Make it Weird, Take Leaps

Mermen, Heathers, and Big Swings: My Weird, Leaping Glimmers for July

Happy blur day, my friends.

I don’t know what day it is, only that July is almost over and this summer has felt both so long and so short. What’s been going on with you?

My forthcoming novel, Doll Parts, is on Goodreads (please add it to your “to read” shelf and keep an eye out for updates).

I just finished the second round of edits and I’m pretty excited about how the book is looking, though I’m told I’ll eventually read it so many times that I start to hate it. But that hasn’t happened yet.

A few other updates:

• I had a really inspiring conversation with Julia F. Green, Ralph Walker, and Caroline Manring earlier this summer about mosh pits, messy soup, and Jupiter. Check it out on the Writing in the Dark podcast.

• I wrote about the books I can’t wait to read next (a wishful-reading list—what’s on your TBR?)

• I’m leading an in-person prose intensive with WriteShare in Greenville, South Carolina this fall. If you know any writers in the area, tell them to apply soon!

I’ve been sharing glimmers for a few months now (and collecting them longer than I can remember) based on part of author Pam Houston’s writing process. For me, the idea feels a little like a friendly hug between Big Magic and The Book of Delights, both of them swathed in a sparkly cloak.

To hear Lindsey DeLoach Jones of Between Two Things mention glimmers at a recent generative writing session (through WriteShare’s Summer Camp) was a mini-revelation, reminding me of the importance of paying attention. As Mary Oliver says, “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”

The idea of “glimmers” can suggest that we’re only paying attention to the beautiful, shiny things, but Lindsey took it a few steps further by referencing Jeannine Ouellette’s “shimmers and shards.”

To quote Ouellette: “Shimmers and shards are simply a collection of ‘sticky things’ you notice and describe briefly in succinct concrete detail.”

All to say, this is my way of agreeing—and reminding myself—that paying attention doesn’t have to be about the pretty and the sparkly. There’s room for the dark, the brilliant, the angry, the complicated, and the confusing. The sad and the weird.

And ever since Lindsey told us in that writing session to “make it weird, take leaps,” I have been on the lookout for the weird, leaping things.

Not that I have to look very far. My eye is trained.

Weird, as in perfect. Leaping, as in this thing that makes my mind leap forward in lovely, strange ways.

Each glimmer and each leap is a new writing prompt. There are so many stories I could tell. Let me share just two.

Glimmer 1

A wall of merman

The glimmer: a wall of mermen, especially this dedicated medical professional. (I’ve seen the merman ornaments before, but this month, they are making it into my Glimmer File.)

The leaps: Well, I am married to a nurse. I could start there. There’s also the blurry knowledge of these mermen ornaments as a “cult classic.”

Instead, my mind leaps to The Pisces by Melissa Broder, a book about the relationship between a woman and a merman. It’s a book I adore, but that I know isn’t for everyone. Though I would be happy to recommend it generally to everyone, I have only personally recommended it to two readers because I just knew they wouldn’t throw it across the room and immediately judge me/text me “WTF.”

There is an art to book recommendations, I firmly believe.

And then I took a far-back leap to the song “Merman” by Tori Amos, which I was so lucky to see her perform in concert maybe 25 years ago. I think a lot about the connective tissue around music and memory, as you’ll see in the lead-up to Doll Parts.

And, of course, this song makes me think about my friend Sarah. How many times did we listen to “Merman”? An impossible number to guess.

As I wrote a while back, “the saddest songs are the ones she loved.” But really, the saddest are the ones we loved together.

Glimmer 2

Screenshot from actress Lisanne Falk’s Instagram account

The glimmer: Heathers, one of my favorite movies of all time. And Shannen Doherty. And friendship. And the ways we memorialize and pay tribute.

The leaps: Two days before Shannen Doherty died, I re-watched Heathers. In the midst of editing, I took breaks at night to re-watch favorite movies, when my brain was too tired to take in anything new. They were all movies of a certain flavor that felt relevant to my writing/editing vibes.

Jennifer’s Body. The Craft. Jawbreaker. And Heathers.

Which makes me think about Kate McKean’s recent Substack about art that “takes a big swing”—something very much on my mind while editing Doll Parts. Am I taking a big enough swing? Am I taking it too far?

The above movies fit into that category, for me, at least. A few books that take a big swing: Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, Bunny by Mona Awad, Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson. The Pisces, as mentioned above, definitely fits into this category. They aren’t quiet books. They are “weird” in the most wonderful ways.

But one other leap: Lisanne Falk, the actress who played Heather McNamara in Heathers, posted about Shannen Doherty’s death via Instagram. They were not close and Falk’s statement feels conflicted and generous all at once.

Falk writes, “It’s been an honor to occupy our own little patch of the zeitgeist, together as one, out here on the fringe, where all the cool kids hang, a cult classic.”

She is the last remaining Heather. Oof.

And also: this tweet about the friendship between Doherty and Sarah Michelle Geller nearly wrecked me:

I’ve been grappling with this kind of friendship loss since the creation of Mourning Pages. It is the black heart at the center of Doll Parts. And I can’t wait for you to read it.

I don’t know yet what I’ll do with all of these glimmers and leaps. I’ve got a lot to work with: friendship, music, cult classics, public tributes, and big swings.

If you are in a similar place, either between projects or about to burst with all of the images you’ve been collecting and storing up, maybe today is the day to find the connections and start putting your glimmers (and your shards) side by side.

It doesn’t have to make sense or feel logical, not at first or ever. Embrace the fragment. Break something and put it back together.

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Thank you, as always, for being here!

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Always paying attention,

Penny