What's Feeding Me 🐛 vol. 8
a monthly buffet of creative fodder
The Webs We Weave is a free weekly-ish newsletter on staying connected to ourselves, making connections in our creative work, and feeling more connected in the world.
Each month I share a little buffet of things that have been keeping me fed: intellectually, creatively, and emotionally. I invite you to share in the comments what's been feeding you, too! Both with me, and with each other.
📔 Great Writing
📜 Sense-Memory by Makayla Wamboldt
and I are in the same writing group together, and I just love reading her work. I’ve said as much to her about this piece, but once I started reading, I couldn't stop. It’s beautifully crafted, and explores some really compelling questions around pleasure and identity and finding creative ease. Alive and resonant from start to finish.
📜 Manic Pixie Dream Girl by Anna Fusco
has a way of telling stories that makes me want to drop everything and listen. I loved this piece, and they way it moved seamlessly from the euphoria of flirting with strangers, to the sobering task of organizing one’s personal belongings into hierarchies as a wildfire approaches, to the weight of words like “community” and “loss.” (And as we’d say in my Monday writing group: Last line alert! 🔥)
📰 The Medium Method
Years ago I found this article from the makers of the app, Todoist and I return to it often to re-ground myself in the reminder that, yes, I CAN be in love with pen and paper while also coveting a super sleek digital system:
“The Medium Method relies on desirable difficulty and re-enforces not only the benefits of paper and digital, but also takes advantage of how our brains actually work to spur deeper learning and creativity.”
I love that this article explores how analogue and digital tools can coexist in harmony within the same ecosystem—a reminder that harmony doesn’t necessarily mean completely devoid of inconvenience or difficulty.
🪶 Echocardiogram by Joy Sullivan
Grateful that this enchanting and potent little poem made its way into my Notes feed recently. I’m so stressed about stress, I need a cigarette really hits home for me.
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Great Listens and Watches
🎙️ This American Life: Try a Little Tenderness
To steal host Ira Glass’s words: “in these noisy, aggressive times where the people rising to power in this world seem to come in hot . . . we pause for a moment to remember there is another path.” Both the introduction and Act I are so good and so funny that I paused the episode, ran downstairs, and made my husband listen to it again with me. (He loved it.)
🎙️ Write-Minded podcast: Writing Intimate Truths, featuring Ashley C. Ford and Melissa Febos
I only came across this podcast pretty recently, but so far I’m really enjoying the hosts—both their rapport with each other, and their interviewing skills. They’ve brought on some GREAT writers as guests, and this episode acts as sort of a ‘best of’ featuring segments from interviews with two of my absolute favorite writers. I just want to be friends with both these women! A great listen about intimate truths and sharing, for writers and non-writers alike.
📺 Abbott Elementary (streaming on Hulu)
Setting aside the fact that I’m about four years behind on this one, my husband and I finally started watching Abbott Elementary this winter and OMG IT’S SO GOOD. Laugh-out-loud funny, and a feel-good balm for the soul. Do you watch it? (We’re only in Season 2—no spoilers!)
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🙇🏼♀️ Current Project or Micro Obsession
Writing Organization Systems & Tools
If you read my last essay, you know I’ve been wrestling with how to set up and organize an ecosystem that supports and fuels my writing practice.
After I published this piece, I made a really deliberate choice to take a step back and keep things simple going into 2025. What better time than the start of a new year to hit the ‘reset’ button, set down all my over-complicated setups and get back to basics?
The plan was this: I will open a single Google Doc. I will name it ‘2025 Writing’ and I will do all of my writing here, for as long as I possibly can. I do not expect this simple document to meet my every need. But I do trust that if I keep prioritizing the act of showing up and writing here, this simple little document (and my frustrations with it) will reveal to me what I actually want out of my writing organizational system.
It should surprise absolutely no one that I’m already restless to burn it all down and build something fancier. 😂 BUT! It does feel good to pare waaaay back and give myself a chance to start from scratch, and build a system in response to my actual needs (and not a thousand fancy, hypothetical needs I might one day have.)
Writer friends! I’m legitimately desperate to know: how and where do you organize your writing? Your drafts, your ideas, all your little scraps . . . what works for you?
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🤭 An Internet Giggle, Just Because.
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Your turn!
What’s feeding you lately?
If you’re game, share something that’s been feeding you lately in the comments. A podcast, a book, a habit, a new favorite thing, a project that’s lighting you up, a thing that made you laugh… anything! Let’s crowdsource some good creative fodder. 👇
Until next time,
Michelle
Michelle! Thank you so much for giving my writing a shout out. This totally made my day. 🥰 I always love seeing your round ups. And I LOVE Abbott Elementary - it is such a sweet, funny, and perfect escape-reality show haha.
And I feel you on the organizational stuff. I like the idea of just having one document to show up to. I set up a separate gmail for all my writing related things, so the only things I get in that email are from Sustenance, substack newsletters, and any submissions-related stuff, which has helped my brain a bit. And in that drive I have a few folders for poetry, CNF, substack..but still I am always forgetting where the most recent drafts are and things like that. I tried having one master document with links to each piece I write in separate documents where I work on edits, but I don't really know if it's working. I need organizational support too lol.
I second the question on organizational tools. Maybe we could have Joy talk us through her system sometime! What's feeding me recently is reading some fluff books that are entertaining but need very little brain power. My winter version of a beach read I guess!