Field notes, September 2025

1. This poem by Meredith Quartermain:

2. I’m writing this from a coffee shop on a Sunday morning, eating a cinnamon bun and drinking strong coffee. My dear friend Tyra and I just chatted for an hour and now we’re diving into our work for the day. I do love writing substack posts, but I’m especially excited to work on my novel after I’m done this. The new one is just past 6,000 words—I’m hoping to get it to 7,500 by the end of the day.

3. This note I wrote myself on September 18, 2025:

4. Some more grandma wisdom for you. I get migraines semi-frequently, and have always struggled with canceling plans, despite a legitimate need to (if you have migraines, you get it). A few days ago, I was talking about making sure someone wasn’t upset about me cancelling, and my grandma said:

“That’s not your job. You can’t keep pushing yourself to make sure others are comfortable when you’re not; you can’t keep putting aside your own pain to keep the peace. And if they’re going to be upset, they’re going to be upset, but that’s none of your business.”

5. September 07, 2025: I’m deep in revisions for my novel—it’s all I want to spend time on right now. I lose myself in it in the best way possible: I’ll sit down at my desktop to work and surface hours later, my tea ice cold on the desk in front of me. It’s almost done, and soon, I’ll be able to send it out to agents (something I’ve never really done with the novels I write, but am looking forward to all the same).

6. The asters are blooming at my grandparents’ house; I have a lot of favourite flowers, but asters are absolutely at the top of the list, partly because they signal the real beginning of autumn for me.

7. This artwork by Harlie Briggs:

8. Last night we had a BBQ at my grandparents’ farm to enjoy the last day of summer together, and I’m once again reminded how lucky I am to have the family that I have. We all get along, and work well together, and always have something to talk about. It’s not something I truly valued when I was teenager, but now that I’m an adult, I find it’s one of the things I’m most glad I have.

9. These quotes by Dorianne Laux:

“The changes that have occurred in poetry have been minor when you look at it over the scale of human time. It’s like a rose, maybe a hybrid with color and size differentials, but the same genus, plucked from the same original blowsy family.”

“I write to invite the voices in, to watch the angel wrestle, to feel the devil gather on its haunches and rise. I write to hear myself breathing. I write to be doing something while I wait to be called to my appointment with death. I write to be done writing. I write because writing is fun.”

“Death comes to me again, a girl in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling. It’s not so terrible she tells me, not like you think, all darkness and silence. There are windchimes and the smell of lemons, some days it rains, but more often the air is dry and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase built from hair and bone and listen to the voices of the living. I like it, she says, shaking the dust from her hair, especially when they fight, and when they sing.” — from “Smoke: poems”

10. September 18, 2025: Our new built-in bookshelf was finished today and I couldn’t be happier. It spans all the way from the top of the stairs to the front door, and is so sturdy I could climb it like a ladder (I won’t). Right now, I’m just waiting for the stain to dry completely so I can put all my books back on it.

11. This photo of Franklin, because he’s beautiful.

12. This month’s bibliomancy: a line from Long Quiet Highway by Natalie Goldberg, flipped open at random:

“It’s the same for writing. Some people write for fifteen years with no success and then decide to quit. Don’t look for success and don’t quit. If you want writing, write under all circumstances.”

Talk to you again soon.

—Catherine

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