Let’s Make Like the Cast of RENT and Try to Measure a Year

FIVE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE THOUUUUUSAND SIX HUNDRED MINUTES—

Jan 13, 2025

Welcome back to Keep Writing. We hope the holiday season treated you to equal parts merriment and respite, and you now find yourself refreshed and ready to take on the new year. If you’re new here, warm welcomes to you: Help yourself to the bubbling cauldron of borscht in the corner before diving into this month’s exercise.

See, I'm not much for New Year’s resolutions. I am one for New Year’s reflections. I figure the only way to know where I'm going is to look where I've been. Only when l measure 2024 can I see how I want to move forward into 2025.

So my writing prompt for you all is this:

2024 was the year I…

How would you fill in that blank?

Here’s what I ended up with when I tried this exercise. I’d dearly love to read yours as well. ♥️

2023 was the year I became a mother. 2024 was the year I learned to be one.

Having a child is like intentionally placing a bomb under your pre-baby identity and smiling as you detonate it. It is an explosion after which nothing and everything is the same. It leaves you wandering in the desert of the self, looking for splintered pieces of you in the wreckage. Every time you find a fragment of your former self, you stop, squinting, holding it up to the light. Does this still fit me? You ask. A better question is: Do you want it to?

When I look back at the first third of 2024, I picture myself dancing in a pitch-black room with a strobe light. Every time the light flashes, I strike a pose. Normal! I flash a strained grin under the light. Normal! I thrust my arms toward the camera. Still normal! I hoist two big thumbs-up.

As if every exaggerated bit of “This is fine and so am I!!!” pantomime would make me look less like a skittish deer every time someone looked my way. As if it could hide the fear in my eyes.

My first instinct now is to be so hard on this former self, this scared little sleep-deprived thing dancing by herself in the dark. Look at how foolish she is, I think as I study her, running my finger over her startled expression. Who does she think she’s fooling?

But the more I press on these memories, interrogate them, and turn them over in the light, the less room I find for mockery. Of course I clung so desperately to parroting my old self. What else did I know how to be? If you have one foot in an old world and one foot in a new one, of course you’ll put your weight on the thing you know. Of course you mimic your old voice until you learn to trust your new one.

The truth is that the core acts and motions of motherhood came easily to me; the change in my identity did not. Soothing, rocking, humming, shushing, singing: The rhythms of early parenthood were the rhythms of caretaking, something I’d been doing for much of my life thanks to having a much younger sibling and working in early childcare for years as a young adult.

But there is a very big difference in being a caretaker and the primary caretaker, especially when a young infant’s needs from their primary caretakers are so vast. Shifting from someone who writes and reads and travels and cooks and crafts and enjoys things with friends to someone who mothers and mothers and mothers and mothers and mothers and and and—it was a graceless and sputtering transition period, and it took most of 2024 to feel core parts of myself begin to come back online.

It’s lonely work, wandering the desert of the self. But I’ll never forget the joy and bone-deep relief of finding even the tiniest shards: The first cup of hot coffee. The first completed shower without having to cut it short mid-lather. The first time my hips started moving of their own accord to a strong beat. The first meal I cooked postpartum; the first bracing winter walk I took on my own with my child.

Venturing out alone to meet a friend who was visiting from the Lower 48. Remembering to sweep blush on my cheeks to make my pallid complexion look a little less like a sickly Victorian orphan. Eating at the table instead of crouched beside a bouncer like a little feral goblin. Making any meal with a longer cook time than three minutes. Having any sense of a future tense instead of a brutal, relentless present.

Witnessing my hair thin and wane and comb out in clumps, only to have it return steely-gray and ungovernable. Watching all the softness melt off my body and leave hard angles and lean strength in its place. Marveling at a new calm and clarity settling over my anxious hive of a mind.

Dancing with my baby instead of for my baby. Talking to my baby instead of at my baby. Pointing, studying, delighting. Sitting cross-legged in the warm summer grass, cradling tiny pumpkins in the late autumn sun, belly-laughing in the snow.

I sift through all these fragments from my year and know that I still can’t quite see the finished portrait—I’m still too close to the mess to make out a cohesive whole. But I look at the glinting mass of shards on the table, see how they catch the light. I look at the rough new pieces I’ve forged. And I look at the dull heap of scraps I’ve discarded as I made my way through the desert, the ones that no longer serve me and where I’m going. I don’t have anything finished and ready to show for all my wandering. Maybe I never will. But I do have progress. I have movement, I have momentum, I have beautiful little slivers I can hold in my hands.

All there is left to do is keep moving, keep searching, keep piecing things together, until I land on something that looks everything and nothing like my former self, but still feels like home.

Until next month—

Keep writing,

Nicki

P.S. If you, too, are feeling heartbroken and searching for a way to help those affected by the fires in Los Angeles, here is a list of resources providing aid in the region. My go-to organization is World Central Kitchen, which provides meals to people affected by crises around the globe; you can find its California-specific donation link here. Baby2Baby provides supplies like diapers, food, and formula to Los Angeles families who have lost their homes; you can find its LA-specific donation link here.

February 2025 Calls for Submissions

(Note: Our list is a little shorter than usual this month due to a journal meeting its quota early and closing submissions right before this newsletter went out.)

Spotlight Pick

The First Line: Stories and poems that begin with a given first sentence

Here’s an interesting concept for a literary magazine: This journal provides the first line of a work, and then it’s up to writers to fill in the rest of the story or poem. The first provided sentence of 2025 is “Jayce recognized the man right away but couldn’t remember his name.” The journal has already selected all four sentences for each of its seasonal submission windows, and if writers are feeling ambitious, they may write “a four-part story that uses the spring, summer, fall, and winter sentences.” Send fiction between 300 and 5,000 words (roughly) or poems of any line count, although note that the journal only rarely publishes poetry. The submitted work must begin with the first line provided; the provided line must not be altered in any way. Alternatively, submit a 500- or 800-word critical essay about your favorite first line from a literary work. No submission fees. Payment is $25-50 for fiction, $10 for poetry, and $25 for nonfiction. Good luck, submitters!

Deadline: Feb. 1

Arkana: Hybrid submissions

For its Hybrid, issue, editors say they “want your prose poems, your cross-genre work, and your all around experimental and unclassifiable writing.” Send prose poems, flash fiction or nonfiction, experimental and cross-genre/multimedia works, autofiction, or “anything else that doesn’t fit the traditional bounds of creative writing genres.” Send up to three short pieces or one piece that is no more than 20 pieces. Submitters may send “more than one piece, as long as they are different forms of hybrid.” No submission fees, no payments that I can find.

Deadline: Feb. 15

National Flash Fiction Day Anthology: “Seasons” flash

Editors of the 2025 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology seek flash submissions in 500 words or less that somehow relate to the theme of “seasons.” Submissions are free, although there is a small suggested donation for multiple entries. Published contributors will receive a free copy of the anthology. The editors will each select one piece to receive their “Editor’s Choice Award” and subsequent £50 prize. The judges for 2025 are Karen Jones and Cheryl Markosky.

Deadline: Feb. 15

Sinister Smile Press: Cryptid horror stories

“What stalks the shadows beyond our understanding? What ancient creatures still roam our modern world, defying explanation and documentation?” ask editors of the forthcoming anthology If I Die Before I Wake, Volume 10: Tales of Cryptid Chaos. “Join us for a collection of original tales that will make you question every unexplained footprint, every ripple in dark waters, and every unexplored corner of our world. These aren't just stories of sightings and encounters—they're nightmares that blur the line between legend and truth, leaving readers wondering what might really be watching from the darkness.” Send unpublished horror stories from 4,000 to 10,000 words. Payment is $40 per story. Tales featuring lesser-known cryptids are “strongly encouraged,” although fiction starring common cryptids like Bigfoot are still welcome; however, stories featuring “common supernatural creatures (vampires, werewolves, etc.)” are not.

Deadline: Feb. 20

The Slab Press: Folk-horror submissions

For its forthcoming November 2025 anthology, Hiding Under the Leaves, The Slab Press is seeking folk-horror short stories: “Think curses and cunning folk; superstitions and the old ways; twisted rural landscapes and dark, creeping woodlands,” editors explain. Stories should be roughly between 2,000 and 9,000 words. No submission fees. Payment is 1p a word to a maximum of £50 (roughly $60).

Deadline: Feb. 23 (Note that submissions do not open until Feb. 9.)

Fortuna Major Press: Creative nonfiction poetry and poetry that plays with form

“For its inaugural issue, Memory, Vulpecula Poetica seeks poetry that delves into your origins, speaks into silences, and is saturated (or haunted) by places and people from another time,” editors write. Send up to five poems. No submission fees. Payment is a contributor copy of the magazine.

Deadline: Feb. 28

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