists somewhere outside of reality. It is separate, or even, somehow, elevated from the physical world.

In the movie, the zone is the place where true art happens. When people leave the zone, when their souls return to the physical world, they fumble. An actor forgets a line. A basketball player misses a shot. A tattoo artist draws outside the lines. They can no longer create in the same way.


The thing that makes this metaphor so beautiful is that the zone and the lost souls really are two sides of the same coin. Both require that you leave the physical world behind, that your soul leaves your body—and that danger, the fine line between transcendence and loss, is the price you must pay for art.

This is a pervasive idea in our culture—that creation is both magical and dangerous, that truly great art (whatever that means) always comes with the threat of consuming, or even destroying, the artist.

But the problem with this metaphor, like most metaphors, is that it’s limiting.

I don't believe this is the only narrative, and don't want to fall into the trap of thinking it is.


In truth, writing, to me, has always felt very physical. It is slow, laying a foundation word by word. And that pace forces me to breathe. It asks me to pay attention to my surroundings in a way few things do.

My favorite writing exercise, the one that makes my soul feel alive and inside my body, is sitting outside with a notebook and just…watching. 

The best part about writing, for me, is noting the way two teenagers walk together, so slowly, like they aren't ready to go home. It is watching the way one of them laughs as she grabs a lamppost and hangs from it like there are no bones in her body. Like if she let go, she’d just collapse.

It is seeing the way a young woman sits by the river and feeds pieces of her hot dog to a family of ducks as she tries not to cry.

It is observing the grass, and the trees, and the street-strewn soda cans, and all the people passing by, without projecting my own emotions or memories. It is realizing that every person, even every thing, has their own full, rich story that I will never know—and marveling at just how much infinite life exists in one single person.

That’s beautiful too, in a different way—how writing and art and observation can take us out of our own personal zone and connect us to everyone else. 

Maybe, at its very best, art helps us connect with the world, rather than transcend it.
 

Of course, none of this is to say that experiencing the flow state is wrong. It’s an incredible thing, and I feel lucky that I’ve found it through other mediums.

But there are so many other ways to think about art.

Art is cerebral. It is spiritual. It is other-worldly and out-of-this-worldly.

It is, also, physical. And grounded. And slow. And painstaking in a way that’s delightful, because you can feel every second of it. It’s just…human, I guess, with all the messiness that goes with that.

This year, I’m done trying to experience my writing the way someone else might. I’m happy with my process. And I am happiest when I am here, grounded in my body, in my soul, in this world, experiencing it with all its good and bad, trying to connect.

I hope you’re happy with your process, too—in art, in life, all of it. I’m wishing you strength and hope and connection in the new year.

❤,
Tae
 
 

*and I will talk more about this side project next month!**
**(no, it doesn’t have to do with writing Pixar IP, though hey, if anyone at Disney happens to be reading this, I’m open!***)
***witness me, starting 2021 with shoot-your-shot energy.

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Some stories refuse to stay bottled up…

When Lily and her family move in with her sick grandmother, a magical tiger straight out of her halmoni’s Korean folktales arrives, prompting Lily to unravel a secret family history. Long, long ago, Halmoni stole something from the tigers. Now, the tigers want it back. And when one of those tigers approaches Lily with a deal—return what Halmoni stole in exchange for Halmoni's health—Lily is tempted to accept. But deals with tigers are never what they seem! With the help of her sister and her new friend Ricky, Lily must find her voice… and the courage to face a tiger.
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TAE KELLER grew up in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she subsisted on stories, spam musubi, and purple rice. After stints in Philadelphia and New York City, she now lives in Seattle with her husband, Josh, and a multitude of books. 
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Copyright © 2021 Tae Keller, All rights reserved.


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