you coulda said something nice about my profiteroles

"hurt feelings" by flight of the conchords & well, my own hurt feelings lol

I’ve had this newsletter topic simmering for a while, but I always told myself I should wait until I wasn’t actively in the middle of any Hurt Feelings to write it. Like Halley’s Comet, this period of peace occurs once, maybe twice in a lifetime, and usually hits when you’re doing 75mph and belting along to something good in the car and not when you’re sitting down at your computer aka your Hurt Feelings Machine.

So I figured fuck it, I’d write about it anyway.

I get my feelings hurt very easily! I’m a Pisces, I’m a middle child, I’m a child of divorce, I spent my adolescence lying on my stomach on my bedroom floor flipping through the liner notes of Jewel’s Pieces of You (🎶 I’m sensitive and I’d like to stay that way 🎶 ), take your pick. I’m trying to think of an example of one of the stupidest things that’s ever hurt my feelings, and I’ll tell you that one time a friend heard Paramore playing in the bar she was at and posted it to her IG story to tag ANOTHER friend in to say it made her think of them. That legitimately made me sad. National broadcasts of my regional sports teams hurt my feelings, because I never think they’re giving us the credit we’re due, and now Apple’s Friday Night Baseball gets to hurt my feelings in Prestige TV with gambling odds in the bottom corner while using *my* local sideline reporter (miss you, Tricia), like. Salt in the wound!

Once, when I was teaching a college class on expository writing, the students had a semester-long project where they kept a blog on any topic that they wanted. The assignments would then be individual posts like “write a personal essay” or “interview someone” or “review a book,” all connected to whatever their topic was. I don’t remember exactly what this one student chose as her blog topic, but I remember she gave a presentation on the book The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz, which included the four agreements you should make with yourself:

1. Be impeccable with your word.

2. Don’t take anything personally.

3. Don’t make assumptions.

4. Always do your best.

I really, really try to keep my word. That’s one thing that’s always been important to me. I try not to make assumptions (I’ve seen what happens to both you and me, you know?), and I generally try to do my best except for maybe a few times at work but like, who among us.

But don’t take anything personally!!! I was like the dad in 10 Things I Hate About You tilting his head when he sees the Rogaine commercial on TV. Like, huh. That sounds nice. Almost too good to be true. Is that something people are able to do?

(I never did read the book, so who knows lol. I’ll add it to my list.)

This is one problem with being a writer. I mean, our books begin by being personal to us, so it’s hard not to take things around them personally. I feel like I hurt all the time now in places I didn’t even know could hurt. And sometimes it is the stupidest little things that get under my skin. I’ll give you some examples from Instagram alone, the only reviews I ever see since I don’t feel the urge to place my bare palm on a hot stove aka visit Goodreads for my own books, etc. I get tagged in posts that say I’ve seen mixed reviews but *I* liked it! posts that say this was so much better than her other book imo posts with roundups of books they LOVED oh and then also my book is on there, too someone once said they didn’t know how they were supposed to read about a “skinny, blue-haired bisexual after reading about the MAN they’d just read in [redacted]” and when I tell you that person was TELLING ON THEMSELVES and also that I’ve never forgiven nor forgotten lol, recently I was invited to COLLABORATE on a post calling my book mid and then the person FOLLOWED UP with a monthly roundup to remind me it was their least favorite book they’d read that month, like some of these things don’t *actually* hurt my feelings because they’re just SO extreme but quite a few of them do.

And I know authors aren’t supposed to acknowledge the reviews, they’re reader spaces, etc., but it sure is tough when the bad shit goes right to your notifications. This is why you see authors turn off their tags sometimes, or stop checking tags/responding to things as much. It’s just a lot to take in.

At least with reviews, it’s a place where you expect to get your feelings hurt. Anyone who’s ever created anything anywhere has a story about a negative review that crushed them a little bit. I’ve been reading through Tegan and Sara newsletters I’d let stack up in my inbox, and they were talking about some reviews they got from DECADES ago that they obviously still think about, even if the wounds aren’t fresh anymore. It’s part of the process. I get it. I wrote a bad trade review I got for Love in the Time of Serial Killers RIGHT into Never Been Shipped and I had a fucking blast doing it, let me tell you.

But then it turns out that there are all these OTHER places where your feelings can get hurt, too, that you didn’t even know about. Around events — once I was at the venue early just in time to see a rental company show up to remove all the extra furniture they’d needed for the more famous author who’d done an event the night before, for example, which felt like something right out of Spinal Tap. I’ve had friends whose publicists have bragged at their events about the other, even BIGGER events they’ve handled, which is . . . very impressive and good for you, but also surely you can read the (smaller) room here? I’ve known friends whose conversation partners have clearly not read their book, or bothered to prepare, or have even openly shown disdain for the book’s cover or the romance genre or whatever with their questions. Some of this stuff is irritating or pisses you off and some of it does, yes, hurt your feelings even if you know it wasn’t meant to.

I was feeling like it was time for a picture, so enjoy this drawing my daughter made in her art class when the assignment was to “design an app logo” and she designed this one for an imagined app dedicated to talking shit about some animated character everyone finds annoying? She assured me the app would be quite popular.

I also live in constant fear that I am hurting someone else’s feelings without even knowing it. Especially lately, as I’ve pulled away from Instagram a lot — I know there are people I haven’t followed back, or whose DM I missed, or whose tag I never saw. And at some point, that’s life, right, we can’t beat ourselves up over these things or stress about them, and yet . . . what if we can? What if we do?

Every time I post a list of anything — favorite books, favorite authors, books I’m looking forward to, whatever — I’m IMMEDIATELY struck by the VERY OBVIOUS people I’ve left off the list, and I feel terrible. I wrote about the 13 Best Paramore Songs for Paste years ago and still haven’t forgiven myself, which is why I won’t link to it¹. Another thing I’ve started doing is that I try not to tell people when I’ve started their book — only when I’ve finished it — because sometimes life stuff gets in the way and I know *I* sometimes sweat and read many things into it if someone takes a long time with my book or never gets back to me after saying they started it. Listen, if you’re wondering if I ever WISH I wasn’t so neurotic, I mean, yeah! It seems like it would be nice!

I’m a big email archiver — the minute I’m “done” with an email, I want it out of my immediate inbox — and I like to think of all these little slights that same way. Like okay, thank youuuu for tagging me in this, now I will delete the notification and file it out of my mind. I try to mentally move on as fast as possible. But of course the very fact that I’m even bringing some of this stuff up here shows that it’s not filed that far away, I can still access it pretty easily. Sometimes it takes a long time to move on.

since I’ve already referenced Spinal Tap once

Every once in a while, I do think it’s helpful to bring up the hurt feelings directly if you think there’s something that could get cleared up. In fiction, I’m a defender of the miscommunication trope (when done WELL, don’t get me started), but in real life it’s nice to avoid it if possible. I’ve definitely had situations where I thought someone hated me or was mad at me and it turned out . . . they were just busy, there was a literal breakdown in communication somewhere in the technology, they thought *I* was mad at *them*, etc.

Ultimately, one of my biggest solutions for this “hurt feelings” problem is I try to find it a little funny. A little silly, when you get down to it. There are so many bigger problems in the world — as I believe we are all chillingly aware of right now — but I also know that we’re human and this smaller scale stuff does still matter to us. It SHOULD matter to us, I frankly don’t want to lose touch with all of these feelings, even if they’re seemingly trivial. I think we need to be able to protest and make our phone calls (I know you’ve heard about the 5 Calls app already, but I really do love it, it makes it so easy to talk to my reps who are all losers!) and stay informed but also like, still get miffed when Donna from HR left you off the email chain because that’s what it means to be ALIVE. Let Donna from HR hurt your feelings!!!!!!!!!

If I’m in a really bad Hurt Feelings place, I put on this song from Flight of the Conchords because it always puts me in a good mood. Some people say that rappers don’t have feelings . . . we have feelings (we have feelings). Some people say that we are not rappers (we’re rappers!) That hurts our feelings. (It hurts our feelings when you say we’re not rappers.) Some people say that rappers are invincible! (We’re vincible.) Plus this song is just a banger. I feel like a prize asshole/No one even mentions my casserole! The two of them sitting in those throne chairs, I love the way they kinda bounce on them at the beginning as they’re getting into it. Get me a small man’s wetsuit, please! The bridge with the little pianos and their white wigs. The day after my birthday is not my birthday, Mum. Why is Maid in Manhattan the funniest movie they could’ve picked? Is it because of the way he says Manhattan? Have you ever been told that you look like a llama lolol because he kind of DOES, it’s so fucking funny. When I get Hurt Feelings I just imagine myself crying tears of a rapper and it cheers me right up.

Why am I sharing all of this? No, but literally . . . why did I write this newsletter because now I’m having all sorts of doubts about it. I guess I just don’t think I’m alone in this — the road to many creative endeavors is paved with Hurt Feelings, and it’s helpful to express it and just acknowledge that yeah, it happens. I hope if you’ve ever felt it that this newsletter can help you to know you’re not alone, either.

A few small housekeeping things, before I get into my “Currently” sections:

• I have been so remiss about announcing preorder stuff, I know, but I *am* going to do some kind of preorder campaign with Tombolo Books again, I just don’t know what it’s going to look like yet. In the meantime, if you preorder Never Been Shipped from Tombolo directly, you can include any personalization request in the comments to your order. Song lyrics, a message, a quote from the book, a doodle, whatever you want!! Once I wrote what I thought was an inside-y joke in a reader’s book based on something we’d talked about but it was a little sharp and I’m still nervous that I hurt their feelings! I hope they know it was a joke!

• This Saturday, March 8, I’ll be at the East Lake Community Library in Palm Harbor doing this romance panel event with fellow local authors, sponsored by Steamy Lit Bookstore:

• Next Wednesday, March 12, I’ll be at the Cover to Cover Water Street Tampa Book Fair

• The Art of Catching Feelings recently got a shout-out in Samantha Irby’s hilarious newsletter, which!!!!!! is the opposite of hurt feelings!!!!!!!!!!!!! I fucking love Samantha Irby, if you haven’t read all of her books and caught up on all her Judge Mathis recaps, go do that and then report back.

HELL YEAH BROTHER

Currently reading . . . I’m Back on My Bullshit aka putting together a proposal for a 33 1/3 book so I can get my feelings hurt/get rejected again, so on my recent cruise I read Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. by Andrew Schartmann. A lot of the super technical music theory stuff was admittedly lost on me, but I really appreciated reading about how much creativity it took to make this music that had to be repetitive (because they only had so much “memory” in the game software) but couldn’t feel too repetitive, that had to feel connected to the gameplay, that had to evoke an emotional response, that had to suggest an atmosphere or ambience . . . and all within extremely tight technological constraints. And because it’s all created by a computer, you can’t count on a human to play the music with subtlety and nuance, you had to program it all in. I don’t know, I found it fascinating and I always like to read about other creative endeavors that aren’t specifically novel writing because it always energizes me.

watching . . . I’m almost done with Kevin Can F**k Himself! This show is SO GOOD — the acting, what it says about gender roles and marriage and anger and desperation, its meta commentary on sitcoms even, the way it so brilliantly toggles between tones. Like you could teach a whole CLASS on this show. Annie Murphy from Schitt’s Creek has so much range! All that being said, the show is a little dark and I’ll admit that if I didn’t have the joy and pleasure of talking about it with my husband to look forward to I might’ve given up on it by now, not because it’s not good but just because it presses right on a few of my key anxieties. (Money stress is always hard for me, for example, which is the reason I barely got into Breaking Bad, had to give up on Ozark, and still cite the “Lorelai’s house has termites” episode as one of the worst in Gilmore Girls — that last one also just because it’s a fucking snooze and introduces money realities into a show that doesn’t always want to acknowledge them, but seriously don’t actually get me started lol.)

listening to . . . Today I tried to get tickets to see the Offspring, decided they were too rich for my blood (I’ll be “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” at home I guess), and so instead cleaned the fuck out of my bathroom while blasting Ixnay on the Hombre. It felt GREAT. I know that we’re vincible and that’s the whole point of this newsletter, but for those 42 minutes I really did feel invincible, like NOBODY can hurt my feelings, not while my bathroom looks like THIS and I have Dexter Holland going (Okay) ya, ya, ya, ya, ya right into my eardrums. Maybe Halley’s Comet comes more often than we think².

1. I’ll tell you about the best Paramore songs, they begin chronologically with 10 tracks from All We Know Is Falling, followed by 11 tracks from Riot!, followed in quick succession by 11 tracks from Brand New Eyes, then a hearty 17 tracks from Self-Titled, you guessed it 12 tracks from After Laughter, then would you look at that 10 more tracks from This Is Why, okay time to get into the singles and soundtracks and bonus tracks and covers . . .

2. Except scientifically, it really doesn’t. It’s next predicted for mid-2061.