🧵Thursday Thread: What's something quirky, unusual, or even strange about yourself?

Einstein says, "strange is our situation here upon earth." If we're lucky, our writing will be strange, too. It's the peculiarities that bring it to life. So let's share what's weird about ourselves!

Hi, beautiful friends. I am so grateful for all of you and this community! If you are new here (big thanks to Sarah Fay of Writers at Work for spotlighting my work in her new Substack Visionary Series!), welcome!

So glad you’re here.

You can introduce yourself on our Welcome Thread if you like—it’s a great way to start getting to know what we do here. And this, today’s post, is one of our epic Thursday Threads, which become incredible conversations about all aspects of our lives, including, recently, camp memories—the great, the bad, and terrible.

Today, we’re talking about what’s weirdest about us! Because, learning to notice and depict the strangeness of ordinary life is a skill that will make our writing better and better (and infinitely more real). Learning to see the strange in the ordinary (because, aren’t we all ordinary in the end?) teaches us to do what Rona Maynard described recently: “use an old instrument in a new way.”

Before we jump into the weirdness, a note:

I’m teaching my first live workshop (on Zoom) since last fall—”The Feeling of What Happens,” unpacking what it really takes—concrete strategies—to write in a way that makes readers feel something. Because when readers feel something, they’ll remember and want to read more. This generative workshop is for all levels, all genres. Founding/paid WITDers receive discount codes (10% & 15% respectively) via email tomorrow morning, when registration opens (upgrade here now if you want to). Finally, this hardworking intensive is a perfect opportunity to see what you think about studying with me live and synchronous … because the live, synchronous version of WITD will finally resume this September, in six-session segments!

Now, for today’s convo, what’s something truly quirky or unique about you that most people don't know? These can be funny, serious, silly, sad, surprising, anything! Share it with us—and if you want, you can even share it in the form of a tiny story.

I’ll go first. One of my quirks (I have so many) is that I hide. I don’t mean, like, I hide my feelings or hide my intentions. I mean, I hide. There are many ways of hiding.

Once, when my three children were still preschoolers, their father and I moved house from one town to another, and it was terribly hot—that bready kind of heat that coats your skin, sticks in your throat—and the cat, her name was Baby Girl, was freaking out and peeing everywhere, and Billie Oh, who was two then, was still nursing a lot, enough that my periods hadn’t started back up yet. My children’s father and I were still too broke and stupid to have hired movers—despite the aforementioned three children and the wild tiny cat and the fact that we had lived in our previous house for seven years and accumulated ten lifetimes worth of junk—and our helpers, namely my ornery father-in-law, was also sweaty and miserable and resentful, and my then-husband wasn’t handling it very well, because few people handle tantruming fathers very well, so eventually, on yet another trip down into the new basement, where the air was slightly cooler but still thick and now, also, sharp with the scent of cat urine, I noticed the water heater in the corner, tall and cylindrical and smooth as glass and I crawled behind it and knelt on the concrete floor and held myself as still as I could, just listening as my name floated again and again through the floorboards above me.

To note, this trait of hiding is showing up in one of the important characters in my novel. Because strange is good.

Now, your turn!

Love,

Jeannine

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