a minute from home but I feel so far from it

the usual life/writing updates and a happy 162nd birthday to my Mountain Mama

Hello Substack friends,

It’s been a while.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, actually.

On one hand, I haven’t felt compelled to write a thing on Substack. I have gotten more invested in reading other people’s work than ever before, and somehow that has paradoxically shut me up. The critique of Materialists that was brewing in my mind? Already written. Certainly any thoughts I might have on Sabrina Carpenter’s upcoming album have been exhausted to the moon and back. Even this piece will be self-referential, pulling from something else I wrote on West Virginia Day in 2023.

In my other preferred avenue of writing–fiction–I have also been frozen. I finished a first draft of my National Novel Writing Month project (although it took six months rather than the intended one) and decided to share the unpolished, unedited manuscript with some friends who had been by my side as I wrote it, mostly due to the fact that I was unsure if I would ever accomplish the feat of finishing a draft again, much less take this draft any further.

After a month or maybe two–time is passing at a strange pace for me recently–I have decided that I would like to at least try my hand at writing a second draft. I miss writing. I miss my characters, silly as that might sound, and now that I (a writer who flies by the seat of her pants) actually know how their story ends, I can write it again, and actually try to do it justice. Draft One’s only purpose was to exist; Draft Two’s purpose is to become something I can be proud of.

I sometimes like to feign confidence and self-assuredness, but the truth is that I have what is probably a negative amount of both. More than that, I hate to be seen vulnerable, to make mistakes, or worst of all, to be seen as inept. This sense of “don’t look at me! don’t watch me try! I need to be effortlessly cool and funny and good at things, and if I am not, then it just confirms all of the worst thoughts I already have about myself” has been explored in therapy sessions for almost ten years now. I’m better than I was!

But still not good.

All of this is to say that sharing some fiction beyond my Inner Circle (a friend who I have trusted with my innermost thoughts since 2012 and a friend who is so dear to me that she literally officiated my wedding) was . . . very scary. Brutal, in fact. The payout for vulnerability, however, was experiencing the warmth of people actually liking it.

I am grateful to everyone who has supported me in any way, but this exchange between two of my writer friends (confusingly named Jennifer and Jen) hasn’t left my mind since it happened.

Not only did people like the story . . . people wanted to talk to each other about liking the story. This is the most I could have ever dreamed of, and quite honestly I do not have to go any further to have achieved my dreams of 1. Finishing something, and 2. Having that something mean something to someone.

But now . . . I think I might want more.

I saw Halsey in concert this past weekend, and it was more than anything a gift to my teenage self who spent entirely too much time on Tumblr. I also had the privilege of going with a friend of 15+ years, who was also obsessed with Badlands when it first came out.

This friend is a singer, and when we were stuck in traffic trying to leave the venue (Star Lake Pavilion, I will always hate you), she was quiet, contemplative.

“Alexa,” she said. “Do you think I could ever perform in front of people like that?”

“I do,” I replied, and I meant it.

I told my friend that I had experienced a similar sense of wistfulness while at the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books at the end of May (banger event, by the way–I am dragging all of my bibliophile friends there with me next year). There were free author talks at Carnegie Library all day, and while sitting in an auditorium of romantasy lovers listening to four authors discuss their inspirations, writing processes, and querying tips (I have learned that if I do ever decide to pursue traditional publication, I will need to develop much thicker skin), I thought to myself, “Maybe . . . maybe someday I can do something like this.”

Romantasy–a fusion of romance and fantasy, if you didn’t gather that–has been the hot genre of the 2020s. I wouldn’t say that my draft meets many of the conventions of the genre–it is, more than anything, about a woman’s journey from voicelessness to autonomy and self-determination, heavily influenced by my mental state in November 2024–but there is certainly fantasy, and there is certainly romance.

Characters come naturally to me. They are like little invisible friends who live inside my head and demand to be written into existence. Hopefully that does not sound too crazy. Worldbuilding comes to me more slowly. While hurrying through my first draft, I tried not to get too bogged down by the setting. Now, I am having a nice time going back to flesh out the different regions of my world–their history, culture, religion, and customs, many of which I was just starting to figure out as I completed my first draft. It is a joy of its own.

I’ll admit it–writing romance is hard. I love reading romance novels and watching romance movies, and I have been in love for almost eight years, but making that play out between two characters on a page has been challenging. I think that part of the problem is that love has been so kind to me–at least since 2017. Before Ian, I had awful taste in men, but from the time that I met Ian, became friends, and then started dating him about three months later, life has felt like Taylor Swift’s “Daylight”:

I don’t wanna look at anything else now that I saw you

I don’t wanna look at anything else now that I thought of you

I’ve been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night

And now I see daylight, I only see daylight

And that’s nearly enough of being a sap for now. We face our challenges, as any two people do, but ultimately Ian is the greatest gift I have ever been given, and loving him is as easy as breathing.

(I know, I am gagging at myself.)

In the romance genre, and in all of its various off-shoots, conflict is introduced to the plot when two characters are in love but cannot be together. I remember watching Anakin and Padmé’s forbidden love play out in Attack of the Clones when I was five years old. I was awestruck. My brain would never be the same.

Side note: both of these outfits also left a permanent mark on my psyche, but that’s a topic for another day.

I also remember absolutely losing my mind while reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion, when after eight years of separation and coldness, Captain Wentworth says this to Anne in a letter:

Jane’s quill was ON FIRE when she wrote that, and if you are one of my close friends who has read my draft, you might notice that I drew some inspiration from this 1817 text.

After taking some time away from my manuscript–letting it rest, so to speak–I have realized that perhaps an issue in the romance plotline is that the love interest does not really get a character arc of his own. He is a fleshed out character, with personality traits and dreams for the future, but he does not really change throughout the story, and some change is necessary to make a story work and a character compelling. I recently read The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks and now have some ideas brewing for the rewrite, but I will keep those ideas to myself for now.

While writing romance is hard for me, writing complex family dynamics is my bread and butter. I love writing about siblings who are each other’s fiercest adversaries. I love writing about siblings who feel like two halves of the same soul. I love writing about families of choice, in which blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb. I love writing parent-child dynamics as complicated as a bundle of electronic cords you would need to spend hours untangling.

“I love her, and I hate her, and I sometimes feel like I am her,” is a non-spoiler line about a familial relationship in the story I have been working on.

Don’t worry, Mom; if you are reading this, this line is not about you. However, as I sit and write this on West Virginia Day, I wonder if I can say the same about my Mountain Mama.

One interesting dynamic I see in families–often, siblings in particular–is this pervasive idea of “I can be mean to you, but no one else can.” My older niece (four), for example, often pushes her younger sister (two) during playtime. However, when another child on a playground allegedly pushed the younger sister (we are not entirely sure what actually went down), the older sister nearly chased the other child off the playground, insisting, “You apologize to my sister!”

I feel like this occurrence is an excellent metaphor for my relationship with my home state, West Virginia. I can point out her many flaws, but when someone who has no idea what life is like here tries to do the same, I want to start swinging.

Here is the part where I get self-referential because I do not want to rewrite everything I wrote on West Virginia Day in 2023; I only want to write what thoughts I have developed and pondered since. From that piece:

While West Virginia is thought to be “almost heaven” to some, its reputation can be much less savory to others. I would venture to guess that everyone has heard some variation of the stereotypes about my state–that we are all dirty, uneducated, backwards in belief. I think that some of these stereotypes stem from people pathologizing poverty, or viewing it as a moral failure. Yes, my state is poor, but this is not because it chooses to be. It is poor because of geographic isolation, lack of jobs, poor allocation of funds for jobs and education, and generations of exploitation and resource removal by outsiders.

While we are talking about culture, it feels like an appropriate time for a history lesson for any out-of-state readers. Today, June 20, is West Virginia Day, the 160th anniversary of the day that we separated from Virginia to join the Union during the Civil War. It is alarming how many people do not know that we left the confederacy–second only to how alarming it is that in the year 2023 so many people don’t even know that West Virginia is a state! While West Virginia is currently a conservative stronghold–in the 2020 presidential election, all 55 counties were red–its history is far more progressive than many realize. Integral to West Virginia history are the Coal Wars, a time of conflict between coal miners and coal companies over the exploitation of workers. If you don’t know anything about the Coal Wars, I highly, highly recommend checking out this article from the Smithsonian, which talks about how the Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest labor uprising in American history and how it impacts the struggle for workers’ rights today. West Virginia’s strong history with workers’ rights movements is not even entirely in the past; five short years ago, a West Virginia teachers’ strike brought attention to poor funding for rural schools and criminally low pay/poor benefits for teachers and launched a nationwide movement.

The Coal Wars are a topic I could talk about for hours on end and one of the things that makes me proudest to be a West Virginian. As I watch the protests unfold in Los Angeles and the National Guard be called in, I think to myself that Appalachians know a thing or two about having forces deployed against them for righteous disobedience. In that, it makes me extraordinarily depressed to see people from my area siding with authoritarianism. Do we not remember our own history? It is much the same as seeing the Confederate flag in a state that was born to not be part of the Confederacy.

Another reflection in my 2023 West Virginia Day piece that has only grown stronger in the two years since:

The pain that comes from existing in a place that you love but that you feel does not love you back–or hearing people say that they love you but vote against your best interests–is difficult to express, but things are not all bad. I want to make that exceedingly clear; things are not all bad.

As in the line from my draft: I love you. I hate you. I am you.

I think that I grow so defensive of West Virginia because 1. It is literally in my blood–my family has been here for as many generations as any of us can remember, and 2. People from outside seem to see only the bad and none of the good, only the hate and none of the love.

My county had a terrible flash flood last weekend that left homes destroyed and lives lost. After watching a video about the flooding recently, I came across the following lovely comment:

My fingers hovered over the keys on my phone while my blood pressure spiked, as I considered typing out a response. You know nothing about these people or their lives. Shame on you. I soon realized that, if a person’s first reaction to a video about seven people (including a three-year-old) dying is that, they are not worth engaging with.

(They also misspelled pieces.)

There was another nasty comment that someone did reply to that I wanted to share:

Slay, grackswantheory. Slay.

The video that enticed such lovely individuals to leave their vile comments included a discussion about how FEMA was nowhere to be found. The Trump Administration has certainly gutted FEMA–to the detriment of all Americans–but this was a problem long before he was. West Virginia has a long history of being overlooked and exploited, and people here have a long history of stepping in to take care of one another.

Ohio Valley Mutual Aid, a group of locals hoping to help out the community in the Greater Wheeling, WV area of the Ohio Valley, reported that 250 volunteers helped de-mud 70 homes and businesses the first day after the flood. My husband, who was unable to access the road to his work, was among them. When he returned home after twelve hours in homes and at the donation center, he expressed that he was impressed with both the magnitude of the damage and the turnout of volunteers.

He ran into people we have met at parties. Our realtor from when we bought the house. Someone who went to high school with him an hour and a half away from here. A member of the United Methodist Committee on Relief (also from two hours away) who knows my parents very well.

That is the West Virginia I know that I fear is overlooked by the nation and world at large. That is the West Virginia I love.

In past Substack pieces, I have mentioned organizations that I love in West Virginia, and I would like to revisit some of them here. There is:

• Ohio Valley Mutual Aid, mentioned previously. If you have some extra money and would like to donate to flood relief you can do so at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ohio-valley

• The Friendlier City Project, which seeks to make Wheeling a safer and friendlier place for the LGBTQ community

• Fairness West Virginia, which seeks to make all of West Virginia a safer and friendlier place for the LGBTQ community

• West Virginia Can’t Wait, a grassroots coalition that aims to elect local representatives with progressive platforms, including cutting healthcare costs, supporting family farmers and small businesses, protecting land and water, working to eliminate homelessness, promoting anti-discrimination legislation, and much more

• Morgantown Coalition for Housing Action (MoCHA), which works to bridge gaps in resources and advocacy for unsheltered neighbors in Morgantown, WV

And so so so many more.

In my own professional life, I work with prevention educators in rape crisis centers across the state. We had a group meeting this past week to check in about successes, challenges, and building partnerships to reach vulnerable populations. I am eternally impressed by the people doing this work and honored to be among them. They face challenges–and, let’s be real, genuine horrors–with hope, grit, and the unwavering belief that we can all do our part to make the world a better place.

As an ice breaker, since it is the week of West Virginia Day, I asked everyone to share their favorite place in the state. Here were a few of the responses:

Seneca Rocks

Black Water Falls

Audra State Park

New River Gorge (our National Park!!!)

While writing this, I have had the song “The View Between Villages” by Noah Kahan–specifically the extended version with the talking monologue from members of his community–stuck in my head. I will share some of the lyrics in closing:

[Noah singing]

Past Alger Brook Road, I’m over the bridge

A minute from home, but I feel so far from it

The death of my dog, the stretch of my skin

It’s all washin’ over me, I’m angry again

The things that I lost here, the people I knew

They got me surrounded for a mile or two

The car’s in reverse, I’m grippin’ the wheel

I’m back between villages, and everything’s still

[Hazel speaking]

“When I, for me personally

I found a town big enough for anything that I want

I mean, I’m not a city girl by any means

Strafford, it still has a lot of meaning to me

Because I grew up there

Well, I guess it’s a small community of, uh, people that really look out for each other

And that’s the same way with anybody that needs anything

This–this community is there to help”

Take care of yourselves. Take care of others.

Alexa