May 2025

The April to May transition always always catches me by surprise. For one, I'm of the rare variety of humanoids who visualize the year in thirds, rather than quarters. I think this is a result of always having lived in places where seasonal transitions mean little to nothing. There's the cold-but-getting-lighter third, the warm-to-hot-then-sorta-not third, and of course, the Hocus Pocus third—stop looking at me like that, I don't make the rules—and switching from one to the next always feels like a jolt. There's expectation, and sometimes disappointment (lookin' at you, United States of Embarrassment), and oftentimes fear braided into hope. What does the next third have in store for me? For us?

Secondly, the First 1/3 to Second 1/3 Shift is a BIGGIE because it captures two significant dates for me. On April 23rd, 2022 I started my @Write_as_Rain_Sullivan Instagram account. Really, Instagram? That's your significant date? Honestly, yeah, it is. Making my account was my soft "coming out" as a writer. Prior to Write_as_Rain, I'd only told a handful of friends that I quote, "liked to write," and had spent three years fumbling from draft to draft of my super secret dream project that nobody, except my spouse, was allowed to read.

Write_as_Rain forced me out of my comfort zone. It connected me with other writers. It pushed me into the short story writing and submitting game. It's where I found my critique partners and my 2.5-years-and-counting writing group. It's where I learned about querying and writing challenges. It's how I gained the courage to start a new book, and then another new book, and then another new book, and then dust off the first one and rewrite it twice so it was query-ready. Write_as_Rain has allowed me to give back to the incredible community that has offered me so much love, joy, and confidence over the years. Write_as_Rain is probably how you found this newsletter...

So, yeah, it's significant, because in a weird and totally unexpected way, Write_as_Rain has changed my life.

The other date, also life-changing—in that there was none, and then bada bing bada boom! there was—National Star Wars Day! Jokes. Jokes. I mean, yes, May 4th is National Star Wars Day, but more importantly, depending on who you ask, it's my birthday!

​Yep, your girl is just about to finish another lap around the sun! And I am so so so ready for it! The big 31!

Gosh, it's funny to think about how freaked I was to turn 30 last year, and then it ended up being this huge relief and (current world crises aside) a pretty bangin' year. For all my readers still in their twenties, let me tell ya, 30's >>> 20's. Trust me. You're all out of shits to give and finally free to just...BE YOU! Do YOU! Dream big! Take chances! That bag of unsung criticisms and probably primarily perceived judgements I'd been lugging around since, I don't know, thirteen finally slipped off my back and sank into a vat of molten lava. Just, poof, sizzle, gone.

🤔 NGL, kinda curious to know how much more unhinged I'll be by 40...

I already know by 60 I'll be walking my 7 cats down the street with a giant pain au chocolat hanging out of my mouth, so sheathed in ink and 0-shits energy the children will gasp and point from a distance. Damn, it'll be glorious! 😍 Anyhoooooo....y'all ready for another musing of the month???

You know that hair-pulling, eye-melting, brain-oozing feeling you get when you've worked a problem to death—be it mathematical, hypothetical, authorial, familial 👀, or otherwise—then even after all that time, energy, and effort you still feel kinda meh about the whole thing? Well, editing is essentially 300+ pages of *that* feeling.

Yes, there are moments of pure ah-ha! I'm a genius! joy...but then three pages later you gotta tease apart, or sometimes unravel, or sometimes ruin that joy because the plot decides it's done plotting, or a character lost their potion kit five chapters ago and would really really benefit from it now, or a line on page 78 sounds too much like a line on page 52 and well, that just won't work...

But after repeating this process over, and over, and over, and steadily hacking your way through an old draft, you end up with a new draft. And...it's better. Oh my god, it's sooooo much better. But....it's not...well, it's a little thick, and a little clunky in spots, and tbh, Chapter 25 is a real piece of work, and, and, and....

You look at your reflection in the screen that's gone black. You're hair's a mess and your eyes and your brain are essentially puddles on the desk beside your keyboard, and so, with a deep inhale followed by a rumbling sigh of relief, you send it off to your knight in shining armor, your one, your only (until next time) beta reader.

And yeah, it's a little scary, and holy forking shirt balls, maybe the book sucks? Or maybe you suck? Who knows? It doesn't matter. It's out of your hands. You're free to breathe, to draft another day, knowing that icky, sticky problem is somebody else's...at least for a little while.

Well, friends, yesterday was my Send It Off Day. Draft 3 of Project EG is sitting snuggly in someone else's inbox and, holy smokes, I feel world's lighter. Freaked, obviously. But lighter 🙂🙃🙂🙃🙂🙃

The editing process, the act of reshaping your story, refining it, re-attempting, and reimagining it, is a curious thing. Our stories don't simply exist as their final product, they're a culmination of attempts, a hodgepodge of sometimes ten, twenty, thirty or more iterations. But that's what makes the final product so worthy of our readers' time and attention. It's not a first attempt, or a second, or a third, it's commitment, and determination, hair pulling, and having the guts to try, try, try again.

It's not something we often think about when reading a novel or perusing the aisles of our favorite bookstore. We see all the gloriousness of a thousand finished products and simply select what peaks our interest, what catches our eye, what makes us smile, smirk, or stop and think. But a couple years ago, while on a trip to visit my uncle in NYC, my partner and I went to the Museum of Modern Art specifically to see the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit (I love her) and I had a sort of fusing of the minds moment.

Alongside some of O'Keeffe's most famous pieces were walls upon walls of drafts. Twenty-five mondo sheets of canvas paper featuring the same circle-squiggle-blob combo. Here in pastel hues, there in ruddier shades. This one with an extra splash of sunshine, that one...at night perhaps?

And sometimes the evolution is clear as day, A leads to B, B leads to C, and so on and so forth until Sky Above Clouds IV spans the wall opposite you and takes your breath away.

Sky Above Clouds IV by Georgia O'Keeffe

Being that I am not a visual/fine artist, I tend to simply be wowed by my favorite pieces. O'Keeffe's point of view is so unique, her use of soft and bold colors is invigorating, and, I don't know why, but I feel like, juuuust maybe, I can fly???

Oftentimes, when only seeing final products (like we do at the bookstore, like we do at most museums), I forget that what lies before me isn't the result of yesterday's great idea. It's the culmination of trial and error, effort and inspiration, love and loss. Sometimes beautiful sketches don't become masterpieces. Other times they warp and transform into something entirely other from their starting form. And, on rare occasion, something that looked like nothing, a circle-squiggle-blob combo, becomes something great.

To See Takes Time by Georgia O'Keeffe

Whenever I catch myself thinking 'this draft is too messy' or 'I'm writing this all wrong,' I try to remember this wall of variations at the MOMA. Which version is best? Which version makes you think 'yes, that one'?

Does that mean the other versions shouldn't exist? What if the only way to get that one is to experience those to the left and right of it? What if that one is your favorite because the artist was brave enough to let the others exist?

That's what editing is, that's what being a writer is—being brave enough to let all the versions exist. It can be so tricky to have something you love, that you know is good and worthwhile, and yet...may require another iteration. There's always this fear that if you change something you can't change it back or that it will ruin everything. But it won't, and you can change it back, or maybe you'll change it forward, try something different all together. There's no limit on how many ways a story can exist beside those put in place by the author. But every version, every painstaking attempt, every ah-ha! moment will get you that much closer to that one, the masterpiece, the glorious finished product.

So keep drafting, keep editing, keep trying. And when you create your favorite version, make sure to give those past drafts, those past days, and bouts of effort, their spot on the wall.

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💻Current WIP(s): 🧬Project EG - adult sapphic sci-fi/dystopian; 💀Short Story DD - dark fantasy/thriller thing. ⁉️ - something new???

📈WIP status(es): 🧬 = shipped to my fabulous beta reader!! 💀 = done and submitted to a mag (but should probs buck up and find a few other places to submit to, sigh, submitting is soooooo boring). ⁉️ - I'm doing a fair bit of beta reading myself this month and have two short stories I need to work on (one needs a total rewrite, the other simply needs to exist lol). I may for fun try to sneak is some SATC Book 2 brainstorming 😍🪷 (SATC is the book currently sitting with Agent Des in the submission trenches, wish my book baby ✨luck✨)

📚Current read(s): 🧜‍♀️ The Girl From the Sea by Molly Knox Ostertag & 💀 Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, a buddy-re-re-re-re-read with my partner that's taking foreverrrrrrrrr.

✨ Other: I'm headed to Portland this weekend for my b-day to see friends and fam, probably protest (bc can't stop, won't stop), and peruse Powell's City of Books (no joke, it's massive)!!

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📘: These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs — a sassy, ruthless space opera with a very satisfying reveal 👀

🎥: Bob Trevino Likes It starring Barbie Ferreira and John Leguizamo — 1. get ready to feel ALL the feels, 2. have tissues on hand, 3. know that my movie recs are LITERALLY a 10/10 across the board. I'm not trying to toot my own flute, but I went back and looked at my past movie recs and your girl does 👏 not 👏 miss 👏

📺: The Four Seasons — a star-studded Netflix limited series that hooked me like that 🫰

🎵: Nova Twins — an English rock/punk duo that is essentially everything my Spice-Girls-loving heart ✌️🇬🇧 and Dark-Mystery-Tragedy-seeking brain 🤘😈 could ever want. Needless to say, I've make up a large percentage of their Spotify listens this past month.

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As always, if you'd like to read past newsletters, you can do so on my website.

Take care! ​Happy May! 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