399. A Bittersweet Announcement
April 21st, 2011 § 10 Comments
I’ve got a bittersweet announcement, y’all.
My friend Hanna has this expression that she uses with me sometimes when I’m getting fussy — “I’ve only got one life, and only one pair of hands.” And this expression comes to me when I think about the things I’m doing these days, and how my life has taken on strange proportions and shapes. Which leads me to a decision that I’ve been mulling on for quite a while now, and which was not made lightly; Jenny is now the sole blogger at FFW. I’ll guest post occasionally, and you’ll probably see my silly face here and there, but for the most part, I’m out of the fashion blog world.
I started Fashion for Writers in 2008, and in the last three years, a lot has happened. I’ve changed aesthetics, styles, haircuts, cities, and friends. I’ve made good pals both on and offline. I started a job at a great company as a fashion writer, and that job was introduced to me through someone who found me through FFW. We’ve gained readers, much love, and a tiny bit of infamy. And I’m so, so grateful for that. Thank you.
Thank you, most of all, to Jenny, whom I know is going to do a fantastic job with FFW from here on out. Post #400 (coming soon!) is going to be part of the new era. I know she has her own big news to share. I love you, Jenny.
And I love y’all — you awesome, awesome readers. Enjoy, and be well.
xo,
mw
P.S. I’ve received a lot of comments and feedback about my post regarding The Fear, and I want to mention again here — if you don’t already know about it — that I have an entire blog (The Novelist’s Hubris) devoted to mental illness/health, compassion and care, and the writing life. Plenty of photography, too. That’s where most of my Internet energies have been going for the last half-year or so, and lately I’ve been experiencing an explosion of visitors, especially to this post about Yale, mental illness, and medical leave. (It’s not always that heavy, though — promise!) Please do come visit.
398. The fear/This is my fear
April 5th, 2011 § 25 Comments
It’s important to remember, when we’re all looking at one another in this blog world, and seeing pictures of one another in pretty clothes, and discussing things in poetic or non-poetic ways, that we’re all people; we’re all ordinary people who are afraid and lonely and yearn for love.
The last week has been unfortunate in that I have been “symptomatic” lately — as in, I wake up feeling terrified, and I move through my world with terror in my heart. I went to that friend’s wedding unable to enjoy this gorgeous, beautiful wedding despite my best efforts, and left before I could even eat cake (I am being honest here, even though I know that many of the people at that wedding read FFW), because I was having an epic panic attack that had lasted all day and I just wanted to bolt bolt bolt. I said something about my back hurting, which was true, but that wasn’t the real reason. Which speaks to something about how I am a mental health advocate and a person who is generally okay when it comes to talking about her mental illness, but when it comes down to it, sometimes it is easier to say “My back hurts” than “I am about to self-destruct in the middle of this beautiful wedding.”
So this is my fear. And part of the way my fear is manifesting itself is that I feel like I am hideous in physical appearance, even though I look at the above photographs from this morning and I think that this person in the photographs looks all right. I have trouble with mirrors lately, and with being in my body.
It was so good to see Jenny this weekend, and also my many wonderful faraway friends, but I wish that I had not felt hindered and hampered. Still, I will see them again someday, and in different circumstances, when I am not cloudy with a chance of meatballs.
xo,
mw
397. Ouch
March 27th, 2011 § 12 Comments
My friend Ryan is a babe.
This French toast from Beretta in San Francisco is also a babe.
So much has happened since the last time I clack-clacked words onto the screen of FFW. Jenny, as always, is holding up the fort with aplomb, and her fandom grows by the day — which I don’t mind, never ever, because she deserves all of the glory that a gal can get. And she’s coming to stay with me in my ‘lil San Francisco apartment in one, two, three, four, five days, for a few glorious nights, for, as she’s mentioned, the wedding of a friend — a wedding where we’re going to see people we haven’t seen in ages, and where small reunions will happen in the background of a formal union.
These are some major things that have happened in my life as of late: I developed a large-ish ovarian cyst, had emergency surgery to have it removed, recovered from surgery for a month or more, developed a rotated pelvis and swollen vertebrae as a result, grew sad, grew happy, grew sadder, went to physical therapy, was rejected from Yaddo and MacDowell, reached 100k words in my novel and am now halfway through the book, finally, went through a painful week in which a friend said good-bye to me in a permanent sense and I can’t talk about that, cried a lot, took a lot of painkillers, worked with the dynamic and spectacular Functional Muse Dyana Valentine, and tried to, every single day, tell my friends that I love them.
“Ouch” is what I think about lately. “Ouch,” my clothes are not fitting me anymore because it is hard to maintain one’s weight when convalescing from major surgery. “Ouch,” words hurt. “Ouch,” I am overly sensitive 99% of the time, and 1% of the time I am insensitive in all of the worst ways.
“Ouch,” I want to be loved more and more. I dislike this about myself.
I haven’t bought new clothes in the last two months EXCEPT FOR this Madewell dress, which hasn’t arrived yet. This is what it looks like:
I am a foot shorter than this girl, weigh significantly more, and have much more of a chest, but the shape and silk and color call to me. And the pockets. It is essential for me to have pockets, because I listen to my iPod all day, every day.
Recently I came up with the phrase “coeur-color” in my novel and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since.
See you, kidlets and grownups.
xo,
mw
390. My fingers are stuck full of words, so here are some pictures for you
January 23rd, 2011 § 3 Comments
Jenny and I have recently been talking a lot about writing, and what we try to achieve with our writing, as well as our fears and hopes and dreams for our writing careers. Both of us are in our late 20s (still young, yet), and while things are happening for us (Jenny has many publications coming out, which is a brilliant boon for the reading community), there is also a lot of anxiety about things like choosing/thinking about agents, building a body of work, and finding homes for our homeless stories.
If you read The Novelist’s Hubris, my other blog, you already know the following bit of exciting news: I found out a few weeks ago that I received a large writing grant to help fund the completion of my novel-in-progress. And while I consider myself fairly diligent already with my writing schedule, I’ve been extra-sure to wake up at 4, 5, 6 AM to get in some writing before work.
To cite David Foster Wallace again, here is part of an interview with him, and I cling to these sentiments when I am floundering at 7:30 AM with the sunrise:
I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of “generalization” of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character’s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside.
Hence: I’m conserving my words in places that are not related to work. I’ve been using my Contax T2 more than usual as a way to get another look at the world; I hope you enjoy these snapshots of my life. In the final photograph, I’m wearing a vintage frock from La Rosa (in the Haight), as well as a pair of plum Tabio tights. My hair is also quite short these days.
Jenny and I will be posting a new Heart-to-Heart soon. Be on the lookout! & I hope you’re having a beautiful weekend.
xo,
mw
386. New look, new dress, new year
December 27th, 2010 § 2 Comments
As threatened on my Twitter feed (are you following me yet?), I did redesign our blog today. If you happened to come across FFW while I was messing around with the CSS, forgive me; I’m really not very good with this stuff. But I thought that we could use a revamp with which to introduce 2011, and I’m happy with how it came out!
In the above photograph, I’m standing in front of an institution known as Tiffin Inn, which came back after Katrina and still has its excellent orange-and-brown/gold menus/decor. It is as 70s as 70s can be. Chris loves orange and brown, as well as blue and orange (both of which are color combinations that I find hideous — sorry, Chris), and he supposed, after I brought it up today, that his love of the former was introduced via Tiffin Inn. It’s not gourmet in the least, but they have big omelets and many types of syrup on a carousel. I had coffee, four links of sausage, grits with American cheese, one hotcake, and two sunny-side-up eggs. Afterwards, I wandered around the TJ Maxx next door in search of a ballet wrap cardigan, which I didn’t find. I did note that the TJ Maxx was the most ethnically diverse region of Louisiana that I’d ever been in.
We later went to the park and walked around, looking at birds, including this ibis. I call this photograph the Magical Ibis Photograph because it looks so angelic and pure and yet completely evil. There were also two black swans sleeping in the exact same position next to one another in the water, but my photo of them didn’t turn out as well as this image of the Magical Ibis.
Today I wore this sweet blue dress with a shawl collar, which I bought at Retro Active — along with some vintage Dior earrings, a glamorous 20s bracelet, and a lace-and-pearl white cardigan. There’s a 50% off sale there right now! Joe is closing the store in May! Hurry along to New Orleans!
I leave you with this picture of Chris and myself, which is one of my new favorite pictures of us because we look wholesome as all heck, not to mention happy.
xo,
mw
385. Brief Interviews with Not-Hideous In-Laws (& Husband)
December 26th, 2010 § 6 Comments
Yeah, what — I have reindeer antlers on my head? Yes. I am also making an incredibly awkward face.
A couple of things that I decided not to do re: my blogging life during vacation: 1.) to not post photographs unless they were film photographs, because my new digital camera didn’t arrive on Wednesday, which it was supposed to, before I left for New Orleans on Thursday 2.) to not type/post at all, and to pen my elaborate blog posts in my new Levenger notebook because I’m developing RSI from work. But I am going to throw these things out the window and write a little post anyway, because my holiday thus far in the Big Easy deserves some documentation.
First of all, a huge happy birthday to our beloved Jenny Z! Can everyone please join in with me in wishing Jenny the best 27th birthday she’s ever had? She’s getting a brown leather satchel from me, but it hasn’t gotten to her yet. Sorry, Jenny. I love you!
Christmas Eve was its usual Southern assortment of relatives with excellent accents, delicious turkey, creamy broccoli, creamy everything, including green bean casserole with Velveeta (gosh golly), and eating two full plates in a row to the point where I was sick and felt like I needed to be scooped out with a melon scooper in order to be able to function. Christmas morning we woke up, had orange danishes, and opened presents. I received an assortment of excellent presents, including two pairs of 40s and 50s screwback earrings, but the morning culminated in a present that made me weep openly in front of Chris and his entire family: an autographed, first-edition copy of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which was one of the best books that I read in 2010 and one of my favorite books of all time, now.
Then we drove across the lake and, at an aunt and uncle’s house out in the country, ate deer neck with gravy, and watched Animal Planet with all of the lights off until it was dark outside, threw our garbage in their furnace so as to minimize its impact on the environment. I read a Seventh Day Adventist tract while sitting in the near-dark on the couch. I saw five extremely bright cardinals eat suet outside, and I did not see the alligator that lives in the pond behind the house, but I did play with their three-year-old dog, Gumbo, who is so incredibly sweet, and carried around the bloody deer neck bone as he ran around outside. Did I mention that I also ate way too much food at their house, as well? I did. I tried to work on my novel (longhand) on the sofa, but they like to conserve energy by not having the overhead lights on, so there was only one lamp on the house; I developed a headache from writing longhand in the dark.
At the moment I’m drinking apple pie liqueur and watching everyone play Killer Bunnies. If you celebrate Christmas, merry Christmas. If you don’t, I say merry Jenny’s birthday, and to all a good night.
xo,
mw
