The Best Thing I’ve Ever Written
My (very) personal essay, “The Poetry Reading,” was accepted into MAYDAY Magazine.
As a writer who spends most of her time sharing intimate details about her life on Substack, there are very few experiences I haven’t written about. I don’t harbor many secrets. I’m not afraid of sensitive topics. I often view my life experiences through the lens of being fodder for my art.
But there is one thing I’d never written about before—a topic that I didn’t mind chatting about but avoided revisiting at a depth that would enable me to translate the event into mere words on the page. If you had asked me why this topic appeared to be off-limits, I don’t know that I would have been able to tell you. I hadn’t really given it much thought until spring of 2020.
As the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading across the globe, I was sitting on a couch in an Airbnb rental in the Umbrella District of Bo Sang village on the outskirts of Chang Mai, Thailand, staring at a LinkedIn message from an editor I’d never met who worked for a publication I’d never heard of. Elliot Bueler of MAYDAY Magazine complimented my writing and asked if I’d be interested in submitting a pitch for the literary publication. I was flattered. I decided to swing for the fences and proceeded to pitch the most emotionally intense personal essay possible.
Mr. Bueler loved it. He gave me the go ahead. No need to set a specific deadline, he said, the magazine will be ready whenever the essay is. I knew this was dangerous for me. I’ve always wanted to be the person who could write without a deadline, but I am not that girl. I returned to the States. A pandemic came and went. R. and I planted roots in the Lonestar State. We spent the holiday season in Mexico. We lost one dog and added two more. I never wrote the essay.
Three years passed before I decided to give it another go. I reached out to Elliot and re-pitched the topic, albeit slightly differently. I totally understand if you’re no longer interested, I wrote, but I wanted to reach out in case you were. From my perspective, it was a win-win. I was going to write it either way. This time, it was Mr. Bueler’s turn to be flattered. He was honored that I still felt that MAYDAY was the right place for the essay. I set a deadline this time and got to work.
I’d like to tell you that things flowed smoothly from there, but writing what would become “The Poetry Reading” was challenging. I had to open up a vein to do it—not in the tortured artist sense, but in the sense that it was the only possible way to reveal what was within me. I had a beginning. Then, an ending. It was the middle that felt muddled. I was telling two stories at once, and the execution had to be just right.
I ended up writing all the parts in the order that they came to me. After it was all out of my brain, I cut the sections into strips and put them into one configuration. Then another and another and then one after that until all the pieces fit and the resulting puzzle revealed the masterpiece I’d been crafting for months. It was the hardest work I’d ever done as a writer. But in the end, it was perfect. I submitted. It was accepted. I waited impatiently until the moment it would be published.
And now it has been. If we’re connected on LinkedIn, you may have seen my post about it a week or so ago. I was too excited not to share. That said, I wanted to share more about the process and do a special reveal here. I’m extremely proud of the result. I hope you’ll read it, and beyond that, I’d love for you to share it with people in your world.
One final note before I let you go: I don’t love trigger warnings for written content, especially when such cautionary text takes away the element of surprise. So instead, I will tell you that at the end of the first section of the essay, you will know without a doubt whether the content is for you. At that point, you can choose to keep reading or stop there. I encourage you to consume it in its entirety. Some early readers have told me that they couldn’t put it down, which is probably the best compliment a writer can receive. You can decide for yourself if that rings true for you.
Whatever you decide, thanks for checking it out. I couldn’t be more delighted to share this (very) personal essay with all of you. Happy reading!
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix
P.S. In case you missed it, this is the direct link to the story ;)