Week of 1/18 - 25
Hiya Book Buddies:
Sorry for the lateness on this this week! Hope everyone is doing well! Here’s what’s up for this week:
Book Club :
Finally, I’ve finished the Book Club schedule through to September.
Also a reminder that Book Club is open to ALL BOOK BUDDIES, and takes place during a Tuesday Gen Writing window. Here’s the schedule:
Tuesday February 17 from 6:30 - 8:30pm EST: Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act: A Way of Being.” This one is a craft/process book that’s a nice, grounding reflection on what it means to be an artist, how important creativity is to the human spirit, and what it feels like to make stuff.
Tuesday April 14 from 6:30 - 8:30pm EST: Liz Moore’s “God of the Woods” This one is a two timeline mystery with multiple perspectives.
Publisher’s synopsis: When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide. Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found. As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances.
Tuesday June 16 from 6:30-8:30pm EST: Ryka Aoki’s “Light from Uncommon Stars.” A quirky, whimsical fantasy novel. This one got many votes on the rec list!
Publisher’s description: Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in Ryka Aoki's Light From Uncommon Stars, a defiantly joyful adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts.
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate.But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline.As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.
BONUS Extra Summer Book Club Tuesday July 14 from 6:30-830pm EST: Lily King’s “Heart the Lover.” I snuck this one in because a lot of you asked for it. I just started it yesterday and it’s only a 5 hour audiobook, and has summer romp vibes for days. Love triangles, writer main character/narrator, coming of age etc. I thought it would be fun to have an extra, light hearted one for peak summer. Bonus if you read the first book, “Writers and Lovers,” but not necessary. They are in the same world, but not dependent on each other.
Tuesday August 18 from 6:30 - 8:30pm EST: Charlotte Wood’s “Stone Yard Devotional.” This is a good one for folks interested in slower plot, richer interiority, exploration of place and thematic intentions. Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.
Booker Prize website description: Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of New South Wales. She doesn’t believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living a strange, reclusive existence almost by accident. But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past…
September to December books coming in a few months!
Feedback Group Submission Schedules!
IRL Group Wednesdays @ beautyland 6:30-8:30: Next meeting is January 21. Johanna and Genna have floor time, we’re having a birthday party! Genna’s got pages in already, and Johanna, let us know when you can submit! We’ll meet again on February 4 and Chris and Aimee, I believe, have the floor.
Noon Crew Thursdays 12pm - 1:30: Our next meeting is January 22. Sara will have floor time with pages due ASAP. The meeting after is set for February 5 and Ezra has the floor. Pages are due January 30!
Weirdlings Thursdays 12pm - 1:30: The following next meeting is January 29. Ed is on the sub schedule with pages due on the 22nd.
Kool Kids Thursdays at 7pm - 8:30: Our next meeting is January 29 and Morgan has pages due on the 22nd.
OG Crew Thursdays at 7:30pm - 9: The next meeting is January 22. Kristina has the floor. Pages are in! The following meeting is February 5 and Malavika will have the floor. Pages due 1/29.
Saturday besties 12:30pm - 2: The next meeting is and Georgia and Nora January 31 and pages are due 1/24.
Gen Writing Prompts for January 20 and 24 2026
January 20 and 24, 2026
Please don’t stop the music
I like working with music for prompts. I just got to the part of the book club book, Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being where he discusses the difference between process stopping competition and trying to emulate a piece of work you love. He writes about how making something with the intention only to be better than something beautiful won’t result in good work, but goes on to say that aspiring to make something as good, aspiring to be in the same landscape of the thing one admires can go a long way in terms of motivation. As an example he talks about the relationship between The Beatles and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, where Wilson claimed he wrote “God Only Knows” in response to Rubber Soul and then in turn the Beatles went on to write “Here, There, and Everywhere.” The mutual inspiration, Rubin argues, created a feedback loop of creative innovation.
This just got me thinking about how “God Only Knows,” in my opinion, is a perfect song. So I’d like us to use it or a song YOU think is a perfect song as inspiration for our writing this week.
Here’s how you can work with music:
Generate something new:
Use a verse of the song or some other chunk of the lyrics as an opening line or otherwise integrate the text into your text
Begin a story or essay with someone hearing this song and let that inform the mood
Do some journaling of what emotions and/or experiences the song brings up for you and use that as a jumping off point .
Working with something you’re revising:
Put a character in relationship to the song somehow. Maybe they are at an event and it comes on and it changes their perspective, maybe they perform the song somewhere, maybe they listen to it in the car and that can start a scene...
Integrate the lyrics into a scene you’re having trouble working out
Think about what the song is getting at thematically and let that help you understand the story as a whole.
Here are the lyrics and a link to listen to “God Only Knows”: God Only Knows - The Beach Boys (with lyrics)
I may not always love you
But long as there are stars above you
You never need to doubt it
I'll make you so sure about it
God only knows what I'd be without you
If you should ever leave me
Well, life would still go on, believe me
The world could show nothing to me
So what good would living do me?
God only knows what I'd be without you
God only knows what I'd be without you
If you should ever leave me
Though life would still go on, believe me
The world could show nothing to me
So what good would living do me?
God only knows what I'd be without you
God only knows what I'd be without you
God only knows what I'd be without you
God only knows what I'd be without you
God only knows what I'd be without you (God only knows)
God only knows what I'd be without you (what I'd be without you)
God only knows what I'd be without you (God only knows)
God only knows what I'd be without you (what I'd be without you)
God only knows what I'd be without you (God only knows)
God only knows what I'd be without you (what I'd be without you)
God only knows what I'd be without you (God only knows)
God only knows what I'd be without you (what I'd be without you)
God only knows what I'd be without you
Success Stories!
Maia Baker HAS GOT A BOOK DEAL! To Keep a Theif will be out via Berkley Romance (Penguin Random House affiliate) summer 2027, so get ready to stalk Maia on book tour!
Rebecca Tiger has got a new piece in TRASH CAT LIT: “Shitty Kitty.” Read it here.
Happy writing this week. I’m rooting for you!
