March 2025

After another whirlwind of a month, that for many of us can be summed up by some version of the world-burning-Will-Ferrell meme, we've somehow made it to March!! Spring is near (in this hemisphere), the birds are chirping, and last week I got more vitamin D than I did during the past five months combined. So... still kicking 🤘🔥

But February wasn't all bad. In fact, here are some really great things (and yes, some of these technically fall into the start of March, but in my brain March started on Monday so... suck it):

• Tesla stock is down 30% for the month of February!! Woohoo!
• 145 protests took place across the country just last weekend 🇺🇦💙💛 - in both red and blue states!
• Protestors in Vermont prevented JDV from skiing on his family ski trip. Heck yeah, Vermont!
• Target has seen a decrease in foot traffic for the 4th week in a row! Let's keep it up.
• 75,000 people cancelled their subscription to the Washington Post. Your move, Bezos♟️

And on a more personal note:

After 6 years, 13 drafts, 341 query letters, and Hecate knows how many edits, 🪷Project SATC🪷 (I can't wait to share the title with you all when the time comes) is officially on submission!! For anyone who doesn't know publishing lingo (bc why would you unless you had to?), this simply means I got my final edits back to Agent Des (on Feb 14th, a little v-day present to myself 💕) and they, on my behalf, submitted their pitch to a handful of editors at a handful of publishing imprints. They'll continue to do this until someone bites... if someone bites... In other words, things are out of my hands and up to the Fates now. Send good juju, good vibes, virtual hugs, all the things!! *Insert nervous giggle* 😅

And 🥁🥁🥁 (<--- that's a drumroll, a common feature in The Weather Report) Pathfinders Writing Collective's March Madness Writing Challenge has begun!! If you wanna learn more or join in the writing fun, check out our website! It's been a real bright spot for me and a lot of writers during the general doom and gloom lately ⛅ #TeamOrange!!

Now onto the Musing of the Month...

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A couple of weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of seeing Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton... for the third time 😅. What can I say? I love theater! And *shocker* the show was fabulous! I laughed, I cried, and when the story wrapped up and the curtain fell, I felt a disquieting sense of pride in a country I have been adamantly ashamed of and embarrassed to call home for the better part of my adult life.

Needless to say, it was rather...jarring.

The performers had sung of revolution and freedom, and so I sang, and continue to sing (soundtrack's on repeat) of revolution and freedom — of the fight for freedom and the cost of freedom. And, inadvertently, was brought face to face with the fact that freedom really isn't free.

For many of us, especially here in the US (yes, we are extremely privileged), that's a hard pill to swallow. Freedom, as a birthright, is a major component of our indoctrination. We are taught that we are free, that our minds can think freely, that our bodies can exist freely, and that whatever we want to do — climb the ladder, create the next great thing — we are free to do.

But... are we truly free? Fewer and fewer ways of being, ways of thinking, and doing, and believing are permitted to exist now than just three months ago. In other words, our freedom is becoming more and more restricted. And a restricted freedom, beyond laws aimed to protect (I'm not saying we should all start driving around with unbuckled seatbelts), is a dying freedom.

Over the past several months, I've been on a hot-and-cold rollercoaster. "Fight back!" and "Lean in!" one day, then "Give up" and "Give in" the next. And I haven't miraculously disembarked (I wish), but a few times now I've glimpsed neutral. On the one hand, we must fight for our freedom (and I don't just mean here in the US — I stand wholeheartedly with Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan, etc.). On the other, we have to protect the freedoms that we do have.

As an author, not a warrior, not a politician, not an [insert position of power here], I often feel powerless in these efforts. How can I fight back? How can I protect anything? And then, when I throw up my hands and sit down to work on something for me — my book, my newsletter, my success — this wicked little vein of guilt cuts a line from head to heart and I begin to think my work and my words are worthless...

So I pull away from my work. I pull away from my community. And I shrink into the couch and doom scroll. Tear up while reading another devastating snippet of news. Wonder if I too should be shouting about women's rights on TikTok. But I don't know enough. And I don't know what else to contribute to the conversation. And so I feel powerless. And then I feel guilty. And HOLY SHIT!! I'm right back where I started.

Only now I'm not working on my book... not giving life to my characters.... not sharing my story...

I'm... silent.

It may feel like the world is knocking me down and shoving me into a corner, and maybe it is, but dammit I'm allowing it to do so. In that moment of defeat, I chose to relinquish my greatest superpower to the silencers, to the mass-manipulators. In that moment, I gave up my voice, and with it, another bit of my freedom. The very thing I am so terrified of losing.

"I wrote my way out of hell
I wrote my way to revolution...
In the face of ignorance and resistance...
I picked up a pen, [and] wrote my own deliverance"

— Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hurricane, Hamilton

We may think our stories, our words, our art, and our power to create are frivolous. When our world — literally and figuratively — is on fire, personal passion projects feel... pathetic... pointless. But *their* fight for OUR VOICES is PROOF than our voices are extremely VALUABLE.

Why else would they ban books? Censor media? Overwhelm us? And distract us? And make us feel small?

To under-educate us, to cheat us, and lie to us, and skew and narrow our perspective... To SHUT US UP.

Now is not the time for silence. On the contrary, now is the time to be ruthlessly loud. To show up, and stand up, and speak up. To write the rage-y sci-fi, to paint the scandalous mural, to tell the "wrong" love story. And it doesn't matter if you're writing monster smut, kid's comic books, or poems about springtime posies. If it allows you to keep your head up and sink your teeth into life, if it helps you give a damn about any of this, then it's worth doing. And trust me, if it lifts you up, it WILL lift someone else up as well.

I've seen Hamilton three times now. The first time I was awed, the second time I knew every line, the third time I heard every word. Listened and felt and knew that as much as Hamilton was singing about revolution, Miranda was too. A different revolution, sure, but a revolution all the same. He created something new. Something that made people feel seen, and heard, and at the same time not heard enough. And I bet someone called his endeavors silly. A musical about one of America's forgotten founding fathers... Not gonna lie, that pitch would have sent me walking the other way. But look what came of it.

There's no right way to show up for the revolution. We just have to keep showing up. Keep creating. Keep sharing. Keep uplifting. Keep writing our stories and using our voices.

And here's a little more good news to round things out: Miranda has cancelled planned performances of Hamilton at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. in response to DJT's decision to take over (further censor) the art institution last month. Power to the people, baby!

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📃Current WIP(s): 🧬Project EG - adult sapphic sci-fi/dystopian; 🪷 Project SATC - adult chem-punk sci-fi/fantasy

📈WIP status(es): 🧬Project EG - dismantling draft 2 and smooshing it back together again in hopes that it'll become a decent draft 3; 🪷 Project SATC - *screaming, crying, throwing up* YA GIRL'S ON SUB!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! All other projects are hibernating 😴

📚Current read(s): 🐱The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki; 😷Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

✨ Other: My spouse didn't get laid off amidst huge lay offs last month!! For all my non-American readers, just know the United States of Embarrassment really IS a dumpster fire right now. As such, both of us are on the hunt for remote work we can do from anywhere... 👀... if ya catch my drift 😉

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📘: In honor of Black History Month (Feb) and Women's History Month (March) may I present to you my #1 YA read of 2024 🥁🥁🥁 I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea. Spooky, riveting, whimsical, gore-y, and for my fellow ex-athletes, a glorious and sometimes horrifying reminder of how far the human form can be pushed 🩰

🎥: Thelma starring June Squibb and Richard Roundtree — a scam, a healthy dose of vengeance, and a shiny new mobility scooter 🛵

🎵: Confession session: I've listened to the Hamilton album more than eight times in-full over the last two weeks. That and Six the Musical are literally all my brain knows right now. I'll probs be alternating between those two for at least another month, I recommend you do the same, but completely understand if you opt not to 👑

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As always, if you'd like to read past newsletters, you can do so right here on my site. For those of you still wondering what other actionable things you can be doing while so much of the world is in crisis, last month's letter includes a list of ten free, easy ways you can both fight for and protect your freedom (and your peace).

Take care of yourselves. Drink water. Rest when needed. And in times of darkness and doubt, remember to lean into your communities. Your writing community. Your family community. Whatever helps you keep the fire lit.

​Happy March! Much love! And if there's something you'd ever like me to dive into (writing, querying, editing) just let me know!

XOXO,

Rain ☔

she/her