and i will always love you

"i will always love you" by dolly parton & vignettes of regrets

“Vignettes of Regrets” might be a bit strong, but it rhymes and sounds catchier than “stuff I’m saying goodbye to this week” so I’m rolling with it. It’s been a rough week on many levels, and YES I’m referring in part to the Trade Deadline and I’ll make no apologies for caring that much about baseball. I’ve said multiple times I tie my mental health to it, for better or worse, and this week it’s definitely been for the worse.

I’m also down to the wire with my revisions that are due on my 2025 romance, so yeah. Let’s say goodbye to some things! Let’s try to be unburdened by what has been!

The Rays We Lost to the Trade Deadline

For those of you who don’t know this very specific pain, baseball has a “trade deadline” at the end of July, where teams can make all these adjustments to rosters and trade players before the final push toward the playoffs toward the end of the season. The Rays are notorious for not spending a ton of money for big splashy names but generally being pretty savvy about getting top prospects or dark horse everyday guys with potential. I like to say that it’s like coming back to school after Christmas and your friend’s like, check out this Sega Genesis I got and you’re like, oh man I just got this handful of seeds but by this time next year I should have a sick garden. That’s an imperfect analogy but a funny joke (to me).

Well, this year, the Rays decided to take a different approach, which was:

I made this meme with my bare hands, so at least from great pain comes great art.

I found out we were shipping starting pitcher Zac Eflin to the Orioles literally on my way to the game Friday night. Then there was reliever Jason Adam to the Padres and the Rays’ only 2024 All-Star Isaac Paredes to the Cubs. It got to the point where I was seeing “Thank you!” posts on the Rays’ Instagram before I even knew the player had been traded, like what happened when infielder Amed Rosario was announced to go back to the Dodgers.

But it was definitely Randy Arozarena that most got to me. I saw the news blowing up my group chat while I was still lying in bed on Friday morning, and I came out of the room wearing my Randy Arozarena soccer jersey giveaway shirt and playing this song (Dolly’s “I Will Always Love You”) on my phone. It seemed like a fitting tribute.

It’s not just the loss of a specific player, although of course that hurts. There’s just this feeling, like it’s the end of an era — especially when it’s a player who’s been a big clubhouse presence, a fan favorite, the kind of player who’s given you so many iconic moments. Stealing home in a playoff game slapping the base to win Game 4 posing with his arms crossed hand-delivering a signed bat to a kid in the stands. The way he would sit at the end of the dugout, leaning back against the wall, I used to say he was “Moon River-ing” it. Once we saw him bring a ton of baseballs out with him to left field and throw them all into the crowd — but like, a TON, they were hidden all under his shirt and in his pockets and every time you thought he was done he had one more.

I mean, yes, Randy in The Art of Catching Feelings is named in homage to THIS Randy! And his character was also very inspired by Willy Adames, one of my most formative Rays heartbreaks because the way they traded him was so abrupt and I can still see him with his little backpack on talking to all the other players before he left. (He’s doing great in Milwaukee, I’m happy for him, but it hurt!).

In one version of The Art of Catching Feelings (in my head! I never wrote any of this part down), my fictional Randy was actually going to get traded. It just felt like a realistic baseball thing, I was still working through a lot of my Willy Adames feelings, etc. etc. But then I was like, Alicia, you are NOT going to trade away Chris’ best friend when he’s going through so much, you’re not going to do it!! So Randy sticks around for at least a couple more years, don’t worry about that.

In one last iconic move before he left, Randy sat in “Randyland” — his section at the Trop for Friday night games — with the crowd! It was really touching, him watching the game with his daughter on his lap, his wife clearly getting emotional, seeing him interacting with all the fans. And on Jimmy Eat World Summer Concert Series night!!! Emo indeed!!!!!!!!

I hope life treats you kind/And I hope that you have all that you ever dreamed of

[Edited to add that WHILE I WAS DRAFTING THIS we also let go another pitcher Shawn Armstrong. But Yandy and Fairbanks both marked safe from the 2024 Rays Trade Deadline so I guess I’ll take it.]

Things That No Longer Spark Joy

When I got back from my epic Baseball Book Tour, all I wanted to do was listen to the audiobook for Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and throw shit away. I think it was a combination of having spent the past two-and-a-half weeks in various hotel rooms, where everything was, by their very nature, minimalist and clean. And then also when I came back I had my revision deadline looming over me, and I’m normally more of a “fuck around and play games on my phone” type of procrastinator, but what can I say. Desperate times.

I’ve pressed pause on my tidying ventures because I DO need to get down to business on these edits, but I look forward to getting back to it once I’m done. I’m a very sentimental person, so my sticking point is definitely getting rid of all that kind of stuff — if you’ve given me a card at any point in my life, I kept it. I still had the birthday card I got from Della in second grade and I don’t even remember her last name. Bye, Card from Della Whoever! Thank you for your service!

My Virgo Moon

I INFAMOUSLY (to my friends, who I’ve complained about this to) never knew my birth time, because for whatever reason the information wasn’t on my birth certificate and my mother didn’t remember (cut her some slack, she had four kids). A couple years ago, some friends made me a very sweet presentation of various birth chart options for me, and basically if you just set my birth time to a standard noon, it said I had a Virgo moon. This made sense to me! I’ve always vibed with Virgo! (Lauren from Cold World is canonically a Virgo). Earth signs in general! (Phoebe from Love in the Time of Serial Killers is a Capricorn; Chris from The Art of Catching Feelings is a Taurus.)

But lo! While going through some of my sentimental papers, I found it! A little card from the hospital where I was born, helpfully filled out with information like my weight and length and sure enough, my birth time!

I eagerly plugged the information in to the first birth chart calculator that came up on Google and found out . . .

I’m a Leo moon?!?!?!

I know what you’re thinking. This is just proof that astrology isn’t real, that people cherry pick what they want. Or maybe I’m just not as self-aware as I think I am. BUT THIS WAS THE NINETEEN EIGHTIES. The obvious explanation here is that the doctor was drunk! That shit happened ALL the time in the ‘80s! It was the Wild West out there, I’ve read Lightning by Dean R. Koontz! The ONLY explanation is that the time was written down wrong!!!

Anyway, please think of me and my alleged Leo moon this Leo season. I’m still wrapping my head around what this all means.¹

All My Deleted Darlings

I tend to be a fairly “clean” drafter when I write, in that I need the book to really FEEL like a book the whole time I’m writing it. I can’t use placeholders or [more description here?] type notes, I need to write in order from beginning to end, I generally only work in one document and make any edits in the document itself without saving a bunch of versions or keeping track of changes. There are pros and cons to this approach, of course — like generally, my “first” draft is pretty solid, because I’ve done a lot of work to get it there as I’ve been writing. But then again, sometimes things take longer than they need to, sometimes I’m unable to move forward because I get stuck at a certain part and my brain won’t let me write the next scene until I figure it out.

But man, sometimes I think where some of this really gets me in trouble is during the revision process, because it can be SO HARD for me to take something apart — something I’ve very carefully, deliberately crafted — and figure out where to change a plot point or add something new. This revision I’m working on has been particularly hard, because I LOVE the draft I turned in, I mean I cried when I finished it because I was like holy shit what have I done (bad) but the more I reread it and thought about it the more I was like holy shit what have I done! (good). And I can’t really get into the edit letter because spoilers and other stuff, but the point is that it’s been . . . tricky.

One of the things that’s been tough for me is working IN the document itself, especially because I have to keep Track Changes turned on so that my editor can see my edits (I do usually turn off “Show Markup,” which is a helpful tip I would give to anyone! You can have it track your changes without you needing to know anything about it, it’s none of your business. Especially in sex scenes, for the love of god, turn off Show Markup lol.)

But even THAT was hard, so for any revisions that are bigger than like, tinkering with a single word or sentence, I go back a couple paragraphs from where the revision is needed and start typing them fresh into a new document. And then every single sentence I make myself make a choice before typing it in — is this the right sentence? Or do I need to write something new, pivot here so I can add in the backstory or include more detail or make the dialogue go in a different direction?

I guess it’s the equivalent of Marie Kondo making you stack all your clothes on your bed and then going through one-by-one and really DECIDING whether you’re going to put it in your closet or not. I don’t know, but the point is that it really is helping me to envision these new parts of the story and help weave them into what I already had and loved. (I did once compare editing/giving feedback to what Niecy Nash did on Clean House in a pedagogy paper, and my instructor wrote NO next to it and underlined it three times, so lol. Maybe I’m off base here, but if it sparks joy for me to think of this as tidying my manuscript just let me have it!!)

Elvis’ Version of “I Will Always Love You”

Since I’ve been immersed lately in this world of classic country, Nashville music studios, tryin’ to think about Elvis, etc. etc. I really have listened to Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” quite a lot. And listen, I respect the hell out of her for saying “no” to Elvis recording a version of this song when she found out he would take 50% of the publishing rights. Good for her. And I’m glad she made her money on the Whitney Houston Bodyguard rendition, which is also SUCH a good version of the song.

But.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say it didn’t make me a little sad that I’ll never get to hear Elvis sing this song! I think he would’ve done a great job with it! I kinda wish there was like, a secret recording somewhere that could be released now with all money going to Dolly just so we could hear it, but alas. It’s good to want things.

Currently reading . . . I just finished rereading You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi for my romance book club. Is this book a romance? To me, it’s a thought-provoking question to debate! It brings up a lot of discussions around what makes a book a “romance,” where do genre boundaries blur, what matters more an author’s intention or a reader’s interpretation and on and on and on. Either way, I think it’s a beautifully written and very interesting book.

watching . . . I’m watching the Olympics but only in clips and highlights! This is very frustrating to me because I love the Olympics! I have been a gymnastics girl since 1996! But yeah, working on these edits so. Regardless, very excited for Team USA!

listening to . . . I’m all over the place. Listening to my Elvis playlist, my [redacted²] playlist, a lot of Explosions in the Sky (my favorite editing music), this Dolly Parton song, an episode of You’re Wrong About on the Cleveland Balloonfest ‘86, just whatever drifts through my transom. This is why I had to write this newsletter in vignettes! I am giving all my focused energy to ONE thing right now, which is why my house is still untidy and also why my Instagram notifications are piling up!

1. I take astrology seriously and am also EXTREMELY unserious about astrology, so please take this whole section in the tongue-in-cheek manner it’s intended. Is this a Leo moon thing for me to say? Am I already living more authentically?

2. Maybe I can reveal the book title at least next week? We’ll see!