1. Visited the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at NASA.
There’s something about water and science and space that when combined all together makes my heart beat too fast. The lab specifically works to help train astronauts in working on the ISS without gravity. It’s a giant pool with a full size model in the bottom. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted to see in life (this is an exaggeration, but only as much of an exaggeration as someone who watched The Abyss 200 times as a child can exaggerate about their excitement about giant pools). Getting to see this in person was an incredible experience that immediately made me write a twenty page creepy story about it. I’m sorry, NASA, everything turns to horror in my hands.
2. Yoga
I started doing daily yoga as a way to tone muscles and instead found that it was the perfect place to channel my daily rage. So, maybe I’m doing it wrong or maybe I’m doing it exactly right. What I found is that thinking about the movements of the body on such a small scale—a tiny bend, a twist of a muscle you didn’t know existed—made me think about writing about the human body in a new way.
3. Watched Dirty Computer 13 Times
You know what? Don’t judge me, it’s perfect. Monae’s eMotion picture idea is fully realized here and it made me rethink how important all modes of storytelling are: sound, visual, and story. I teach multimodal communication and interactive storytelling, and I’ll be teaching this in particular for years to come.
4. Taught a Class on World Ghost Stories
I’m someone who thinks about ghost stories a lot, they’re basically one of the foundations of every culture’s storytelling. But actually planning a course around them and really diving into thinking about them, and even more importantly hearing students’ thoughts on them, was an invaluable experience.
5. Finally Made a Perfect 4 Layer Cake
At some point, cake building becomes like trying to write a novel—is it too much, is this filling actually right for the other flavors, why did I do this to myself? There’s a balancing act in everything one cooks or bakes and more so when it’s a layered cake. (It was buttermilk lemon cake with raspberry filling and vanilla buttercream, in case anyone wants to know).
6. Edited a Magazine
At Cotton Xenomorph, we’ve attempted the impossible: getting 3 writers to agree on every piece we accept. From this, it means not only are we getting pieces that speak to 3 very different mindsets, but it’s also made me rethink how and why stories/poems work for different people.
7. Babysat My Three Nephews
Something about the way children start to learn language and storytelling is amazing to experience. I mean they also learned a lot of swearwords and questionable ethics, but that’s also interesting in its own way. My oldest nephew also tried to explain what he’d heard about religion by saying “God is a ghost you can’t see” and it was maybe the best thing anyone has ever said on the subject.
8. Took Photographs
If I have a second love to writing and words, it was always images. Framing a picture, capturing a moment on film, has many of the same shortcomings as trying to do so on the page, but when the light is right and the angle is true, there’s something so close to magic that it feels realer than the actual moment (which is also what a good piece of writing can do).
9. Took My First Ever Plane Trip
I expected to be inspired by being in the frakkin’ sky, but I didn’t expect to feel so inspired by the peacefulness it brought in my brain. There was something about seeing the world contained and far away that made me wonder if that’s a reason I write: to see a world I can hold in my hands and protect.
10. Read
So much. There is so much beautiful and exciting and vibrant contemporary work going on right now. It makes me want to scream at everyone to check out the newest lit magazines, to dive into the debut authors books. I made a vow this year that in future creative writing courses, I’ll only teach stuff that is 3 or less years old. We need to know the words of now more than ever.
Chloe is the author of “Balancing Beams” — one of our ten most read stories of 2018 and one of a few pieces she has about space and astronauts and all kinds of beautiful and horrible things that happen to earthlings. Because that’s what stories are for. Chloe knows it and we’re all better because she does.
