i'm just a girl in the world

"just a girl" by no doubt & 5 semi-related things i feel like talking about

If you want a glimpse into last week and why there was no post, picture me sitting in a friend’s NYC apartment, saying, “I have to write this newsletter — is it okay if we put on Romy and Michele? I’ve seen it a thousand times, so it’s a perfect background movie.”

Reader, it’s a terrible background movie.

I closed my laptop sometime around “okay, if jobs and boyfriends were so easy to get, wouldn’t we have them by now?” “we never had a good reason like a reunion before” and didn’t bother opening it back up. The movie is just too good. I already wrote about it once before but I figured I’d include a little more about it in a round-up of somewhat-very-loosely-kinda related things:

Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion

The friends I was staying with had never seen this movie before, and it was such a DELIGHT to show it to them. I simply love the feeling of screening a beloved favorite for someone new. We really couldn’t get over Mira Sorvino’s interesting vocal choices for Romy in particular, and I remembered reading this oral history a while back where the screenwriter said when she first heard it on set she was like, “What the fuck is that voice?” It’s one of my favorite movies because it is so weird and specific, and because it’s basically a friendship romance about two people who really get each other and have fun together. What could be better than that.

This is also one of those pieces of media where every single line reading lives in my head rent-free, exactly as spoken, I could basically do a one-woman reenactment at a moment’s notice. But a line that’s been on repeat in my brain since this most recent re-watch — altered to fit my own lifestyle — has been: “I wouldn’t even be here if this weren’t like, a [writing] emergency.” I think that now any time I reconfigure my writing schedule to try to absorb the words I didn’t write today into a future day; any time I text a friend like “how do you write a book again”; any time I try to find the one secret that will somehow crack everything open whether that’s music or research or a treat that I have, let’s be honest, not even earned.

You already know I’m obsessed with Sio Gallagher’s art, and this print she illustrated for Romy and Michele is so good. I just love her style! It has nice lines, a fun, frisky use of color, Lisa Luder would be impressed! Maybe there’s still time to grab a print before the holidays? I’ve bought/commissioned many things from Sio over the years because art is one of my favorite things to give someone.

Harlequin Romance

While we’re on the subject of writing! There has been lots of discourse going around the past few weeks about romance — which bores me because when is there not discourse, it’s one song I do not want to listen to over and over, I love talking romance but not in a swirling cesspool of hot takes, etc. But one good thing that ended up coming out of it was the discussion of Harlequin category romances and how formative they were for so many people, how challenging/impressive it can be to write a tight 50-55k story, how the genre has changed and adapted over the years. And then I was going through some boxes of stuff and came across this:

The texture of this letterhead with the watermark! That it’s just addressed “Dear Thompson!” That it’s signed “Editorial!” A true artifact.

I could write an entire separate newsletter about my early journey trying to sell a Harlequin Presents novel — and one day I will — but this was from my second attempt when I was about 20 years old. I genuinely love that I framed this.

(I obviously never hung it up, because the process usually goes something like get piece I’d like framed —> gap of 5-10 years —> frame the piece —> gap of 5-10 years —> then maybe, MAYBE finally hang the piece on the wall unless of course we took a turn down the flow chart into eh actually I don’t care much about this thing anymore which is probably the case with this framed rejection I no longer feel any need to display. Still glad I found it.)

Taylor Swift Class

I’ve posted about this before, but one of my true joys these past few months has been that I’ve been sitting in on a literature class at USF centered around Taylor Swift. One of my dearest friends co-taught the class, and so I invited myself along one Tuesday morning, just like hey, what if I sat in the back and listened and I promise not to disrupt anything? I quickly became so enamored of the experience that I just kinda . . . kept going. You can’t even call it auditing because I didn’t do any of the assignments and I never told the university what I was doing. I just showed up most Tuesday mornings, sat in the back, took notes, and didn’t disrupt anything.

(Well. There was one time during the Queering Taylor Swift Songs lecture when a student made an ELITE reference to My Own Private Idaho, which was so unexpected and delightful to me that when they were trying to remember River Phoenix and . . . who was the other actor . . . it was River Phoenix and . . . I did shout out “Keanu Reeves!” because I couldn’t help myself. Surely we’re all allowed one.)

I just wrote notes in my planner because I carry it everywhere and sometimes there are empty pages I end up not using and I hate a wasted page. Filling up every page in a notebook because paper is so precious makes me feel very Emily Moon.

One of the best parts of the class was getting to watch my friend in action, because she’s exactly the funny, warm, analytical badass I’d most want to break down Taylor’s male muses and how they relate back to Greek myths and renaissance art, and then I also listened to her and her co-professors lecture about themes of childhood in Taylor’s songs (all those references to Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland and The Secret Garden!); time and temporality (what if “Begin Again” as the last track on Red is actually going back to the BEGINNING of her relationship with Jake and the happy times then and so in a way the entire album is a recursive loop just like her memory!); lyrics through a queer lens (the My Own Private Idaho reference came up when discussing “cowboy like me”!); and then situating folklore as a pastoral, a plague narrative, just a thousand different connections back to the romantic poets and themes of grief and everything else.

If you want a specific example of one time the class BLEW MY MIND: we were talking about the Byronic hero and how that came up in Taylor’s music — basically, Byron is often considered the first literary celebrity, had an infamous personal life, made lots of references to himself in his poetry (SOUND FAMILIAR) and then a Byronic hero is one who is brooding and passionate but “doomed” or “cursed” in some way (Taylor has been this; Taylor has been attracted to this). We were specifically talking about that divisive rhyme in “So High School,” where Taylor writes truth, dare, spin bottles/you know how to ball I know Aristotle. The lecturer was talking about how it felt like a “Byronic” rhyme to her, the way that Lord Byron was known for trolling in his poetry sometimes, where he’d deliberately write “bad” poetry and be like “ahhhh too high concept for you, you don’t get it” to all his haters.

AND THEN SHE BROUGHT UP A POEM BY LORD BYRON THAT CONTAINED THAT EXACT RHYME.

From Don Juan (1819-1824):

I’ll call the work ‘Longinus o’er a Bottle,
Or, Every Poet his own Aristotle.’

🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

I’m sorry, that’s just cool.

Glitter and Greed: The Lisa Frank Story

I’ve been watching the Lisa Frank documentary that’s on Amazon right now, and everyone I’ve seen talking about it has been like: prepare to have your childhood ruined!! I wasn’t worried about that, because YES of course I grew up writing my friends letters on my very special Lisa Frank stationery! but also I am never surprised when any company turns out to be toxic or when any visionary turns out to be a megalomaniac. Sorry. I’m just not. I’d already read some about Lisa Frank Inc. in particular, so knew the broad strokes — she’s difficult and demanding to work for, there was a nasty divorce and business split, etc.

I was a little worried the documentary would be hard to watch, actually, because I have my own experiences working at an EXTREMELY toxic work environment which, while it could not be in a more different industry from Lisa Frank Inc., also followed many of the same beats (narcissistic owners, policing and paranoia, demand for total loyalty, the stories I could tell you!). What I didn’t realize was all the work stuff would be FINE but the divorce stuff would be ACTUALLY UPSETTING. I do not pretend to know exactly what the relationship between Lisa and her CEO husband was like or who did who dirty or anything like that but watching her ex-husband show off his BLAMEJAMES tattoo because “that’s what it became, right? blame me” and then their grown son talked about how his father working all the time was ambition and his mother working all the time was selfishness OOOOF. It was like rewatching Mrs. Doubtfire, a movie that my child-of-divorce trauma does not want to experience again. I have no doubt that Lisa Frank played her part. I also inherently do not trust an ex-husband with BLAMEJAMES tattooed on his forearm, it must be said.

In the aforementioned cleaning up I was doing tho, I did come across this — proof that I’ve been keeping a writing notebook longer than I thought and also that I’ve always loved Lisa Frank designs:

This is from 2015, when I wrote a YA novel for NaNoWriMo.

The Sweet Valley High Series

It’s the end of the year, and I am SWEATING my Goodreads goal. I’m desperate. I know, it’s an arbitrary number CHOSEN BY ME and there is no prize or purpose for killing myself to reach it. And yet.

I’m not too proud to pad my numbers, so I’ve been listening to the audio of the Under the Mistletoe Amazon Originals collection, because each story is like an hour-and-a-half and so all it takes is a few nights of my Happy Color routine and I’m flying through them. I also started rereading the Sweet Valley High series, which has been a wild ride . . . as wild as Elizabeth on the back of Todd’s motorcycle after her parents TOLD her not to, after Elizabeth herself told Todd she wouldn’t, after Todd even decided to sell the bike because if he can’t ride with his girl what’s the point, after Elizabeth said oh let’s take one ride together even though you left my helmet at home¹, after they CRASH and Elizabeth is now in a COMA! I hope she’s okay²!

I even ordered a whole lot of the books from eBay, because I really wanted to read the next iconic installment, Dear Sister, in its paperback form. It says the order was delivered and yet I don’t have it! This is very upsetting to me. Almost as upsetting as it will be when Elizabeth wakes up from her coma and . . . starts acting like a stuck-up little brat aka exactly like Jessica! (I have read this book before, after all, and I know the premise.) I’ve been filling my husband in on all the drama at Sweet Valley High and when I told him about this he said, “Oh, Todd’s not going to like that!” No indeed.

well no wonder you fell off the bike, Elizabeth, riding like that!

I’ve had so much I’ve wanted to write about or talk about in this newsletter the last few weeks, I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface. Each of these could’ve been a newsletter on their own tbh. I’ve been low-key working on With Love, from Cold World bonus content and I keep telling myself I should be talking about that book more, it’s Asa and Lauren’s season!!! I spent a few days in NYC and had a great time and took a bunch of pictures I then never bothered to share. I’ve had a real desire to rewatch While You Were Sleeping and do a longform recap of it. I found my favorite holiday romance novella collection at the library bookstore and have wanted to recap that, too.

But I’m also trying to actually draft a novel right now and this time of year always kicks my ass because I am just NOT a holiday person, I never feel prepared, I always get a little overwhelmed and also a little melancholy (while listening to a playlist with not one but two versions of “A Long December” on it gee wonder why!!!). So anyway, if you need me just picture me like Gwen Stefani in the “Just a Girl” video, singing “I’ve had it up to here” while helpfully placing her hand right at her forehead so you know how far she’s had it up to (said with the utmost love for this iconic song/video).

Currently reading . . . All I’ve done is yap about what I’ve been reading (holiday novellas; Sweet Valley High), but I also just finished Ashley Herring Blake’s Make the Season Bright for my romance book club and it was so good. Perfect cozy winter vibes, love that they’re both musicians, love the second chance trope and the way their miscommunication in the earlier part of their relationship really does get explained by their separate character wounds, love a gray-haired heroine, loved the sex scenes. I always joke that if I started a fanfic alt account it would be to write up the legal pleadings arising from my favorite stories, so I couldn’t help myself:

Her former group takes HER emotional love song and releases it as theirs?!?! Count I: Copyright Infringement. Count II: Unjust Enrichment. Count III: Emotional Distress.

watching . . . I have been on such a documentary kick lately. In addition to the Lisa Frank one, I also watched Buy Now (eh, it was okay, I feel like this is all stuff we know? and some of the visual/narration choices were a little weird?) and Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey (I have many thoughts but all I will say is this is EXACTLY why I’m interested in the rhetoric of true crime as a genre, because I could write a fucking book not even on this crime but on the way this crime gets talked about, portrayed, what facts we know, what narratives have arisen, what biases exist, and on and on).

listening to . . . Tell you one thing, this newsletter really fucked up my Apple Music Replay for the year lol. I mean, I guess you could argue that I often get fixated on the song first and then I write about it, but they definitely feed into each other. My top song of the year was HUMILIATING. I can’t even DISCUSS it. All I will tell you:

• it was a song I wrote a newsletter about;

• it was not off The Tortured Poets Department even though that was my top album of the year;

• it was not by Twenty One Pilots even though they were my top artist of the year (this is 100% from drafting Never Been Shipped because basically all I listened to in January 2024, non-stop, while feverishly finishing the draft and riding my bike around thinking about the book, was Twenty One Pilots on shuffle); and

• it is deeply embarrassing to me that this would be my top song in 2024 and this is coming from someone who proudly bragged about being one of Third Eye Blind’s top listeners in 2023 so I’m not easily musically embarrassed.

1. Should Todd have offered HIS helmet to her? Or is that not a thing, where you shouldn’t wear someone else’s helmet?

2. There are approx. 173 books remaining in the series, Elizabeth will be fine.