Hey dear readers,
As everyone takes cover from the Cron’s siege on the city, I thought I’d slide into your inboxes to share some pretty awesome news: I landed my first story in The New York Times Magazine.
It’s a funny essay for their Letter of Recommendation column about “the rewrap,” my family’s Christmas tradition of not-so-subtly repackaging unwanted gifts and passing them off to one another as “new”— an inside joke that has taken on a life of its own in my big, riotous Irish Catholic family.
When I started writing this, I had no idea where it would land. Over the summer, I was crashing with my best friend, Sara, trying to haul myself out of the pits of depression. For some masochistic reason, I started bingeing The Handmaid's Tale AND reading Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. Was it their darkness that offset my own? I have no clue what I was thinking but I definitely could not complete the latter.
So, I tried writing. Again, a pretty masochistic thing for me to do, as writing is generally not something I do for fun. But I was unable to write for the longest time, so it felt, in part, like an act of reclamation. To be sure, I feel high as a kite when something is PUBLISHED. But the road there is a war with my keyboard and caffeine-induced heart palpitations. For me, writing is usually an endeavor of fulfillment rather than joy (I am not a parent lol but I’ve *heard* raising kids is similar…except me I was a total joy to raise, right Mom?!).
But this essay was different. I dove into this piece with the comfort and thrill of my family’s other delicious Christmas secret: mulled wine before mass. As I called around to my relatives to collect their memories, I ended up spending hours on the phone laughing with my aunt, uncles, grandma, and mom, relishing in a tradition that I had taken for granted. Perhaps I was desperate for some happiness. Perhaps I was finding community and love when I needed it most. But after I hung up, the essay just wrote itself. Usually when I pursue a story, I have a publication or editor in mind. But here I was, just in this white, dimensionless Matrix room, free-styling and turning it into a little disco in my head. The dance floor was all mine.
I cranked out a draft in a few days, but sat on it for a while, waiting to pitch until the fall when editors would be thinking about the holidays. As I did, I got a few nice no’s— “too late” or “not quite right for us.” By early November, I was ready to toss this in the “maybe for the novel someday” folder, when finally, I got an email back from NYT Mag. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was timing. But to find a home for such a special story in one of my favorite publications in one of my favorite columns (the brainchild of one of my favorite writers, Sam Anderson), felt immensely validating, and reminded me how important it is to write for yourself.
If we aren’t totally locked down by Sunday, check it out in print on a newsstand near you. And if you happen to get rewrapped this year…welcome to the club. Nana warned me that I’m really gonna get it this year.