Letting the Nostalgia Have Its Way with Me

Querying my novel and summer slowness

The title of this week’s post is taken from a meme I posted in one of Write or Die mag’s Friday mood boards. It’s funny, yes, but the phrase has been coming to mind a lot lately now that it's finally full-on summer here in New England. And also maybe because we just dropped into Cancer season (my sun sign). 

Nostalgia hits hard for me most summers because there are so many seasonal things to think of fondly:

Being a child on the beach, swimming until my fingers pruned or until my mother called me out of the water to drape me in a giant cotton t-shirt against the sun. The hermit crabs and sand dollars my cousins and I found. That time the tide came in so fast that it stranded us on the sand bar, and my mother and aunt had to swim to get us, how we held onto their limbs as they dragged us ashore. 

Eating ice cream cones on the stone wall across from Gellars, dangling our tanned legs, and watching the traffic leave town. 

The year when I first got a car and my sister and I drove around the waterfront for hours, shuffling the songs on my iPod. 

Peaches and nectarines and plums and cherries. 

Bright early mornings, lazy evenings making dinner in bare feet while the breeze cools the stuffy kitchen. 

That post beach, after shower delirium. 

Concerts with my husband, both of us desperate each year to sweat in a crowd of bodies and scream our lungs out. 

This past week, during the summer solstice, my sister and I were reminded of one of our favorite girlhood movies, Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain, starring Christina Ricci and Anna Chlumsky. On the longest day of the year, Beth and Jody search for Molly Morgan, a woman who, years before them, discovered gold and supposedly hid the treasure somewhere on the nearby mountain. The film follows their unlikely friendship and adventure in the way only a 90’s movie can—all strong, fearless girls and dangerous stepdads and bike rides through the woods; a boring summer turned wild.

My sister and I are leaving for a hiking trip in New Hampshire next week, and we had the brilliant idea of re-watching the film while we were away in the wilderness. 

my girls

We have always shared this type of nostalgia. The kind that also encouraged us to create a special playlist for the drive, one that solely consists of the 90’s country music we grew up listening to. Dixie Chicks, Tim Mcgraw, Brookes & Dunn. Music that takes us back to when our family was still together, and our parents sat on the front porch with glasses of wine as we played in the grass to the throaty vocals of Toby Keith, our mother harmonizing along. We always claimed we hated country, but now, as adults, LeAnn Rimes and Shania Twain are our summer music. 

Swept up in these feelings lately, it's been very hard to be online. I get my work done and get out. I haven’t been reading as many newsletters, instead reaching for the novels stacked on my end table. Even in my reading, I’ve been craving the not-so-modern—I want backlists and debuts and novels published in the same era I keep going back to with my music and movie selections. 

The nostalgia is absolutely having its way with me. 

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I just sent out my first batch of query letters. Ten agents received my letter and the first few chapters of my novel so far. It was thrilling to finally put this book out into the world like that, a moment that took me 3.5 years to achieve finally. I have no idea what to expect. I don’t know if I’m doing this “right.” Tamar and I logged onto Zoom, and hit send to our first agent at the same time. We wanted the moment to be ceremonial. This is where our togetherness ends. After all this time, literally on the same page with writing our novels, we now have no control over what happens next. We can’t create deadlines anymore or make any plans at all. In a way, it's a relief, given how hard I’ve worked on this manuscript in the last few months. Almost all of my free time went to revisions, and now it's “done.” I feel a bit wobbly without the project to fuss with. But the slowness of summer is finally here, and in that way, it feels like perfect timing. 

I plan to start working on my second novel in a few weeks. Some research and daydreaming and note taking and then some drafting. I think I might revise a short story I had out on submission. It's quite long, and after a year away from it, I think I know how to trim it down and have a better chance of getting it published. I plan to read a lot of books about sisters. (If you have favorites, PLEASE let me know!) I like all this upcoming looseness after so much regimented writing time this year. 

I can’t wait for my little getaway in the woods. To think about a new project. To slow down where I can. To eat a lot of stone fruit over the kitchen sink and contemplate the past.

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